July 2016 Member of the Month: Peter J. Callahan
s in the April 16 Lexington (gr. III) before finishing tenth in the May 21 Preakness (gr. I).
“Yeah, you’re damn right we were excited,” Callahan recalled of Collected’s Triple Crown promise. He added, “Just to be mentioned in that company was flattering, to say the very least.” Consigned by Runnymede, Collected fetched $150,000 at the 2014 Keeneland September Yearling Sale from SGV Thoroughbreds, which sold him the following spring for $170,000 at Ocala to eventual owners Speedway Stable. Thus far, the Bob Baffert trainee, graded-placed at two, boasts four wins in a seven-start career and earnings of $433,700.
A son of City Zip, Collected is out of the British-bred Helena Bay (by Johannesburg), a striking chestnut mare whom Runnymede and Callahan also co-bred. The Clay-Callahan team purchased her in uterowhen they bought her dam, the Danehill mare Josette, for $300,000 at the 2005 Keeneland November Mixed Sale. Callahan observed, “She descends from the famous family that we bought into…when I first started collaborating with Runnymede.”
The matriarch of that clan was Runaway Bride; dam of international sire Blushing Groom, she was the fifth dam of Collected and the third dam of Japanese champion Agnes Digital. The latter horse, bred by Runnymede and Callahan, earned over $8 million. This dynamic duo purchased Agnes Digital in utero when they bought his dam, Chancey Squaw, in foal to Crafty Prospector, for $150,000 in 1996. Other Runnymede-Callahan collaborations in the breeding shed include 2010 Hollywood Gold Cup (gr. I) winner and hardy handicapper Awesome Gem, earner of over $2.8 million, and grade III winner Midnight Cry.
How did this productive pairing come about? In the late 1980s, Callahan, a media magnate who once served as the principal stockholder for the corporation owning The National Enquirer, began to dabble in equine partnerships. When he didn’t achieve success at the level he’d hoped, he branched out on his own. Around 1990, Callahan met Runnymede chairman Catesby W. Clay, and their bond solidified quickly. Clay fondly dubbed Callahan the “Manhattan Fox” for his friend’s New York roots and the animal featured on his family crest, and the two have collaborated ever since. “For the last 25 or 26 years, we’ve been co-breeding horses and had more than a modicum of success for our efforts,” Callahan said proudly.
They own about six mares jointly, while Callahan, who now resides in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, has two broodmares of his own, boarded at Runnymede, and four to five racehorses. “I don’t consider myself a horseman, per se,” Callahan said. “I’m a probability analyst. I can look at the page of a stallion and the page of a mare and conjure up certain thoughts about what a horse could look like.” As a result, he turns to the Clays for breeding advice.
But one of Callahan’s proudest equine achievements came in his own name as breeder of multiple grade I-winning sprinter Palace, now a stallion at Spendthrift Farm in Lexington, Kentucky. “I became infatuated with a sire named City Zip, so much so that, after using him on a season-to-season basis, I actually bought in a share for six and seven years, and with the share, I bred City Zip and
Underdeveloped as a juvenile, Palace almost remained in his breeder’s barn, but later wound up with owner Antonino Miuccio after being claimed by top New York trainer Linda Rice. Palace, sold for $160,000 as a juvenile at OBS March, made the 2014 Saratoga meet his own. In one month, he tallied back-to-back wins in the Alfred G. Vanderbilt Handicap and Forego Stakes (both gr. I), all en route to earning $1,586,550. Callahan admitted he wished he “still had him every time he won a big race, but I’m a breeder, and at the end of the day, you breed them and you sell them and you turn around and walk away.”
Carly Silver began her career in horse racing journalism for The Blood-Horse at age twelve, writing pedigree analyses in her own column called “Teen Tracks.” Currently an assistant editor at Harlequin Books and an ancient historian writing and teaching in Brooklyn, New York, she has also contributed to The Thoroughbred Daily News and The Daily Racing Form.