April 2016 Member of the Month: Ben Berger – Woodstock Farm
The past year has been full of ups and downs for the Berger family. Beside Suddenbreakingnews, they also bred Catch a Glimpse, winner of the 2015 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf (gr. IT); the three-year-old City Zip filly has trained on, winning her first start this year, a victory in the grade III Herecomesthebride Stakes. But he Bergers also lost someone very special: their beloved matriarch, Mina, who purchased the family’s Woodstock Farm near Lexington, Kentucky, in January 1997. Working together with his parents was a “three-way kind of family experience,” Ben mused.
But Ben and his father have continued the operation in fine style. He estimates the total number of horses at Woodstock at 95. Between Bergers Sr. and Jr., the two own about ten broodmares. Ben’s been in the family business for nearly twenty years, but values learning from his dad, whose experience spans twice that. He said, “I’ve found in the last five, ten years that I wish I’d listened a lot harder and not insisted and not thought that I knew so much, because I realize how much I didn’t know and how much more as I get older—and hopefully a little bit wiser…I can understand that what he was telling me years ago is things that I’m seeing more correct now.”
Suddenbreakingnews, whom Branch Equine sold to Henderson for $72,000 as a yearling at the 2014 Keeneland September sale, has proven his mettle on the racetrack and in his pedigree. By 2003 Horse of the Year Mineshaft, a son of A.P. Indy, the bay gelding is out of Uchitel (by Afleet Alex), whom Robert Berger bought privately. Uchitel is a half-sister to two talented full siblings by Touch Gold: 2008 West Virginia Derby (gr. III) winner Ready Set and multiple grade I victress Composure. The latter mare has produced two graded stakes-placed horses to the cover of A.P. Indy, as well as Penwith (by A.P. Indy’s son Bernardini), winner of the February 13 Royal Delta Stakes (gr. II).
The Bergers sold Uchitel after the Rebel Stakes, though they kept her four-year-old Sky Mesa filly and a Bernardini filly that’s headed for the sales. Ben said his father’s decision, was a practical one: “Now, in his eighties, as he gets a little bit older, he’d like to enjoy the fruits of his labor a little bit sooner, so he’s cut down on the numbers” of broodmares in his band. Robert plans to “enjoy the successes sooner, as opposed to later, just because it gives him more action on a yearly basis if we sell foals well, if we sell yearlings well.” While his father is a pedigree enthusiast and loves poring over nicks and crosses, Ben focuses on physical match-ups when planning a mating; the two put their heads together to find a stallion that’s got best of both worlds for the mare.
When it comes to Catch a Glimpse, Ben said that she “was a nice filly, had good angles, and was put together right.” Her stakes-winning dam, Halo River, was 18 when Catch a Glimpse was foaled and had already produced grade III winner (and 2015 champion sire in Canada) Old Forester, but she’d had some bad luck since then. Fast forward to 2014, when Catch a Glimpse went under the hammer for $75,000 to eventual co-owner Windways Farm; now, Halo River, who’d since been retired as a broodmare, is expecting a foal by Can the Man and due to be bred back to Lemon Drop Kid.
Catch a Glimpse’s successes have been a thrill for the Bergers. “I’d raised her and we’d prepped her to sell her and she’d made it to the Breeders’ Cup and she’d won,” recalled Ben. “That was just kind of those once-in-a-lifetime things—hopefully not once-in-a-lifetime, just a perfect storm of things that was happening.”
These victories are a crowning achievement on Robert’s career. “It’s been very exciting and fulfilling and emotionally uplifting for his program to have these two horses produced from the same crop and make headlines,” Ben said. Ben, his wife, and daughters enjoy sharing these successes with Robert. He enthused, “It’s great to be able to share the ride with him.”