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Belle of Rainier
(1979-1989, Inducted 2008)
Starts: 43; Record: 17-6-4; Earnings: $424,526;
Owner and Breeder: Al Benton; Trainer: William Findlay
Foaled in 1979, the striking
gray Belle of Rainier captured hearts with her impressive on-track
accomplishments and regal presence.
The
“Belle” was owned and bred by West Seattle businessman Al Benton and
trained throughout her four-year career by William Findlay.
Belle of Rainier was named to honor Dewaine
Moore’s Enumclaw-based Rainier Stables, which had Mt. Rainier as a
picturesque backdrop and was among the state’s top farms for many years.
The talented filly was conceived, foaled and raised at the South King County
farm.
Belle of Rainier was sired by Bay Meadows
stakes winner Windy Tide, who had run third to champion Silver Screen in the
1969 Arlington-Washington Futurity. The son of Windy Sands earned $108,593
before retiring to stud at Rainier Stables in 1974.
Lap Wing, Belle of Rainier’s dam, had been
claimed by Benton for $8,000. The daughter of Donut King won her first time out
for Benton, taking a six furlong allowance race at Longacres. Lap Wing, also a
gray filly, continued to perform well throughout her five-year-old season and
retired to the breeding shed with earnings of $57,764.
Belle of Rainier was the fourth foal and first
stakes winner out of Lap Wing, who would later produce stakes winner Lady of
Rainier, and was the fourth of 15 stakes winners sired by Windy Tide.
Belle of Rainier made her debut at Longacres and
swept the Gottstein Futurity (over Chinook Pass), Mercer Girls and Green River
Handicaps before finishing the year with a win in the Burlingame Stakes at Bay
Meadows. At three, she won seven stakes: the Belle Roberts Handicap (against
older fillies and mares) and the Mike Donohoe Memorial, Ingenue, Betsy Ross and
Sacajawea Handicaps at Longacres and the Ballerina and Senorita Stakes at
Exhibition Park. She was voted Washington’s champion three-year-old filly.
She won three more stakes and placed in seven others among her 43 starts and
retired with a record of 17-6-4. Her lifetime earnings of $424,526 were second
only to Chinook Pass.
Belle of Rainier produced
only three foals, the best among them being multiple stakes-placed Sky White,
by Relaunch, who went on to become a successful sire in British Columbia. Her
final foal, Pancho’s Girl, a 1988 daughter of Pancho Villa, has produced
two stakes winners and one stakes-placed foal among her five winners. Tops
among them is the now nine-year-old West Seattle Boy, who won his 16th race on
September 12 at Emerald Downs.
Belle of Rainier
died in 1989 at age 10. |
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Firesweeper
(1983-2011, Inducted 2011)
Starts: 34; Record: 13-5-3; Earnings: $363,394;
Owner and Breeder: Northwest Farms;
Trainer: Bob McMeans
In the 1970s, Yakima horseman and breeder Jerre Paxton, who would later be inducted into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot in 2003, was gathering well-bred fillies to race and breed to his upcoming young stallion, Drum Fire. Among them was an Ack Ack filly that he had L. L. McMurry purchase for him at the 1979 CTBA March Two-year-olds in Training Sale for $29,500. A $30,000 Saratoga yearling buy the year before, Skysweeper would not distinguish herself on the racetrack, but would prove of great value in the breeding shed, producing two Washington champions and being the granddam of two more through her daughter Nightatmisskittys, Washington’s 2007 broodmare of the year.
The second of 11 foals produced out of Skysweeper, Firesweeper topped the 1984 WTBA Summer Yearling Sale after Edwards Bloodstock signed the ticket at $67,000, but the outstanding filly would remain with her breeder. At the time, Dale Leach, who managed Paxton’s Northwest Farms, considered her the best filly he had ever been around.
The well-named Firesweeper made her debut at two in the Washington Stallion Stakes at Longacres, the first of 19 consecutive stakes starts.
After overcoming a poor start, Firesweeper defeated seven rivals to launch her career with a four-length win. The Bob McMeans-trained speedball next scored a five-length win in the Green River Valley Stakes.
The blazing filly continued her dominance over the juvenile filly division with a 10-length tally in the Broderick Memorial and then hung on to win the mile Mercer Girls Stakes by a neck, after coming back from a 104 degree fever which had prevented her starting in the Gottstein Futurity.
Paxton’s star filly made it five in a row as she cruised to a 12-length win in the $107,020 Longacres Lassie Stakes while under a “steadying restraint” from rider Gary Stevens.
After running eighth in the Oak Leaf Stakes (G1) at Santa Anita in her first defeat, Firesweeper went east to Aqueduct for the second Breeders’ Cup World Championships, and after leading for most of the first half in the Juvenile Fillies (G1), was eased in the drive to finish 11th of 12.
Named Washington’s champion two-year-old filly of 1985, she was given 106 pounds on the Experimental Free Handicap.
Firesweeper began her sophomore season at Santa Anita and finished unplaced behind Sari’s Heroine in two sprint stakes. Returning to Longacres, she narrowly won the Ms. Stakes in her first of ten 1986 starts at the Renton track. She would take the Sacajawea, Ingenue and Autumn handicaps and place in five other stakes en route to her second champion filly title and was given a 109 pound impost by the Daily Racing Form on the annual free handicap. Of her final 15 outings, less a trio of Santa Anita allowance tests, all were in stakes company.
Back again at Santa Anita to start her third year of racing, Firesweeper placed in two allowances before returning to stakes company with a 1 1/4-length win in the Mt. Wilson Stakes run over the Arcadia track’s downhill turf course. A month later she was back home at Longacres to score a record tenth stakes win at the track with a three-length tally in the Fashion Handicap. Firesweeper would add victories in the Luella G. (after a two-month layoff and two surgeries for an entrapped epiglottis) and Hazel K. handicaps, but would lose year-end championship honors to Belle Roberts Handicap winner Popcorn Patti.
Firesweeper returned to Longacres as a five-year-old, but the best she could offer in three tries was a fourth place effort in the Rhododendron Handicap. She retired in June as the third leading Washington-bred distaffer of all-time and would be the first of only two horses (the other being fellow Hall of Famer Captain Condo) to record a record dozen stakes wins at Longacres.
Though Firesweeper’s primary legacy would be on the racetrack, she did produce three stakes-placed fillies from her 13 foals. Her final offspring, the unraced Dehere filly De Sweeper, was foaled in 2007.
Firesweeper died at the age of 28 at Three Chimneys Farm in Versailles, Kentucky. |
Peterhof's Patea
(1988- , Inducted 2007)
Starts: 52; Record: 16-14-6; Earnings: $623,367
Breeder: Oak Crest Farm; Owners: Roger Williams & Patti Strait
Trainer: Bud Klokstad
In 1990, a gray two-year-old comet named
Peterhof’s Patea made her debut at Longacres and dominated her division.
It would only prove to be the arbiter of more good things to come.
Bred by Jack and Theresa Hodge, the daughter of
two-time group winner Peterhof and first foal out of the winning Drone mare Tea
At Ten, was consigned to the 1989 WTBA Summer Yearling Sale where she was
purchased for $11,500 by Roger Williams. Turned over to future Washington Hall
of Fame trainer Bud Klokstad, Peterhof’s Patea would break her maiden in
the Green River Valley Stakes for Williams and his future wife Patti Strait and
then add wins in the Broderick Memorial and Longacres Lassie Stakes before
finishing second in the Joe Gottstein Futurity. With her 3-2-1 record in seven
starts, and earnings of $172,187, she was named not only Washington champion
two-year-old filly, but the best statebred juvenile of the year.
At three, Peterhof’s Patea would win three
more stakes at Longacres, have two stakes seconds, and add another $98,820 to
her totals.
In 1992, after winning three stakes in
a row at Longacres, she gave her connections quite a scare when she developed
pneumonia. Four months later, she returned to the races at Bay Meadows and
finished the year with a fourth, a second and a win in three stakes, earning
$100,730 and adding her second state championship designation, as Washing- ton
champion older filly or mare.
Peterhof’s Patea
spent her 1993 campaign in California where she won three stakes and placed in
nine others, three of which were Grade 3 events, among her 14 outings, and
earned $186,730. Her superlative campaign not only earned her a second title as
Washington champion older distaffer, but also horse of the year honors.
The sturdy performer came back to make a dozen
starts at age six, winning the James Wiggins Breeders’ Cup Handicap and
placing in four other California stakes to give her a final record of 16-14-6
from 52 starts and earnings of $623,367. Fourteen years later, that amount is
still the record earnings for any WTBA-sold runner and she is also the leading
Washington-bred distaffer of all time and ranks as the third leading
Washington-bred money earner to date.
Williams and
Strait then entered their three-time champion in the 1995 Keeneland January
Winter Mixed Sale where Fountainbleau Farm, agent, went to $100,000 to buy her
as a broodmare prospect. She was bred to A. P. Indy and exported to Japan where
she has produced two winners, including Group 2 winner Jolly Dance, a daughter
of Dance in the Dark who has earned over $1.5 million. |
Smogy Dew
(1961-1975, Inducted 2005)
Starts: 29; Record: 16-3-0; Earnings: $60,248
Owners: Dr. Dan Ranninger, Dr. Philip Irwin & Dr. George Venema
Breeders: Arthur & Gladys Fiess; Trainer: Glen Williams
Trainer Glen Williams, winner of a record
57 stakes races at Longacres, and a Hall of Fame nominee himself this year,
ranked Smogy Dew’s victory in the 1964 Washington Derby as the biggest
thrill of his career. With Lennie Knowles in the saddle, Smogy Dew defeated
future Canadian horse of the year and British Columbia hero George Royal by
three-quarters of a length. The chestnut daughter of Six Fifteen—No Smog,
by Cover Up, was the last filly to win the state’s biggest race restricted
to three-year-olds. Her record at age two and three proved Smogy Dew’s
complete dominance over her local rivals, of both sexes. At two, she had seven
wins and a second place finish in eight starts and was the first
Washington-bred distaffer of any age to be named state horse of the year. At
age three, she recorded five wins and a placing, also from eight starts. Final
numbers show three seasons of racing with 16 wins from 29 starts, her earnings,
though a modest $60,248 by today’s standards, gave her a standard starts
index (SSI) of 7.40. Half of those wins were versus stakes company, and six of
those eight stakes victories came at the expense of male rivals. Included in
that number was a win in the Washington Futurity, meaning she beat the best
males around for the biggest local prize in both her juvenile and sophomore
campaigns. She also won the Spokane Futurity, Drumheller Memorial and
Wash-ington Stallion Stakes at two, had wins in the Tacoma and Speed Handicaps,
Spokane Derby and Seafair Queen Stakes at three, and finished off her career
with victories in the Stepping Stone Handicap (at Exhibition Park) and Fashion
Handicap. A foal of 1961, Smogy Dew was bred by Arthur Fiess and sold to Drs.
Irwin, Venema and Ranniger at the 1962 WHBA sale for $2,100. Click here for expanded profile. |
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