Page 10 - 2020 Stallion Register

Left: Mistico clears the last fence in the 1994 New York Turf Writers at Saratoga. Below: Mistico gallops to the post just before his win in the 1994 New York Turf Writers. photos © Barbara Livingston
Mistico
still going strong at 33
March 28, 2019 • By Joe Clancy, reprinted with permission from thisishorseracing.com
Mistico gallops to the post before his win by a neck over Mistico. Warm Spell won a no humidity. The only bad days Mistico has are in the 1994 New York Turf Writers at Saratoga. posthumous Eclipse Award. ones where he has to go to the barn.
Barbara D. Livingston photo
The first edition of Steeplechase Times –
March 18, 1994 – featured a center spread headlined “The Big Three.” Three stars dominated preseason conversation and there
they were, complete with photos by Barbara Livingston and past performances from Equibase.
THE TRIO CONSISTED OF:
• Warm Spell, Dr. John Griggs’ Kentucky- bred chestnut flash who’d won three of five, including a two-race sweep at Saratoga, the previous season.
• Lonesome Glory, Kay Jeffords’ Eclipse Award winner of 1992 when he made history as
a novice by winning in England and 1993 when he won the Breeders’ Cup by 8 1/2 lengths for trainer Bruce Miller.
• Mistico, the nearly black Chilean import who led the earnings list in 1992 and won two major stakes in 1993.
To that point, all three had never appeared in the same race. They ruled 1994, however, winning two stakes each, accounting for all five races worth $100,000 or more and taking the top three spots on the earnings list. Head to head to head, they raced together four times. Mistico won twice, the others once each.
Warm Spell finished with three total wins (to two each for the others) on the season,
and a slight edge in the earnings race. He
also added a crushing final chapter to the story as he was fatally injured in November’s Colonial Cup, which went to Lonesome Glory
Lonesome Glory went on to win steeplechase championships in 1995, 1997 and 1999 – the only five-time jump champion in American history. He died in a paddock accident in 2002 and three years later joined racing’s Hall of Fame.
Which leaves only Mistico, the oldest of the three and still going at 33 on Hubbard’s Crystal Springs Farm in Tularosa, N.M. The 320-acre farm, surrounded by mountains and scenery
fit for a Georgia O’Keeffe painting, is home to Quarter Horse mares and foals, prime alfalfa hay and a little bit of steeplechase royalty – even if the nearest steeplechase course is 1,268 miles away. The high-desert retirement home is actually Mistico’s second, as he spent 10 years at Crystal Springs in Paris, Ky. When Hubbard closed that farm, Mistico made the trek west.
“It wasn’t even really a question, he had to go with us,” said farm manager Tom Goncharoff, who also relocated along with his wife Leslie and daughters Kristen and Rebecca. “We have half a dozen pensioners. They don’t owe us anything.”
And it’s a great life. Mistico (at left in photo taken by Goncharoff this week) lives with My Dashing Lady, a 22-year-old Quarter Horse broodmare who won a Grade 1 on the track and produced $1.3 million earner Noconi among others. They live outside, petty much all the time, munch on vast quantities of that hay, take turns eating from feeders on what might be the only board fence in New Mexico, watch young horses come and go and admire the views. In winter, there’s snow on the nearby mountaintops but barely any (ever) at the farm. In summer, the temperature can climb to 100 but there’s
“Shortly after we moved to New Mexico we had a hail storm and he had welts all over him and just looked rough,” said Goncharoff. “I felt bad for him so we put him the barn, gave him some Bute and let him chill out and relax. He hated being in the barn, absolutely hated it. Still to this day, he’s the same way. We’ve got to bribe him with grain to worm him or do anything. He likes to do things his way.
“He’s kind of a grouchy-gotta-do-it-my-way kind of dude.”
And that’s just fine.
Mistico more than earned his retirement, and his personality. Foaled in July 1986 and bred by Haras Matancilla, the dark bay made 11 starts as a 3-year- old in his native Chile. The son of Balconaje won the Group 2 Premio Alvaro Covarrubias and the Group 1 Chilean Two Thousand Guineas, then placed
in four consecutive Group 1 races before being imported by Hubbard and trainer Henry Moreno.
For Hubbard and partners Dr. Ed Allred
and J.R. Johnson, Mistico made six allowance starts in California in 1990. He lost them
all. Switched to Dwight Viator the next
year, Mistico found more success away from California – finishing third at Oaklawn Park, and winning a Keeneland allowance going 1 1/2 miles on the turf (at 26-1) in April. In a stakes at Dueling Grounds (now Kentucky Downs) two weeks later, he finished ninth of 10. Two more starts that summer at Arlington proved just as fruitless, and Goncharoff started mulling other plans. After the loss at Dueling Grounds, where the four-race card included two hurdle races and two turf races, the joke was that maybe Mistico would do better over jumps.
8 New Mexico Horse Breeder