Page 170 - February 2021

events – including the Remington Park Juvenile Stakes – before abruptly tailing off. Upon closer inspection, her handlers discovered that she had incurred a potentially career ending injury. “The real issue was that she had a chip in her knee,” Fran explains.
As it transpired, however, Weetonas Lafawn wasn’t finished with racing. “[When] we purchased her,” Fran says, “our trainer said, ‘You know, I think we can fix that chip pretty easily, and I think she could come back as a three year old.’” After hearing Clinton Crawford’s diagnosis, the Cavenaughs sent her away to receive the medical care she needed. On April 21, 2018, six months after the filly’s last start, they entered Weetonas Lafawn into the Mr Master Bug Stakes. “It was a nasty, rainy day at Remington Park,” Fran reminisces, “and this was one of our first real races.
We were in the paddock and I remember the announcer speaking about the horses. When he said that Weetonas Lafawn
was making her appearance, he made
the comment that she had lost her form (because she had won the Remington Park Juvenile as a two year old and really had not done much after that).”
But to the surprise of almost everyone present, the filly proceeded to thunder
to a stunning 3/4-length win. Fran
was ecstatic. “She just showed them,”
she fondly remembers, “that her form
was back.” That night, Fran says, she
also learned a valuable lesson about the importance of understanding each of
her racehorses as an individual. “It just shows that sometimes the horse is telling you what they need,” she explains. “She [Weetonas Lafawn] needed time off to heal, but – once she got her time off to heal – she came back. In my heart, I knew that she had never lost her form or her desire to win. She just had something that she had to overcome.”
“And she proved that she did.”
“We want to breed horses that can have a secondary career in the performance arena. We breed to make sure that these animals have longevity after racing.”
168 SPEEDHORSE February 2022
Dustin Orona Photography
In addition to Why, another one of the Cavenaughs broodmares is graded stakes winner Weetonas Lafawn.
Myriam Maynard, Speedhorse