Page 9 - September 2005 The Game

Your Thoroughbred Racing Community Newspaper The Game, September 2005 9
Rombis BelievesYou’ll Get a Good One Sooner or Later
By Harlan Abbey
The three essentials for a successful business, experts say, are --"location, location, location."
The three essentials for raising a successful Thoroughbred race horse, according to Debbie Rombis, are "conformation, conformation, conformation."
Rombis, a city-bred girl herself, was a jockey for two years before becoming a trainer some 15 years ago. She and partner Steve Cathcart bought their 86-acre Against The Wind Farm in Ridgeway, Ontario, five years ago and began their breeding operation soon after. A year later they formed Against The Wind Transport Co., which has five vans shipping runners all over North America.
"We have six mares now, but when we started we had eleven and we sold eight yearlings our first year," Rombis continued. "The best runner we've sold so far is Dana's Lucky Lady, who is stakes-placed twice and has won nearly $200,000 in three years. When we started out, we were thinking American-based sires were important but now we're concentrating on foals that will be eligible for the Ontario Sire Stakes."
To be offered in the select sale is a colt from the first crop of Cats At Home out of Link of Liberty, thus a half-brother to Dana's Lucky Lady. Named Cats Got Wind, the colt is "smart, very good looking, well balanced, and medium sized, all indications of a speedy two-year- old," said Rombis. Chosen for the preferred sale is a filly by Foxtrail, sire of '04 Sovereign Award winning two- year-old Wholelottabourbon, out of Wings Of Society. Her half-brother, now a two-year-old, was in the select sale last year. Rombis described the filly as "rounder, looks like a sprinter, and also very smart, like the colt.
"We try to raise our foals the natural way, grooming them daily, feeding them well, with no hormones added. We use the Equicizer to develop them, plus our indoor ring."
The two sales yearlings are not the only members of the 2004 foal crop at Against The Wind, Rombis added:
"The ones with flaws we keep to race and hope to get lucky with them. We have an Albert The Great colt who reared and fell over backwards and wound up with a tilt to his head. A Dayjur has a superficial scar. The other 'keeper' was sired by Damasca Dan."
This year, Rombis has three mares in foal to Gardiner Farms' Wheres the Ring, who she feels showed excellent speed but whose career was compromised by a foot
problem. In her words, those mares are Winner's Bid -- "No bloodlines to brag about but a good race mare," Lady On Top, an earner of $300,000, and Link of Liberty -- "who has great paper, but is unraced."
The other broodmares are American Money, in foal to Tethra, who has black type throughout her pedigree and earned $60-$80,000 at the track; Friendly Melody, in foal to Bold Executive, who broke her maiden and has excellent bloodlines (her dam sold for $200,000), and No Cheating, also in foal to Bold Executive, whose "paper" isn't outstanding but earned $500,000 racing.
Norm Marchi, who is a partner in Lady On Top and several runners, helps Cathcart and Rombis pick
out sires for their mares. In the past, they used Intidab, who was booked full but whose stock
went through the Toronto sale rather unknown. Then the young stallion had Greater B Good start in the Kentucky Derby and win over $500,000. But now Against The Wind would rather use Ontario sires.
"With the young ones," admitted Rombis, "You never know. Some are 'morning glories' who train in black type and run horribly in the afternoon and others breeze horribly and run great. If you claim a horse, you're lucky to get them to run back successfully at the price at which you claimed them. But in breeding, you have to get a good one sooner or later -- you hope. Our goal is to breed a couple of stakes horses that are good enough to race in Florida in the Winter."
When it comes to the Against The Wind racing stable, Rombis has placed in the trainers top ten at Fort Erie the last couple of years and on May 15, 2004, became the first woman trainer in Fort his- tory to saddle three winners in one day: Nabethian, Tobie Lang and Herr Ruby (at $94.30). "I don't think I could have a more exciting day as a trainer unless one of my horses won the Queen's Plate or Canadian Oaks," she said at the time.
Such accomplishments seemed a silly dream for a child raised on the 11th floor of a Toronto apartment building. She started drawing pictures of horses in the third grade and as a pre-teen rode her bicycle to a stable where she could ride by the hour. At 14 she began
working for trainer Laurie
Silvera and when they put
her up on a horse to walk
around the shed row "I was
so happy they called me
'Smiley.'" Her first riding
win was on Sir Vivian Ivan
and her first training win
was with Really Very Shy.
"When you start out with just four or five horses," she said, "you love them all. But when your stable gets bigger...." Among those she remem- bers are Scottish Runner, an ornery beast that she alone could gallop; Gold Digs, who won the Parnitha Stakes in 1996; and Regal Pet.
This year's stable
includes Glen's Honor, who seems to prefer the Woodbine surface over the Fort's racing strip; Rundle, who special- izes in five furlong dirt races; Thank You Sir, who is con- sistently in the first three, and Hunter Jay.
If anything, Against The Wind may have a bit more luck in breeding than in racing. Rombis explained: "We took six horses to a sale and I told Steve 'Don't buy anything.' Well, he picked out Winner's Bid as a brood- mare prospect for $2,900, and told me 'You can run her first.' She won four of eight starts and $100,000 before developing a tendon problem."
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Photo by Julie Jocsak
Debbie Rombis with
Cat’s Got Wind, a yearling colt by Cat’s At Home - Link of Liberty, Hip No. 118 in the CTHS (Ont) Select Yearling Sale
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