Page 41 - February 2021

Fitting Celebration is the fourth dam of Whistle Stop Cafe and the foundation mare of the female family.
SPEEDLINES
1994, with an allowance win and an eighth place in the Moore Handicap.
Fitting Celebration is the dam of 18 foals and 17 starters with 13 ROM, three stakes winners and one stakes placed runner. Her son Brimmerton was the 2004 AQHA Champion Three-Year-Old Colt. He earned $519,538. He won the
All American Derby-G1, the Rainbow Derby-G1 and the Texas Challenge Derby-G3. Fitting Celebrations’ next stakes winner is Gone Celebrating with earnings of $364,068. His stakes races include The Championship At Sunland Park-G1, the Sam Houston Classic-G2,
the Classic Chevrolet Heartbeat of America Stakes-G3, the Classic Chevrolet Heartbeat of America Handicap-G3 and the Texas Horse Racing Hall of Fame Stakes. Her third stakes winner is Mitford, winner of the Alex Picov Memorial Championship and the Picov Maturity. His earnings came to $121,559. Her stakes placed runner is Benz by Fishers Dash. This gelding was third in the AQHRA Aged Series Enerpan Championship Sprint. The foals of Fitting Celebration have earned $1,079,031. She was the 2004 Broodmare of the Year and now her family has produced Whistle Stop Cafe, the 2020 AQHA World Champion.
THE FITTING CELEBRATION STORY
At this point, Fitting Celebration is the foundation of this female family and she has an interesting story. So, let’s look at her story through her breeder John Shaw Jr. of Jacksonville, Florida. “My dad John R. Shaw Sr. loved our farm. He and
his father bought our farm in 1943. They started with 20 acres and they didn’t have any money, but little by little they got started. They came to know, and this is an integral part of this whole story, they came to know Elmer Heubeck, who was a Thoroughbred guru in Ocala, Florida, during these years. He was the farm manager for Carl Rose
who had Rosemere Farm, the very first Thoroughbred farm in Ocala. Elmer loved field trial bird dogs like my daddy. Daddy had a champion field trial dog and Elmer bred to one of his dogs. That started their friendship, and literally Elmer was one of those people that transcended generations. But he was very easily my father’s greatest friend, and his wife Harriet, too. They were great family friends.”
He continued, “When Daddy passed, Elmer and I got closer. I have a sister in the business, Sylvia Shaw Pittman, who like my mother
and daddy, we all loved the farm and being
in the horse business. But they gave me the
opportunity to make the matings for them. It was through our friendship with Elmer Heubeck that we were able to breed to Duck Dance when he started standing him. Elmer, at that time,
had built up Hobeau Farms for Jack Dreyfuss
of Dreyfuss Fund of New York. Hobeau Farms is famous for beating Secretariat twice with Prove Out and Onion, who were trained by Allen Jerkens. Through our connection with Elmer, we got to know Duck Dance. He was very sought-after by Thoroughbred breeders like B. F. Phillips Jr., Roy Browning and the 6666’s. There was a number of breeders who were very interested in Duck Dance. But Elmer just wouldn’t sell him.”
Shaw added this about Duck Dance, “Have you ever seen the race record on Duck Dance? He was an unsound horse and they kept him in training for three or four years with Allen Jerkens, the trainer for Dreyfuss. They would run him, and he would win stakes, and then they would send him home for Elmer to fix him up and then send him back. He was just a short horse. He looked like the greatest Quarter Horse that you would ever want and he had all the Quarter Horse characteristics.”
Duck Dance made 13 starts with 11 wins and one second, earning $156,237. He won the Toboggan Handicap at six furlongs, the Vosburgh Handicap at seven furlongs, the Paumonok Handicap at six furlongs, the New Era Handicap at six furlongs, and the Old Line Handicap at six furlongs. He set a New Stakes Record at Aqueduct for six furlongs in the Paumonok Handicap in a time of 1:08 4/5, and he
set a New Track Record for six furlongs at Pimlico in the Old Line Handicap in a time of 1:09 1/5. He was sired by Water Prince and out of Classic Rhythm by Swoon’s Son.
Now back to John’s story, “So anyway, we bought a couple of shares in him to breed to him. Then Elmer also allowed us to breed a Quarter mare in a funny way. He wouldn’t
pull out one of his famous Thoroughbred stallions to just breed a Quarter mare unless
it was urgent. So, he would stand there with the stallion when he bred a Thoroughbred mare so he would catch the normal drip that would go on the ground when the stallion dismounted. He would use that to breed our Quarter mares and that’s how we got our start with Thoroughbred horses like Hilarious, Third Martini and Duck Dance. He would do that then he would artificially inseminate our mares. He never charged us through friendship, of course. We returned that friendship anyway we could. He was a wonderful, wonderful man. He’s in the Thoroughbred Hall of Fame now. That is what started us.”
Shaw used the following to show the significance of their use of the Thoroughbred in their breeding program. “Jimmy Eller at Granada Farms had a lot of our mares when we lost racing in Florida and my sister wanted to send them to Texas. So, we sent them out there with Jimmy and he made a statement
to me one time. He said, ‘John, those mares of yours with that speed Thoroughbred and classic Thoroughbred you can breed them to anything, and they’ll improve it.’ That’s the way we handled it.”
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