Foundation Mares: Courtly Dee
Description:
There’s nothing unusual about a mother asking her daughter to pick up a few things on her shopping list for her, but when your mother is the daughter of Richard Kleberg, the man who established the Thoroughbred racing division of historic King Ranch in the 1930s, and when your mother has stood in the winner’s circle at Belmont Park holding the reins of Assault, the Texas homebred that has just won the 1946 Triple Crown, and when Thoroughbreds are part of the family DNA, the list might include a broodmare.
Such was the dilemma for Helen Alexander in 1980. Her mother Helen Groves had asked her to find a suitable broodmare for her at the Keeneland November breeding stock sale. The family was accustomed to finding stock to supplement their breeding program. Upon the death of Colonel E.R. Bradley in 1946, Kleberg, Ogden Phipps, and Jock Whitney had acquired the breeding stock of the noted Kentucky horseman, which they divided among themselves. Each received daughters of Bradley’s “earth mother” of all Thoroughbred broodmares, La Troienne.
Read the full feature in the February 28, 2015 issue of The Blood-Horse.
