Very Un Stable Enjoys New York Success

The new year is so far indeed a happy one for 5-year-old Saythreehailmary's and her connections. On Jan. 10 at Aqueduct Racetrack, the dark bay mare picked up where she left off in 2015, winning her second consecutive stakes race and first in open company when she took the Ladies Handicap by 1 3/4 lengths.

On Dec. 12 she won the Bay Ridge Stakes for New York-breds, her first stakes win after seven attempts.

"Good things happen when you have patience," said owner Joseph Gioia. "And in this game, you have to have patience."

Like his mare, four of whose six wins have come at the Ozone Park, N.Y., track, Gioia has an affinity for Aqueduct, to which he started coming as a kid with his family.

"My uncle had horses at Aqueduct and we'd come watch the horses train," he said. "It always stuck in my head, and once my business became successful, I said to my father and another partner, 'We're going to buy a racehorse.' They looked at me like I was nuts."

That reaction, plus the name of the first horse they claimed—They Are All Crazy—led him to his nom de course, Very Un Stable.

That was back in the early 1990s, and Gioia soon moved from claimers to stakes horses and homebreds; Quantum Merit, purchased in 2000 for $32,000, was the 2004 New York-bred turf champion.

Gioia has three horses in training with John Morrison and three turf horses in South Carolina gearing up for the New York grass season. He also races in partnership at Finger Lakes and has two broodmares, a small band that he expects to expand in 2017 when his homebred stakes winner Mah Jong Maddnes is retired.

Gioia has no plans to retire Saythreehailmary's—by Repent out of Just Call Me Angel, another example of Gioia's gift for names—whose win in the Ladies Handicap pushed her earnings to $437,000 and her record to 22-6-5-4.

"We'd like to have fun with her at the racetrack," he said. "If there's a reason to retire her, we will. Whatever is good for the horse, we'll do."

For now, the plan is to take advantage of his mare's success on Aqueduct's inner track and point to the Biogio's Rose for state-breds on Feb. 7. And whenever the time is right, Saythreehailmary's will retire to start the next generation of Gioia homebreds.

"Even though I have only two mares, I do a lot of studying on pedigrees," he said. "I keep track of all the latest information, and the stallion register is one of my favorite things when I receive it every year."

He laughed.

"That," he said, "shows you crazy I am."