Scuderi Finds Success With Seeking the Silver

More than 24 hours after Paulassilverlining won her second graded stakes, the Distaff (gr. III) at Aqueduct Racetrack April 17, owner and breeder Vincent Scuderi was still beaming.

"Yeah," he said. "I still have a smile on my face."

A 4-year-old daughter of Ghostzapper  , out of the Grindstone mare Seeking the Silver, Paulassilverlining won her first stakes race, the Matron (gr. II) at Belmont Park, as a 2-year-old. That was also the first stakes win for Scuderi, a long-time New York owner, but within three months, he'd get his second when Dads Caps, Paulassilverlining's half-brother by Discreet Cat  , won the Carter Handicap (gr. I).

Scuderi claimed Seeking the Silver for $20,000 in 2004 at Aqueduct, and though a bad knee meant that she never raced again, she's produced seven foals to make it to the races, six of them winners, four of them six-figure earners.

"I was quite fortunate," he said of the claim.

His only broodmare, Seeking the Silver, is boarded at Hidden Brook Farm in Kentucky, though, given the lucrative purses and breeders' awards for New York-breds, her 2013 and 2014 foals—colts by Include   and Macho Uno  , respectively—were born in New York.

"Vincento (Include) won his first time out and then won an allowance race, and we have high hopes for him," Scuderi said. "He works great in the morning, but it's going take him a while to figure it out."

Scuderi expects that Seeking the Silver's 2-year-old by Macho Uno will ship to New York shortly to begin training.

Acknowledging that racing New York-breds in the same state is a better financial proposition than racing Kentucky-breds on the New York circuit, Scuderi nonetheless elected to keep Seeking the Silver, now 16, in the bluegrass to foal her Ghostzapper filly this year.

"Her knee acted up, so we're going to keep her in Kentucky," he said, to avoid the strain that shipping might put on her leg.

Through an earlier venture in the breeding business, on his own and in partnership, Scuderi learned the hard way that investing in pedigree is money well spent.

"We had four or five broodmares, and the horses were just bad," he admitted. "Maybe we should have tried stepping up the stallions a little bit. But I was kind of new to the game, and we didn't breed to much. You're not going to get a good horse when you don't do it the right way."

The president of Brooklyn-based Van Blarcom Closures, which now manufactures child-safe caps for pharmaceutical products and which Scuderi's family established nearly a century ago, Scuderi will add Paulassilverlining to his one-mare broodmare band when she retires, despite having received multiple offers for her.

"I entertained some of them," he said, "but I'm glad I didn't sell. I was going to take on a couple of partners, but they wanted to take the horse elsewhere and run in their name, and I didn't want to lose control like that.

"For the right money, anything's for sale, but it would have to blow me away. I really like her, and I enjoy racing her so much."  

A relatively late convert to Thoroughbred racing, Scuderi grew up going to Roosevelt Raceway with his father and his uncle. His first trip to Belmont was on a 90-degree day, and after evenings with Standardbreds, he was not impressed.

"I swore I'd never go back," he said. "But at some point it just clicked, and I love it."  

The offspring of Seeking the Silver are giving Scuderi a few more reasons to love it. Trained by Michelle Nevin, his stakes-winning bay filly defeated two grade I winners in the Distaff—Cavorting and stablemate By the Moon—and with two wins and a runner-up finish in three starts this year, Scuderi is thinking of giving her a break, with ambitious long-term goals in his sights.

"The way she's running now, we're starting to think about the Breeders' Cup," he said. "We want to make sure she doesn't grind it out too hard, racing every month, so that she's a fresh horse for the end of the year."