Longtime Friendships Boost Paradise Woods in Distaff

Paradise Woods is an extremely fast 3-year-old filly who will contest the Nov. 3 Longines Breeders' Cup Distaff (G1). Her story, though, is a slow-simmering one featuring several longterm friendships and relationships that combined to get the multiple grade 1 winner to the World Championships at Del Mar.

Herman Sarkowsky was no stranger to breeding and campaigning top-shelf Thoroughbreds. From the Pacific Northwest, he raced in Southern California, where his black and orange checkerboard silks were carried to major victories by homebreds such as champion Phone Chatter, Dixie Union, Dixie Chatter , and Supercilious.

In the mid-1970s, Sarkowsky scored multiple graded stakes victories with Pass the Glass, a son of Buckpasser bred by Paul Mellon. Around that time, California owner/breeder Marty Wygod was clearing tomato fields and building his River Edge Farm near Buellton, Calif. He contacted Sarkowsky about standing Pass the Glass at River Edge.

"I showed him the farm and all he saw were tomato fields," remembered Wygod. "I told Herman even if we have to breed and foal on the grass, we'd be operating, and he did the deal with me. We became great friends and business partners, and he served on the board of all my public companies for 40 years. We'd fish in Alaska every year, and we did many transactions together without ever having a written document or a disagreement in all that time."

Three weeks before Sarkowsky's passing in 2014, he called Wygod. "He said he wanted to give me half of this weanling he had," Wygod said. "I thought, 'This is just what I need, another weanling.' But he said, 'Marty, I'm telling you, this is something special.' So I said, 'Fine,' and agreed to his terms that she would run in his colors and be trained by Dick Mandella."

Enter the third leg of the stool. In the 1970s Wygod had horses with trainer Lefty Nickerson in New York. When Nickerson shipped the string out West, a young man named Richard Mandella galloped for him. Wygod talked Mandella into becoming Nickerson's assistant, and Mandella subsequently went back to New York and worked for Nickerson until he returned to Southern California and hung out his shingle. Wygod gave Mandella some horses to train, and also introduced the trainer to Sarkowsky.

"The first horse Sarkowsky gave me was a 4-year-old maiden named Kell My Pet," said Mandella. "The first time I ran her I told Herman I thought she would run well, so he asked me to make a bet on her for him. So I went to the races that day, she comes flying down the stretch, and 50 yards before the finish line I remembered that I had forgotten to bet. So I made up the difference, sent him the money, and told him to never ask me to bet again. It cost me $1,500.

"But that was the beginning of a great relationship."

Sarkowsky was correct. The weanling he bequeathed to Wygod turned out to be the well-named Paradise Woods, now campaigned by Wygod, his wife, Pam; and Sarkowsky's son Steven Sarkowsky. After breaking her maiden in March at second asking, Paradise Woods (Union Rags—Wild Forest, by Forest Wildcat) stunned the racing world by taking the Santa Anita Oaks (G1) by 11 3/4 lengths.

As quickly as Paradise Woods hit the radar, she dropped clear off it by running 11th in the Longines Kentucky Oaks (G1) and then stumbling at the start and finishing a distant sixth in the Torrey Pines Stakes (G3) in August. A month later, however, Mandella straightened her out and Paradise Woods ran away by 5 1/4 lengths to capture the Zenyatta Stakes (G1).

"We hit a couple of foul balls there," Mandella said of the filly's mid-season slump, "but we got her over the fence last time. She came out of the Zenyatta good and I'm excited about going to the Breeders' Cup."

Wygod, a longtime director of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, is anxious to show the place off to horsemen from the Eastern half of the country still unfamiliar with it. "This is a great facility," he said, "and this will be a chance for trainers and owners to see what Del Mar is all about. Maybe it will encourage some to ship out for races in the future."

As for the present, Paradise Woods could write a happy ending to the long story that binds her connections.

Said Wygod of the filly's breeder, "Herman is smiling now."