Birdie Gold Carries Banner for South America at BC

In a busy barn near the clubhouse turn on a fast-paced morning at Del Mar, a longshot filly named Birdie Gold lowers her head into the hands of a woman named Gabriela Alvarez-Calderon.

A steady stream of energetic traffic passes Birdie Gold's stall. Hot walkers stride along with contenders on the shank, exercise riders guide their next sets out to the track, and cantankerous horses sidle down the aisle. Anticipation of the Breeders' Cup World Championships can be felt in the air, but Alvarez-Calderon is gently rubbing little circles into the soft chestnut forehead, and Birdie Gold melts into the pressure. For a few centered moments, the 3-year-old filly blissfully tunes out the hubbub. 

This tender massage, an overflowing hay net, and the exceptional care provided to Birdie Gold as the lone representative for South America are in stark contrast to her quarters four months ago. After she won the June 25 Clasico Pamplona (G1) at Hipódromo de Monterrico in Peru and earned a spot in the Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf (G1T) as a result, the daughter of Birdstone  shipped to trainer Gary Mandella via a quarantine facility in Miami, Fla.—where, to meet United States Department of Agriculture guidelines, she spent seven days locked in a stall.

Standing outside Birdie Gold's current stall, an airy setup deeply bedded with fresh shavings, Mandella recounts the taxing circumstances the filly encountered in her quest to reach the Breeders' Cup.

"The problem is the quarantine," he says. "They have to be in quarantine before they leave South America. Then they have to go into a quarantine situation that is tragic in our country. The USDA does nothing to help horses be taken care of well. They all come out in really bad shape."

Mandella has learned a thing or two about transferring South American form to North American success. He helped his father, Hall of Fame trainer Richard Mandella, saddle horses such as Siphon (BRZ), Sandpit (BRZ), Malek (CHI), and Gentlemen (ARG), a powerhouse quartet from South America. The foursome brought home 20 graded stakes wins combined in the U.S. from 1994-99, 11 of them grade 1 races.

Even as recently as this season, Mandella the elder found grade 1 success with Bal a Bali , the Brazilian Triple Crown winner who was slated to run in the 2014 Longines Breeders' Cup Turf (G1T) before laminitis sent him to the sideline. Bal a Bali made a full recovery, won multiple top-level events, and was even under consideration for this year's Breeders' Cup Mile (G1T) before he retired in October to Calumet Farm—but it didn't come easy.

"Any of the horses Dad had 20 years ago—none of them ever just walked off the plane and never had anything go wrong and you just ran them whenever you wanted," the younger Mandella says. "They all went through something. It's just too different and too much.

"It's the kind of thing you have to have the experience of seeing how it works more than once, and I'm lucky I worked for my Dad when he had those top South American horses, and saw the adjustment time it took for them. And then once they came around, they came around really good."

While Breeders' Cup contenders from Europe spend just 42 hours in a quarantine facility at the host racetrack for their Breeders' Cup visit, horses from South American countries face a much more grueling journey.

"A filly like (Birdie Gold) isn't given the option of coming into the track the way European horses do—in a quarantined area but with their own people to take care of them," Mandella says. "When we take horses to Japan or Dubai, that's the way it is too. 

"These horses have to be locked in a closet for a week. No one even gets them out of their stalls and walks them, because you have some guy that takes care of Chihuahuas and cats—he's not going to walk the horse and risk it getting loose. They just stay in their stall, they're fed the minimum of everything. If I showed you a picture of her the day she showed up here ..."

His voice trails off for a moment, because a filly who comes in 200 pounds underweight with the Breeders' Cup as her main goal is a grim proposition, especially when she's on a deadline to get fit again.   

"I had to put 200 pounds on her and give her body time to adjust. Her body wants it to be winter, and it's summer," Mandella resumed. "Her feet started to give us a little bit of trouble. She's popped a couple of abscesses in her training, and that's why we haven't been able to get a prep race before this. We're having to run her fresh, and to be honest with you, I don't know how much that would have helped us or not. It probably would have made me feel better about having her dead fit, but she probably is. ... But I would have rather everything was straightforward straight through, obviously, and it's not."

While Birdie Gold's story is far from straightforward, it began simply enough. She was foaled in Kentucky, the product of the Touch Gold mare Gold Revenue, who is a half sister to 2007 Emirates Airline Breeders' Cup Distaff (G1) winner Ginger Punch. As is the case with many of her peers, she prepped for the yearling sales in the Bluegrass, and was consigned to the Fasig-Tipton July Kentucky sale by Taylor Made Sales Agency. When she failed to sell, breeder Bernardo Calderon decided to bring her back to Peru to compete for his Teneri Farms.

In Calderon the filly has an owner whose lifelong passion for the horse is universal. Formerly a high-level show jumper who represented Peru in international competitions, Calderon has been a Thoroughbred breeder for more than 40 years and even bred a Peruvian Triple Crown winner. He loves pedigrees and breeds horses mainly for his own purposes. In addition to his mares in Peru, he keeps a few in Kentucky. Former Olympic rider Michael Matz conditioned a horse or two for him on the East Coast, and recommended the Mandellas three years ago as West Coast conditioners well-versed in training South American runners when Calderon wanted to send Peru-bred Valiant Emilia to the 2014 Longines Breeders' Cup Distaff (G1) at Santa Anita Park.

"He's not always just breeding with a sale in mind, but for his own program," says Gabriela Alvarez-Calderon, who manages the Teneri Farms string with her father. "One of the stallions that he likes is Birdstone. He considers he can produce a very good horse, so that's how we got Birdie Gold. We have a 2-year-old full brother and a yearling sister back in Peru as well. He will breed them Northern Hemisphere, thinking of improving his own mares, and we take them back to Peru and race them. If they're really good then we bring them back here. They have to prove to us that they can compete at this level."

Birdie Gold shipped to Peru as yearling and was given plenty of time to grow up. She did not race until March of this year, when she broke her maiden at first asking with an 8 3/4-length romp sprinting 1,200 meters (about six furlongs) on the dirt for perennial leading trainer Juan Suarez Villarroel.

"My Dad and I follow all of our horses very closely, and she showed she was really good," Alvarez-Calderon says. "She's one of those fillies that has everything. She has size, she eats well, (and) she's very clever. And sometimes fillies are so neverous, but she's not."



Birdie Gold graduated from maiden to group 1 winner in 3 1/2 months. Because she was bred in the Northern Hemisphere, she enjoyed weight breaks when she faced older horses multiple times. She held her own with a record of 4-1-0 from five starts at Monterrico.

"She won her first three starts, and we immediately started thinking of the Breeders' Cup qualifier, even though she's a 3-year-old," says Alvarez-Calderon. "After the first two starts, she showed us she was really special. In her fourth start, in May, she ran against older mares in Peru on turf for the first time and finished second, closing (in the Clasico República Argentina). And then the grade 1, the qualifier going 1 1/4 miles, she won by three lengths over the favorite (Chilean-bred Soy Realidad).

"Her whole career has been always showing us something better. That second place was not a downside, because she took a big step up, and she finished really well. She's done everything in a really nice way. Of course, she's going to face super-tough competition. She's going as a 3-year-old against the big, big, big mares. But I think she can run a good race and continue with her future, hopefully here."

Birdie Gold arrived in the United States in July. She was a steady presence on the Santa Anita work tab through September and October, and concluded her dirt preparations for the Breeders' Cup with a five-furlong drill Oct. 16 in 1:00 2/5, which equaled Breeders' Cup Classic (G1) contender Gun Runner's time as the second-fastest that day. She moved to the turf Oct. 22 for a mile around the "dogs" in 1:41 1/5, and took it easy Oct. 29 on the Del Mar lawn with a four-furlong leg-stretcher in :49 3/5. 

"She's feeling good," Mandella says. "You should have been here when I was walking her around yesterday afternoon and she was bucking her withers up over the top of my head, and I'm (6-foot-5). My training skills are questionable, but my hotwalking skills I have a lot of confidence in. So I wasn't worried she was going to get away from me, and when that's the case, you can be happy about it."

Alvarez-Calderon has a different perspective. When Birdie Gold wears her ice boots after training and must stand still, her breeder's daughter will stand in the stall and feed hay to her by hand.

"She just wants to be spoiled," Alvarez Calderon says. "She wants to be scratched on her head. She's really good with kids. She just stays with them all the time while they pet her, loving it. So that's really sweet. I do think she has a special personality."

She has a special something, Mandella maintains, to be competing in the Breeders' Cup after the challenges she faced coming here.

"It's very difficult to do, so if I ever figure out what the secret is, I promise I won't give it away for free," he says. "Getting them ready in four months is really difficult. It's honestly not enough time."

Mandella wants the Breeders' Cup to adjust their Challenge program in South America.

"I'm actually hoping that at some point Breeders' Cup will maybe allow people an option," he says. "If you win a race in one of the South American countries, you can only use it once, but you can use it the same year or the next year. Then you could have the winners of the (group 1 Gran Premio Internacional) Carlos Pellegrini and Latinoamerica come as well, if they had time to get over everything.

"Because the way it is now, these horses win the race and they have about four months to get up here, get settled, and go through the changes in their feet. I'm really lucky that in the Teneri program they gallop their horses in saddles. Because a lot of times you get these horses and they neck rein—they gallop without a saddle—so you've got to re-break them. To try and get that done in four months, it's really tough. That's why you don't have horses coming from Brazil, Argentina, and Peru, and run off the plane like they do from England. There's just basically no way to do it. Not successfully."