Catching Up With Adoration

Adoration in the winner's circle after winning the 2003 Breeders' Cup Distaff. (Photo by HorsePhotos)
When Adoration entered the 2003 Breeders’ Cup Distaff, the 4-year-old filly had her work cut out for her.
The filly had won two graded stakes races during her career, both coming early in 2002, and her only previous Grade 1 attempt had been an eighth-place finish in the Santa Anita Oaks. However, Adoration had shown that she still knew how to win when she won a stakes race at Del Mar two races before the Breeders’ Cup.
That win didn’t convince bettors to place confidence in her on Breeders’ Cup day, however, and she went off as the longest shot in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff field at odds of 40.70-to-1. But Adoration proved her doubters wrong when she took a one-length lead right out of the gate and never let it go. Covering the 1 1/8 miles in a time of 1:49.17, Adoration opened up her advantage going into the far turn and continued to roll to the finish line, winning by 4 ½ lengths.
Elloluv and Got Koko rounded out the top three and made those who had the trifecta very happy, allowing them to win more than $1,000 on the opening race of the card.
“We weren’t surprised,” her jockey, Pat Valenzuela, told The Blood-Horse. “She had run a great race against Elloluv, Got Koko and Azeri [in the Grade 2 Lady's Secret Breeders’ Cup Handicap in her final Distaff prep]. I only got beat three lengths that day, and I had to check pretty hard. [Trainer David Hofmans] took the blinkers off and she relaxed. This is only her third race back [after missing most of 2003], and I guess the third time is the charm."
The victory also meant a lot to each of Adoration’s connections for multiple reasons. The win was the first Breeders’ Cup win for Adoration’s owner, Amerman Racing, the first Breeders’ Cup victory for trainer Hofmans since 1996, and ended a Breeders’ Cup drought for Patrick Valenzuela, whose last win in any of the Breeders’ Cup races had come in 1992.
2003 BREEDERS’ CUP DISTAFF

A little more than a month later, Adoration returned to the track for the Grade 2 Bayakoa Handicap at Hollywood Park. She seemed to have gained a big confidence boost with the Distaff win and finished second, her best graded stakes performance outside of the Distaff since winning the Hollywood Breeders’ Cup Oaks in June 2002.
Adoration’s 5-year-old year was arguably her best season of racing. While she started it with a fourth-place finish, it was the last time she would finish off the board in her career.
She won her second career Grade 1 race in mid-March when taking the Santa Margarita Invitational trophy back to the barn. After a second-place finish in the Grade 1 Vanity Handicap, Adoration shipped outside of California for the first time since late 2002. The move was the right one with Adoration winning the Grade 2 Fleur de Lis Handicap under the Twin Spires at Churchill Downs. She took the rest of the summer off before shipping east again, where she showed fans at Arlington Park her brilliance with a 2-length victory in the Grade 3 Arlington Matron Handicap.
Unfortunately, her career ended without another run in the Breeders’ Cup. In late September 2004, Adoration was found to have an ankle injury after a workout at Hollywood Park.
She retired with $2,051,160 in earnings with eight victories in 20 starts.
“You’ve always got to be ready for a few surprises,” co-owner John Amerman told the Daily Racing Form when Adoration’s retirement was announced. “She’s been super-sound throughout her career. It was nice to get over $2-million. It sounds better than 1.9-million and change."
Bred to Belmont Stakes winner Empire Maker the next spring, Adoration gave birth to a colt named Deification in 2006. The following year she produced a filly by Ghostzapper named Holy Spirit. Deification made only one start, finishing last while Holy Spirit never made it to the track, however she produced a filly of her own in 2012 named Haleys Rainbow.
Before either of her first two foals hit the track, Adoration created more racing industry fireworks in the Keeneland sales pavilion in November 2007 while carrying a Smart Strike colt. The mare entered the ring early during the second session of the Keeneland November breeding stock sale, and before anyone knew it the bid reached $3.1-million and Adoration was on her way to the Coolmore partners.
Since then Adoration has been bred exclusively to Galileo and is based in Ireland.
The Smart Strike colt she was carrying when sold to Coolmore was named Outrider. After an unsuccessful career in Ireland, he was sold to connections based in Hungary, where he proved to be a nice horse, winning four of his 19 starts in the country and hitting the board six other times during his 3-season race career.
Both Adoration’s 2009 and 2010 foals by Galileo won at least one race each with her 2009 gelding Sash of Honour winning a race in Belgium earlier this year. Eishin Galilei, a colt now running in Japan, was sold for $200,000 at the 2011 Keeneland September yearling sale. While he didn’t win any of his 2-year-old starts and took a while to get rolling as a 3-year-old, he has won four of his six starts in 2014 with one other on-the-board finish.
Awesome Diamond, the most recent out of Adoration, sold for $625,000 earlier this year. A 2-year-old based with Patrick Biancone in California, Awesome Diamond was third in her debut on July 31. The filly looks like she has some talent behind her, with a fourth in the Oak Tree Juvenile Fillies Turf Stakes, only 2 ¾ lengths behind the winner.
Overall, Adoration has had a truly international impact on the racing community. Only traveling around the United States during her racing career, the now 15-year-old mare has had foals race in six different countries with wins coming in three of them.
It is safe to say that none of Adoration’s foals so far have their dam’s race record, but they have made sure people around the world know her name.