Catching Up With Ginger Punch

Ginger Punch now lives in Japan at Northern Farm. Here she is with her 2014 Deep Impact filly. (Photo courtesy of Northern Farm)
An Adena Springs homebred, Ginger Punch provided the stable’s racing arm with its first Breeders’ Cup Distaff victory when winning by a neck in 2007.
While it took Ginger Punch four starts to break her maiden, the filly quickly got into the racing groove once she figured it out. From her maiden victory on May 14, 2006 until the Beldame Stakes on Sept. 30, 2007, she never finished worse than second. The 10-race streak included six victories with three graded stakes wins.
Going into the Beldame, Ginger Punch had won two consecutive Grade 1 races by a combined margin of 6 ¾ lengths and was bet down to 11-to-10 favoritism. While it looked in the stretch like Ginger Punch might take over the lead and earn another win, she faded to third and broke the streak of top-two finishes.
However, the Beldame loss didn’t take away bettors’ confidence going into the Breeders' Cup Distaff and Ginger Punch was made the co-favorite at 9-to-2 odds.
On a sloppy track, leader Bear Now set a solid pace with Ginger Punch no more than two lengths back throughout the running. As Bear Now started to fade, Ginger Punch took over the lead by a head but soon was joined by Hystericalady, who wasn’t going to make getting the win easy.
By the stretch, the two fillies were in an all out battle with closer Octave also working her way toward the pair. Finally, with less than a sixteenth of a mile to go, Ginger Punch started pulling away from Hystericalady. The official margin of victory was a neck over Hystericalady with Octave another neck back in third.
2007 BREEDERS’ CUP DISTAFF

The victory was the second straight Breeders’ Cup Distaff win by a daughter of Awesome Again — Round Pond won in 2006. Awesome Again had given Stronach Stables its first ever Breeders’ Cup win in the 1998 Classic.
Surprisingly, for a while it wasn’t known if Ginger Punch would run in the Breeders’ Cup as she hadn’t been nominated for the event as a foal and had to be supplemented to run.
“[Trainer Bobby Frankel] said he felt pretty good about the filly,” Frank Stronach told ESPN. “Basically, I don't second-guess Bobby, so I said go ahead and nominate her.”
Ginger Punch ended 2007 with five wins, two seconds, and one third for $1,827,060 earned for the year, and she picked up an Eclipse Award as champion older female to top it off. But she wasn’t done racing yet and returned in late January 2008.
GINGER PUNCH'S DISTAFF WIN SEALED THE OLDER FEMALE CHAMPIONSHIP

Photo by HorsePhotos
The now-5-year-old made her return look as easy as one can, winning the Sunshine Millions Distaff by 6 ¾ lengths. All systems looked like they were good to go in the Apple Blossom Handicap for her next start but she came up empty after leading most of the race, finishing third behind an up-and-coming top older female named Zenyatta.
But Ginger Punch put the Apple Blossom defeat behind her a month later when she romped home to win the Louisville Stakes by 3 ¾ lengths in spite of jumping tire tracks during the race. She then got revenge over a previous year’s loss when she won the Ogden Phipps Handicap by 7 ¾ lengths under a hand ride. Wins in the Go for Wand Handicap and Personal Ensign Stakes completed her Grade 1 hat trick and showed that she was just as good as the previous year.
The Beldame was again a race that ended a record for Ginger Punch when her half-length loss broke the 4-race win streak that she’d carried through the summer. Next up was her second run at the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, renamed the Ladies’ Classic. Ginger Punch was making only her third start on a synthetic surface and first since April 2007, a move that may have contributed to her 10.10-to-1 odds.
The Ladies’ Classic was a no-go for the mare straight from the gate as she was no closer than four lengths from the leader at any point. She finished sixth, 7 ½ lengths behind winner Zenyattaa, in only the second off-the-board finish of her career and first in 19 starts.
Ginger Punch was retired after the race with $3,065,603 in earnings. She won 12 of 22 starts with six seconds and two thirds. A year later, Ginger Punch went through the auction ring at Fasig-Tipton’s November sale, in foal to Bernardini, where she was privately sold after the sale to Katsumi Yoshida of Northern Farm in Japan.
Ginger Punch was known to have a tough attitude at the track and soon after exiting quarantine that attitude reappeared.
“I was assigned to care for her and other mares in quarantine for two weeks when she arrived in Japan in December of 2009,” said Naoki Nishida, one of Northern Farm’s broodmare barn managers. “Ginger Punch was very calm in the beginning, but after she moved to the farm, she gradually showed herself.  She didn’t like to be touched and started to intimidate barn staff. We try to give her a lot of space and she takes the edge off somehow.”
GINGER PUNCH AT NORTHERN FARM IN JAPAN

Ginger Punch’s first foal, a filly named Ginger Mist, raced seven times but never hit the board. Her second foal, a filly by Zenno Rob Roy, has had a bit more success. Named Mamie Taylor, that filly won a race in January of this year and finished second in a race last year. Mamie Taylor is still racing while Ginger Mist has been retired.
Ginger Punch’s third foal, a 2-year-old by Manhattan Café, is already a winner. The filly named Rouge Buck debuted in a race on Sept. 28, when she won a race going about 1 1/8 miles on the turf.
Ginger Punch has had foals by Deep Impact the last two years. In 2013, she produced her first colt, an unnamed yearling Northern Farm is looking forward to racing.
This year on April 19, she produced a filly by Deep Impact. While Ginger Punch’s foals don’t look like their dam, they all have something in common.
“Her first foal, Ginger Mist, was small and slender. She didn’t look like Ginger Punch.  And her second foal, Mamie Taylor is rather like father Zenno Rob Roy. But all her babies took after their mother’s strong attitude,” said a Northern Farm representative.
If you want to keep track of Ginger Punch and her foals in Japan, you can type her name into the JBIS database here.