Late-Season Surge Lifts Shamrock Rose to Championship

A big finish to the season, culminating with a score over a top-flight cast of older runners in the Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Sprint (G1), helped earn Shamrock Rose the Eclipse Award as the top sprint female. The 3-year-old came to hand in August and climbed the class ladder through early November.

Bred in Pennsylvania by Tommy and Lori Fackler's Best A Luck Farm and raced by Manfred and Penny Conrad, Shamrock Rose is the first grade 1 winner and champion for sire First Dude . She is out of the Elusive Quality mare Slew's Quality. The Facklers purchased Slew's Quality for $35,000 at the 2007 Keeneland November sale.

The Conrads paid $120,000 for Shamrock Rose at the 2017 Ocala Breeders' Sales' April 2-year-old auction. 

Grade 3-placed at 2, Shamrock Rose had a solid start to 2018, placing in two stakes for 3-year-olds. Sent to conditioner Mark Casse's training center for a few months, she came back with a vengeance.

The "new and improved" Shamrock Rose returned Aug.  5 in the Malvern Rose Stakes for state-breds at Presque Isle Downs. She drew off to win the mile race by 10 1/4 lengths. At Woodbine she faced open company in the Sept. 8 La Lorgnette Stakes and took them wire to wire, winning the 1 1/16-mile race by 4 1/2 lengths.

Shortened to seven furlongs, she surprised many by winning Keeneland's Lexus Raven Run Stakes (G2) Oct. 20 by 2 1/2 lengths as an 18-1 shot. Casse and the Conrads then went "old school" and ponied up $130,000 to supplement Shamrock Rose to the Breeders' Cup, despite the short turnaround.

"About 36 years ago I got to spend some time with (Hall of Fame trainer) Allen Jerkens," Casse told BloodHorse. "He would always tell me, 'I don't understand trainers. Run them when they are good and rest them when they are running bad.' "

Shamrock Rose was "running good," so good, she charged from last to first in the Breeders' Cup, splitting horses in the stretch to take the seven-furlong Filly & Mare Sprint in a blanket finish. She edged Chalon by a head, who hit the line a neck better than Anonymity, with 4-5 favorite (and fellow Eclipse nominee) Marley's Freedom, a head back in fourth. 

Shamrock Rose's campaign mark was 4-1-1 from seven starts on the year, with earnings of $848,076.