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Tales from the Crib: Hades

Mar 25, 2024 Kellie Reilly/Brisnet.com

Hades

Hades is a grandson of Awesome Again and Quality Road (Photo by Angelo Lieto/Coglianese Photos)

Bred, raised, and given his early training at Florida’s oldest Thoroughbred farm still in operation, Hades is adding a new chapter to the history of Ocala Stud. The O’Farrell family’s farm is in a purple patch at the moment, having just sold a two-year-old relative of Hades for $1.8 million, and a homebred Kentucky Derby (G1) winner would crown their achievements.

Ocala Stud can boast a few connections to Kentucky Derby winners. The first Florida-bred to wear the roses, Hall of Famer Needles (1956), came from the property when it was known as William Leach’s Dickey Stables.

A few months before Needles’ breakthrough victory for Florida’s fledgling Thoroughbred industry, Joe O’Farrell and partners acquired land from Dickey Stables to establish Ocala Stud. The very next Florida-bred Derby hero, Hall of Famer Carry Back (1961), was born, raised, and initially prepared at Ocala Stud for his breeder/trainer, Jack Price.

The new nursery made an even more immediate impact on the national stage, breeding My Dear Girl, the champion two-year-old filly of 1959, by resident stallion Rough’n Tumble. Both have since played an inestimable role in pedigrees: Rough’n Tumble sired the all-time great Dr. Fager, and My Dear Girl produced the influential sire In Reality.

Ocala Stud would become an institution in the Sunshine State, not only by standing stallions, breeding their own mares, and raising foals. O’Farrell was the driving force behind the creation of two-year-olds in training sales, an idea that ultimately evolved into the Ocala Breeders’ Sales (OBS) Company. The goal was to advertise the athletic ability of their youngsters who might not have the most fashionable bloodlines (in his era), but they had the making of solid runners in their early training.

Thus Ocala Stud also developed into an equine academy, where other owners sent horses to learn their lessons before graduating to the racetrack. Derby champions Unbridled (1990) and Street Sense (2007) both went to school there. The roster of famous Ocala Stud alumni continues to expand, including the past two Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (G1) champions, Forte and Fierceness.

Maintaining the family tradition are O’Farrell’s grandsons – David, who manages the farm operations, and brother Joe, who handles the financial side of the ledger. They co-bred bred Hades, in partnership with Ocala Stud et al.

Hades himself exemplifies Ocala Stud’s overall method of operation. Sired by one of the farm’s stallions, Awesome Slew, he is a graduate of the OBS April two-year-old in training sale.

Hades’s dam (mother), The Shady Lady, was likewise bred by the farm/O’Farrell partnership. She was intended to be sold as a juvenile, in accordance with Ocala Stud’s policy, but she ended up not making the sales and never raced.

The Shady Lady was retained for her clear potential as a broodmare. She’s a daughter of blueblood Quality Road and Lady Discreet, who proved to be a bargain acquisition by Ocala Stud for $45,000.

“She was the first mare I ever bought into with the farm,” David O’Farrell said of Lady Discreet.

Her pedigree page was nice, as a daughter of Grade 1 heroine Pretty Discreet, and as a half-sister to multiple Grade 1-placed stakes scorer Pretty Wild. But it was about to get red-hot.

Lady Discreet was sold by the estate of Einar Paul Robsham in the fall of 2004; the next year, her half-brother Discreet Cat burst onto the scene with a sensational debut at Saratoga. Discreet Cat went on to become a Grade 1-winning millionaire, as did another near relation, Awesome Maria. Another younger half-brother of Lady Discreet and Discreet Cat, Discreetly Mine, likewise earned a Grade 1 victory and millionaire status.

By the time The Shady Lady was growing up, Lady Discreet was already a stakes producer herself, as the dam of 2009 Calder Oaks victress Chary and multiple Grade 3-placed stakes winner Courtesan.

The Shady Lady would follow suit; all four of her racing age foals, by different Ocala Stud stallions, have won. Hades is her second stakes winner, following Astoria S. romper Devious Dame.

When Devious Dame was a foal, in the spring of 2020, The Shady Lady was bred to Awesome Slew. Her resulting bay colt was born on March 6, 2021, and from the beginning, hinted promise.

“He was always such a nice, big horse,” David O’Farrell recalled. “He never got in any trouble, never saw the vet other than for routine herd health.

“He always stayed clean – one of those types that always did everything right, from the day he was born through his training.”

Eagerness was perhaps his most memorable trait.

“He was always the first at the gate, eager to eat, eager to go out.”

Prepared for the OBS April Sale, the yet-unnamed colt worked a quarter-mile in a sharp :21 1/5 at the under tack show, where prospective buyers can scout out the juveniles ahead of the auction. What really caught trainer Joe Orseno’s attention was his gallop-out. Youngsters can shut it down once the drill is over, but this one just kept motoring with enthusiasm.

Orseno knows how to gauge and nurture talent, having trained such stars as 2000 Preakness (G1) winner Red Bullet and Breeders’ Cup champions Macho Uno and Perfect Sting.

“In the sale, he had a fantastic work,” Orseno told Gulfstream Park publicity. “But he had a tremendous gallop-out, which really attracts me. Any horse can go an eighth of a mile or a quarter mile. But the ones that can’t gallop out, I stay away from. He just kept going and going, and he just always appeared that he wanted more ground.”

Once the colt strode into the sales ring, the bidding went past $100,000. That’s a substantial sum for the progeny of a stallion who stands for $4,000, but sire Awesome Slew has hit a number of home runs at the sales.

Indeed, the price surpassed the desired range for Orseno and the Green family’s D. J. Stable. The trainer brought in another longtime client, Robert Cotran, as a partner, and they managed to secure the colt for $130,000.

Only the newly-named Hades didn’t remain a colt for very long. He lost his way after leaving home, as Orseno described in a Gulfstream press release:

“When I bought him out of the sale, I gave him a week and brought him down here. He just wasn’t training like I thought he should have been. He was studdish, really studdish. He was a little weak behind. He didn’t seem to be himself. I said, ‘This isn’t the horse I bought,’ because we really loved him.”

Gelding was the logical solution to help him thrive and reach his potential.

“I said, ‘Just cut him and help him grow up a little bit.’ That’s what we did,” Orseno added. “We just gave him time and cut him. He’s a son of Awesome Slew. Nobody was thinking ‘stallion’ at that point. Nobody was thinking anything. We bought a racehorse, and we’ve got to get him to the races.”

The gelded Hades indeed got to the races in style at Gulfstream. Rallying from a rough start to win his debut sprinting 5 1/2 furlongs on Dec. 9, Hades showed his tactical versatility in a Dec. 31 allowance by dueling for the lead and drawing off by eight lengths.

His first proper class test came in the Feb. 3 Holy Bull (G3), where champion Fierceness was favored at lopsided odds of 1-5 to follow up in his Breeders’ Cup romp. But Hades rose to the occasion when Fierceness headed him, and he fought back.

The Road to the Kentucky Derby scoring race turned into a tussle between the Ocala Stud homebred, Hades, and the farm’s training grad, Fierceness. Hades repelled Fierceness, who tired to third, and drove two lengths clear of Domestic Product, the next-out Tampa Bay Derby (G3) winner.

Now Hades will try to extend his perfect record, in a rematch with Fierceness, in Saturday’s Florida Derby (G1). Another strong performance can send him to Churchill Downs, in hopes of becoming the seventh Florida-bred to win the Kentucky Derby.

Aside from the aforementioned Needles, Carry Back, and Unbridled, the other three Derby heroes bred in the Sunshine State are Triple Crown legend Affirmed (1978) and fellow Hall of Famers Foolish Pleasure (1975) and Silver Charm (1997).

Affirmed was a homebred for Harbor View Farm, whose owner Louis Wolfson had a business relationship with Joe O’Farrell of Ocala Stud. Wolfson bought and raced the first Derby competitor bred by Ocala Stud, Roman Brother. Fourth behind Northern Dancer in the 1964 Run for the Roses, Roman Brother would be voted Horse of the Year in 1965.

A more tangible sign of the Wolfson-O’Farrell connection still stands at Ocala Stud, in the form of the bell from the battleship U.S.S. Kentucky. When the never-finished ship was being dismantled for scrap metal, Wolfson obtained the bell for O’Farrell, who installed it as a meaningful fixture on the farm.

The ringing of the bell used to announce the latest Florida-bred stakes winner, until the frequency of those occurrences made it unsustainable. Now the bell is reserved for victories by the farm’s graduates in the grandest races on the calendar, the Triple Crown and the Breeders’ Cup.

If Hades wins Derby 150, the U.S.S. Kentucky bell will resound all over Ocala, perhaps reaching even the Greek mythological underworld.

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