In a little over 60 years of the Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society’s annual yearling sale of Canadian-breds, there have been some very successful bargain purchases. From Pink Lloyd to Lexie Lou, Canadian champions have been bought for as little as $5,000.
And it is not only on the track that these shrewd purchases of Canadian/Ontario-breds have succeeded. On Saturday at Keeneland racecourse in Lexington, Colleen Dalos and her father Ivan, whose Tall Oaks Farm is one of this country’s all-time top breeders, will cheer on a homebred, who descends from an $11,000 CTHS purchase, on the biggest racing day in the world.
COACH POPE, bred by the Dalos family and born at their Briarbrooke Farm in Kentucky two years ago, is one of the favourites for the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (G1) for two-year-old colts and geldings. Only a handful of Canadian breeders have put together their mares with a stallion to produce a Breeders’ Cup champion – Sam-Son Farm, Adena Springs, and Eugene Melnyk, to name a few. The family’s Canadian-bred horses, born under the Tall Oaks banner, have won big races everywhere; one of Ivan’s first major stakes winners was Victory Gallop, the 1998 Belmont Stakes (G1) winner.
Coach Pope, by the great sire Tapit and co-bred by the Tapit syndicate, is a son of the Dalos’ graded stakes winning mare Gamble’s Ghost, produced from Colleen’s first horse purchase, Gambling Girl, who cost just $11,000.
It was in 1994 as Ivan was in the early years of studying pedigree nicks when Colleen wanted to try her luck at buying a yearling. She selected a filly from the third crop of the well-bred Windfields Farm stallion Secret Claim. The youngster, the first foal of an unplaced mare, was named Gambling Girl and Colleen and her friends attended the filly’s first race.
Sent off at nearly 6-to-1, Gambling Girl and jockey Richard Dos Ramos burst away from the field and the pair won by 9 3/4 lengths. That was the beginning of a super racing career for Gambling Girl, who won seven races including the La Prevoyante Stakes as a three-year-old. Colleen and her dad elected to keep the filly for their small broodmare band, “probably one of the greatest ideas we’ve ever had.”
Gambling Girl’s first six foals were winners including Purrfect Bluff, a New York stakes-placed horse and earner of over $368,000. The Dalos’s bred Gambling Girl to Adena Springs’s Ghostzapper in 2012 and Gamble’s Ghost arrived. A tough filly, Gamble’s Ghost won seven stakes races, five of them graded, and earned over $1 million. Coach Pope is her third foal and he was sold for $350,000 as a yearling at the 2025 Fasig-Tipton October yearling sale to a partnership that included Gainesway Farm.
A gorgeous bay colt with a bold white blaze, Coach Pope broke his maiden in his second start by 12 1/2 lengths earning “TDN Rising Star” status from the Thoroughbred Daily News. Trained by Ken McPeek, Coach Pope came back with a second-place finish in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Futurity on Oct. 3 at Keeneland.
The Dalos’s are proud Canadians and have supported Canadian racing and the Ontario sale for decades. They are well aware of the bargain buys that have gone on to create successful bloodlines from Canada.
“Great race horses and broodmare prospects and lines come out of Canada and our sale,” said Colleen. “And you do not have to spend a lot; look at the $11,000 for a foundation mare.”
Ivan and Colleen, who watched Ami’s Mesa, whom they kept to race, finish second by a nose in the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint in 2017, are hopeful that they are the next Canadian breeders to produce a Breeders’ Cup winner.
The Juvenile is Race 9 on Saturday at Keeneland. Coach Pope is number 7.
See breeders of Breeders’ Cup winners HERE.
Gamble’s Ghost and jockey Eurico Rosa Da Silva winning the 2017 Maple Leaf Stakes at Woodbine Racetrack. (Michael Burns Photo)
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