On the recent Rail Talk podcast, Jon Green of D.J. Stable talked about privately purchasing his former horse PROVEN STRATEGIES from his current Woodbine interests to retire him. The gelding will be retired to Mark Casse’s Ocala, Florida farm.
Green and father Leonard Green raced Proven Strategies with their Empire Racing Club from 2019 through to 2023 and did well with the Florida-bred son of Sky Mesa.
As a juvenile, Proven Strategies was fourth in the Grade 1 Summer stakes and at over 100-to-1 was sixth, beaten only two lengths, in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf
Trained by Mark Casse, Proven Strategies won the 2020 Toronto Cup Stakes at Woodbine as a three-year-old. That year he was also second in the Grade 2 Pennine Ridge Stakes (Bel) and English Channel Stakes (GP).
The following year, the speedy turf-lover was third in the Grade 2 Connaught Cup at Woodbine and second in the Red Bank Stakes at Monmouth Park. Through 2022 he won five races for the Greens and Empire before he was claimed last season for $32,000 by P413 Stable at Woodbine. The gelding was unplaced in his following 10 races while sliding down the class ladder. His most recent race was on August 30 at Woodbine for $15,000 claiming and he finished seventh.
“We saw him running and he wasn’t the same,” said Green on Rail Talk. “We got together and purchased him. He will be stabled at Mark Casse’s Ocala farm next to one of his former stablemates, Dolder Grand.
“Proven Strategies did a lot of good things for us; he was the first horse that Mark Casse trained for us.”
Proven Strategies went through a few sales from 2018 to 2021 and was first purchased for $55,000 from the Fasig-Tipton October sale in Kentucky. He earned over $378,000 in his 38 races.
Coincidentally, Proven Strategies’ dam, Stormbeforethecalm, is a half-sister to Prince of Wales Stakes winner COOL CATOMINE, who was recently plucked from a life of low claiming races and retired to Bernard and Karen McCormack’s farm where he was born.
Rail Talk host Joe Bianca also mentioned WEST POINT THOROUGHBRED‘S recent claim of multiple graded stakes winner DEVAMANI (Fr) for $4,000 from a race at Evangeline Downs.
Devamani raced only eight times for West Point, who lost him for $62,500 claiming in 2019. The French-bred went on to win the Grade 2 Knickerbocker Stakes, the Grade 3 Monmouth Stakes for Sanford Goldfarb, Samuel Abraham and trainer Chad Brown. In 2022, brown started the gelding for $32,000 claiming and the horse was scooped up by John Holleman, who won with the horse and then lost him for $15,000 claiming.
Devamani was claimed again for $15,000 and then $10,000 last year. This spring he popped up for $4,000 claiming at the age of 10 for L and G racing Stable and trainer Juan Larrosa and that is when West Point stepped in to claim him.
In 47 races, Devamani won nine times and earned over $557,000.
As Bianca and Green noted in the podcast, the onus is on owners to make sure their racehorses are given a safe landing when they can no longer compete. Both Proven Strategies and Devamani were not competitive as they continued to slide down the claiming ladder.
Be a responsible owner and trainer.
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