To Swift Go The Spoils

Swift Thoroughbreds had an outstanding year in 2016 capped off by eight B.C. awards — including owners of the year — thanks to the prowess of Snuggles, Modern, Rosberg and Daymaker.

The final photograph taken at the British Columbia thoroughbred awards in November 2016 summed up what a year it had been for the group of friends who call their stable, fittingly, Swift Thoroughbreds.

Boyhood chums Horatio Kemeny and Mark Maché and their wives Jackie and Naudia juggled six very large trophies for the photographer, and walked away with eight awards on the night. Four were won by their homebred filly Snuggles, the province’s Horse of the Year and Champion Three-year-Old Filly in both the open and B.C.-bred divisions.

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“It’s a great recognition for all the hard work we put into it,” said Kemeny, who got the horse-racing bug from Maché and his grandmother when they were kids.

The success of Snuggles was even more gratifying since the two couples raced her sire, the late Rosberg, a son of A.P. Indy and the dam Daymaker, a stakes-placed daughter of Fusaichi Pegasus. Rosberg was named Champion Stallion at the B.C. Awards and Daymaker was voted Champion Broodmare.

Their crack sprinter Modern won his second Champion Sprinter trophy and the stable’s 16 Hastings Park wins and earnings of over $408,000 (US) earned a third Owner of the Year award.

In 15 years since the group’s first winner, Hammersmith in 2002, Swift Thoroughbreds has campaigned more than a dozen champions plus several graded stakes winners when it has branched out to join American partnerships.

Kemeny and Maché always knew they would get into horse racing from their childhood trips to the track with Maché’s grandmother. It wasn’t long before the two boys, pre-teens, were hopping on their bikes and checking out the races on their own, figuring out the best ways to bet on a winner.

Once they entered the workforce, Kemeny and Maché founded Mindspan, a computer and video game company and invented Hardball, one of the best-selling baseball video games in the 1980s. Kemeny, the computer whiz and Maché, who works in finance, put a plan in motion to buy their first horse once they had some money to get into the sport seriously.

They bought three, to be exact, at their first trip to the 2000 CTHS yearling sale in Vancouver, carefully picking out youngsters based on breeding and conformation. The pair was confident they were ready to take on the racing game with immediate success, but their horses lost some 23 straight races right off the bat.

It wasn’t until Hammersmith won the CTHS Sales Stakes for colts in the fall of 2002 that they had their first winner. By 2004, the stable was still on a small scale, but victories were becoming more frequent.

Kemeny and Maché sought out a private trainer for their stable and scooped up the talented horsemen Dino Condilenios, who had been running a successful public stable. Swift Thoroughbreds went from winning six to 10 races a year to winning 20 or more by 2006 and Kemeny and Maché had already started visiting the larger horse sales in Kentucky.

On one of these trips, they met representatives of the massive Darley Stable, owned by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum and started purchasing well-bred runners that were not keeping up with the top class horses in the U.S.

“It was a really good arrangement,” said Kemeny. “They offered us horses to purchase to take to B.C. and from them we bought some of the best horses we have ever raced.”

Rosberg certainly qualified for that label. A son of the great A.P. Indy from the Group 1 winning mare Bosra Sham by Woodman, Rosberg was originally a $1.5 million yearling purchase by Darley in 2002 and it appeared to be money well spent when the colt won his maiden at Santa Anita as a 2-year-old with a 100 Beyer Speed Figure for six furlongs in a sizzling 1:08.85.

Unfortunately, Rosberg did not race again for three years and when he returned to racing, he won a few races in Dubai. He was shipped back to the U.S. and he was obtained by Kemeny and Maché. In four races for his new owners, Rosberg won the Premiers’ Handicap (Grade 3) in 2008.

Rosberg entered stud at Canmor Farms, where Kemeny and Maché keep most of their horses, and the stallion quickly became one of the most exciting and successful stallions in B.C. in recent years.

He was in the top three stallions in Canada with his first, second and third crop runners, named the B.C. Champion Juvenile sire in 2014 and 2015 and in 2016, with progeny earnings over $900,000, was named Champion Stallion. He finished 11th on the Canadian sire list behind Old Forester and Giant Gizmo among others.

Tragically, Rosberg died during a breeding in May, 2014 and his last crop of foals are 2-year-olds of 2017.

Teide (tee-dee) was another Darley ‘cast-off’ who thrived in his new surroundings. The impressive-looking son of Mt. Livermore from a Nijinsky II mare, Cascassi, graduated from allowance winner in 2003 to the B.C. Horse of the Year and Champion Older Horse a year later. He won three stakes, placed in a pair of Grade 3 events and earned over $200,000 in his first year for the Swift team.

Teide is at stud at Canmor and his first small crop of runners raced in 2016.

Almost Time, a B.C.-bred by Finality, was the next Swift star as he cleaned up in 2010 as Champion Older Horse, Sprinter and B.C.-bred Horse of the Year, a title he would take again in 2011.

The 2013 season has been the best, so far, at least from a prize money standpoint for Swift Thoroughbreds, as the runners earned over $800,000, but with a smaller, higher quality barn in 2016, the friends had their best season ever.

“Snuggles is a wonderful horse,” said Kemeny. “She came within a neck of being undefeated for the year. She’s a homebred all the way through, by our stallion Rosberg and from our mare Daymaker.”

Snuggles, a stakes winner as a juvenile in four starts, has only ever run in stakes races in her career. She won five added-money events in 2016 highlighted by a huge win over older mares in the Ballerina Handicap (Grade 3). The filly’s impeccable record also earned her a nomination for Canada’s Champion Three-Year-Old Filly at the April 13 Sovereign Awards in Toronto.

“It will be hard for us to win [a Sovereign Award] being out here but we enjoy being big fishes in a smaller pond,” said Kemeny.

The stable has had some success on an international stage, however, as partners with Pete Bradley’s Bradley Thoroughbreds, racing Grade 1 winner Desert Blanc (GB) in 2012.

Kemeny, Maché and their wives are equally involved in the decision-making process in the operation of the stable. One of their favourite yearly events is the winter sit-down when they analyze the racing stable, name the horses (must be only one-word names said Kemeny) and what stallions the mares will visit in the spring.

Kemeny also sits on the board of directors at the BC Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders’ Association and has played a large role in trying to revitalize the local breeding industry.

“We have come up with all kinds of initiatives such as a broodmare program to reward breeders who bring new mares to the province. Our biggest issue here is horse population and that drives everything in the industry.”

The Swift stable numbers are down to about two dozen, plus six broodmares from a few years ago, when they had about 50 in training, but Kemeny is optimistic about the future of the sport.

“I’m optimistic; we just have to find ways to keep the breeders happy and incentivized.”

Certainly, the two families have played a large role in bolstering the horse population and pedigree lines in their home province and with Snuggles and others ready for 2017, its influence will stay around for years to come.