YONKERS, NY,
Wednesday, December 11, 2019—Jason Bartlett’s first words about Mach it a Par
were hardly the stuff of testimonials.
“She doesn’t look
like much, her gait isn’t the smoothest, very choppy, she has to use many more
steps to cover same amount of ground,” her usual chauffeur said.
“But”—and there’s
always a ‘but’—”what no one could measure was her heart.”
Mach it a Par
makes the 182nd and final start of her seven-figure career Friday
night (Dec. 13th), after which she’ll be honored by her home away
from home, Yonkers Raceway. Entering the $22,000 second race, the 9-year-old
daughter of Mach Three has made her last 87 starts in Westchester for co-owners
D’Elegance Stable IX, Carmen Iannacone, T L P Stable and the Gandolfo
Stables,
“She’s not supposed
to do the thing she’s done,” trainer Richard Banca said of the 52-time winner.
“She did overcome so much, all sorts of foot issues. She’s just been tremendous
and gets around Yonkers great. I don’t know why, maybe it’s her size. She took
a (1:50.3) mark there (September of 2016, Brian Sears driving), which I think
was a world record at the time.
We’ve had
her since early (March) 2016. I think the owners paid $60,000 for her. She was
racing at Pompano. She had a lot of wins, but hadn’t made much money.
“We put her right
in the (2016 Blue Chip) Matchmaker,” Banca said. “She was probably eligible to
non-winners of $10,000 (in last five starts), but we threw her in the
series. She ended up winning and paying a lot ($81, George Brennan driving) and
that really surprised us.
There weren’t that
many surprises after a career-best ’16 season (39 starts, 13 wins, nine
seconds, eight thirds, $404,200), with Yonkers as her nearly-exclusive place to
race. The past two full seasons have seen Mach it a Par pay her way, earning
$200,000-plus in each.
“It’s not that she
can’t race anymore (six wins, more than $144,000 in 2019),” Banca said. “The
owners just want to breed her (to as as-of-now undetermined New York
stallion),”
It wasn’t all
sunshine and Skittles on the track for Mach it a Par, however.
The lass cost
herself any number of winner’s circle pictures and a fair amount of coin by not
necessarily pacing the straight and narrow through the lane.
“We never could
figure out why she runs out,” Banca said. “She doesn’t do it every time (cue
Bartlett…’She was a winner last [Friday] night [Dec. 6th], but off
the last turn, she wants to go and get a hamburger in the grandstand’) and
we’ve tried some equipment changes, but then she ran in.”
So, there. Mach it
a Par wasn’t always pretty, but with more than $1.1 million on account, she was
pretty good.
