“I almost looked up at the clock right there at the end just hoping we were running out of time. She’d been so good all the way through, I just needed that buzzer to go off,” said Roger Wagner, after his eleventh-hour winning run on Stylish Martini in the Super Stakes Classic Friday night in Fort Worth, Texas.
Sly Playgirl and Jaime Snider set the bar with 225 points midway through the first set, but Stylish Martini and Wagner trumped their mark with 225.5 points, showing next-to-last in the 25-horse field .
“You don’t feel like you can lose a cow on her when she’s like that,” said Wagner, who has earned over $315,000 aboard the 6-year-old Docs Stylish Oak daughter, bred by Marvine Ranch and owned by Dottie St. Clair Hill.
“I’ve always loved that mare,” said Hill, who maintains a stellar band of broodmares near Glen Rose, Tex. and purchased Stylish Martini for $700,000, a record for a performance horse, at the Marvine Ranch Reduction Sale on October 20, 2012.
Stylish Martini made her debut with a fourth-place finish under Wagner in the 2010 NCHA Futurity. Her previous richest win came in the 2011 NCHA Derby.
“In the Derby I cut a really fast cow at the end and we had a little booble, but tonight that mare was dead on the whole way through,” noted Wagner.
“She’s so fast, when you trap a cow, it doesn’t seem to matter how much you ride her through a turn. She’ll listen, but by the time those cows are turned around, she’s already on that side waiting for them.”
Stylish Martini, out of Miss Martini Play, is half-sister to Copaspepto, 2007 NCHA Horse of the Year and winner of 2007 Super Stakes under Tag Rice.
The Super Stakes Classic was the 2013 season debut for 6-year-old Sly Playgirl. The That Sly Cat daughter, bred by Glade Knight and owned by Luis Dearmas, has earned nearly $300,000 under Snider and Dearmas.
“It was a long wait,” said Snider, referring to his early, potential winning score. “There were a lot of good horses after us. We did what we could and it happened that Roger had a better run.
“She’s been good since I won the first go-round of the (NCHA) Futurity until now. I marked a 224 on her here at the Super Stakes, when she was four, and a 224 on her when she won the Breeders Invitational, but this (225 points) is her highest score.”
Sly Playgirl came into this week’s event from a seven-month layoff. “She got hurt a little bit last fall and it’s nice to have her back,” said Snider. “Luis said that he would just have me ride her coming back and get her ready for both of us to ride in the BI and the Derby.”