Pete Williams made the decision to keep Distorted d'Oro (Medaglia d'Oro) in training another year when she finished a close-up fourth in the Tom Benson Memorial Stakes at Fair Grounds Mar. 22, only to completely change his mind just a week later when the 4-year-old filly's half-brother Tappan Street (Into Mischief) won the GI Florida Derby. Instead, Williams chose to send Distorted d'Oro to visit Tappan Street's sire Into Mischief and he has now made the difficult decision to offer the mare at the Fasig-Tipton November Sale Monday in Lexington. She will go through the ring as hip 207 with the Nicky Drion Thoroughbreds consignment.
“This is really bittersweet,” said Williams, a real estate developer who began building his MKW Breeding commercial broodmare band just four years ago. “This all has to do with the business and we are in a business. This isn't a hobby and you have to make some crappy decisions sometimes. It's a business and you are trying to make money and you want to at least try to pay for your operation.”
The MKW Breeding band currently numbers 17 head and includes Midnight Snack (Distorted Humor), a half-sister to Grade I winner Speed Boat Beach (Bayern), and Mo Town Mayhem (Uncle Mo), a full-sister to multiple graded winner Souper Hoity Toity, while a pair of young runners waiting in the wings include recent maiden winner Malibu Muse (Malibu Moon).
“We bought probably seven or eight of those as broodmares or broodmare prospects and the others have been developed through our racing program,” Williams said of the band. “If we think we can buy fillies right that we like–I call it buying broolings. I have a list of broodmare sires and I am looking for those pedigrees. I wanted a Blame broodmare. And instead of finding a Blame broodmare, we bought a yearling filly by Blame last year. I loved her pedigree, she's a full-sister to a graded stakes winner. And hopefully, we can make that pedigree even better, but if we can't, it's already good enough to send to the breeding barn. That's kind of been the overarching business plan.”
Williams purchased Distorted d'Oro for $325,000 at the 2023 OBS April sale. The mare is out of graded winner Virginia Key (Distorted Humor), a half-sister to graded winners Grace Adler (Curlin) and Pyrenees (Into Mischief). She hit the board in four of eight starts–including a third-place effort in the Searching Stakes at Laurel last year–with three wins.
“She was a hard-knocking filly, she didn't have that incredible turn of foot, but man if you watch the races she won, she would go inside on the rail, she had what it took to race,” Williams said. “She ran in a stakes at Fair Grounds and Jose Ortiz rode her. She just missed getting third by a nose and ran a hard-knocking race against some pretty good horses. I am not in this racing thing, it's either black type or it's not, so I asked Jose, 'If I race her in her 4-year-old year, is she going to put more black-type on her pedigree?' and Jose said, 'Absolutely, let her race this year.' I left there with that decision made.”
Bloodstock agent Alistair Roden and Pete Williams | Fasig-Tipton
And then Tappan Street–still the only horse to defeat Sovereignty this year–put himself in contention for the GI Kentucky Derby with his Florida Derby victory.
“By the end of the week, I had kind of changed my mind,” Williams said. “Obviously, the family is already crazy good, but then he wins that and I said, 'OK, let's retire her.'”
Williams continued, “You know how anytime you get a call from a trainer, or someone at the farm, you just look at the phone and think, 'oh, crap.' So I called Stidham and I said, 'Hey Mike, you know how you always call me with bad news? Well, I am calling you to tell you to ship Distorted d'Oro to Kentucky.' And he said, 'I get it. It's a business and you have to make the best business decision.' So I made what I thought was the best business decision that I could make.”
Williams admitted his yearling sales result were disappointing this fall and that helped him make the decision to put Distorted d'Oro in the Fasig-Tipton catalogue.
“We had a nice Curlin filly and what I thought was a very nice Nyquist filly that I really planned on selling very well,” he explained. “One of them didn't get the interest we were looking for and we kind of knew where we were heading, so we just scratched her and sent her to Margaux to train and race or possibly, I guess, a 2-year-old sale. And then this Nyquist filly did not sell close to where we wanted her to sell.”
Asked what it would be like to watch Distorted d'Oro go through the sales ring at Fasig-Tipton Monday, Williams admitted, “I won't be happy. I really feel like she is the kind of mare you can make $10 or $12 million out of over her life. I looked through the [Fasig-Tipton catalogue] Saturday night and obviously there are some really good pedigrees in there and there are some really talented racehorses, but when I look at her family, as a buyer myself, this is what I would be looking to buy.”
Still in the early stages of his breeding operation–and despite any setbacks–Williams said, “I am excited about what I do. Real estate development has been my business, so I am used to not getting good news all the time. No one ever calls and tells you we are going to finish this project early and it will cost less money. It's always the opposite. Everything always costs more than we thought. So I've got the mentality to take the bad news in this business.”
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