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BREEDERS' CUP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS


October 29, 2005


Claude R. McGaughey III

Denny Phipps


ELMONT, NEW YORK

ERIC WING: 20,000-dollar superfecta and, of course with us are trainer Shug McGaughey and owner Denny Phipps. Gentlemen, congratulations. Denny only one horse has ever won a Breeder's Cup race by nine and a quarter length that Pleasant Home did.

DENNY PHIPPS: I remember it well.

ERIC WING: You know full well it was inside information in 1995 won by 13 and a half lengths. First of all, she hadn't done a whole lot of winning as of late. Your decision to put her into and give her a shot.

DENNY PHIPPS: My daughter saw her down at the Spinster and they convinced me she ran well there and that was the reason she was in.

ERIC WING: Of course when you have horses like Personal Enson and so many of the illustrious, Inside Information, and the others that you don't send out many 30 to one shots. When you have a horse that's kind of overlooked like this, is the gratification even sweeter when you see a horse storm to victory?

DENNY PHIPPS: I'm not a bettor, and I was surprised at the odds today. I thought they might be 12 or 15 to one, something like that, but not at all. I learned a long time ago from Shug that when you have a horse that is on the up, going up, doing well, doing -- looking as well as she did, that's the time to race them.

ERIC WING: Shug, congratulations. Your ninth breeder's Cup win, second all time behind D. Wayne Lukas. Looking at the race on paper, it seemed like most of the horses, the people talking about were up front types with the exception of Society Selection, who ran second. Was that your strategy? Let him fight it out and sit back and see what kinds of business we can do at the end?

CLAUDE SHUG McGAUGHEY: She didn't have any early speed, to speak of. I like horses to run the race, me looking on paper. I thought someplace in the race I was going to get some help, whether it was going to be the first quarter the, middle of the race or what. I was satisfied with 23, 46 might even speed it up a little more around there. I felt like she'd be coming. She ran very well around one term at Aqueduct, ran in Bed of Roses. I thought her Spinster was a very good race over Speed Favor, track down at Keenland that was a deep track, kind of coming off a couple of sprint races at Saratoga; three quarters and a seven-eighths where she was third and second. Both were good. I thought a mile and a eighth over the track at Keenland could set her up good for this one. You know, whether she was good enough or not, I didn't know. She trains at Saratoga. People up there did a wonderful job with her and, you know, she got down here and I thought she looked the picture for a horse especially a fillie this time of the year. We're just tickled to death with what we saw today.

ERIC WING: They say it's hard to close on that Keenland racing strip very often. Did you think you were second in the Spinster was actually better than it might have appeared on paper, given inherent track biases at Keenland?

CLAUDE SHUG McGAUGHEY: I think so. She had the one post that day when she broke, I thought she was fighting the track, going around the first turn she got back farther than I thought she would. I was afraid she wasn't going to run over the track. I could see her climbing. She was eating lot of dirt. I thought maybe she won't run good that day, far to the outside. She came running, was a little bit wide, not bad. Just couldn't get there. Cornelio came back and said, maybe I moved a little bit too soon. But I didn't give him much instructions today. Yes, I think the race at Keenland helped her a lot. If we look back, Inside Information had a hard race in the Spinster before she came here and won.

ERIC WING: Pleasant Home promises to be another nice addition to your illustrious band. Will fans look forward to seeing her on the racetrack in '06 as a five-year-old?

DENNY PHIPPS: She's a wonderful home bred stallion at a Shug crane out of a mare that we have, and I think this will probably be the end for her.

ERIC WING: Have you picked out a stallion yet?

DENNY PHIPPS: Not really. It seems to be improving by the week.

ERIC WING: Questions either upstairs or here in the room for Shug or Mr. Phipps? Dan. Shug, can you talk about leaving Saratoga and bringing her in here late? You were here, why you didn't bring her in earlier?

CLAUDE SHUG McGAUGHEY: Well, it was kind of a last year she did really well up there and I was talking to Mr. Phipps about that back in the summer. He just kind of, why don't you send her up there. I sent her up early before we went to Saratoga. I thought she did well. I left her up there. You know, went up there, I thought she did really well. He with went to the Spinster wasn't going to break what I was doing. So we sent her back up there. I think it was the right decision. She liked that soft track up there. Sort of liked that atmosphere, she did well there.

ERIC WING: Were you at all concerned earlier in the week, it looked like speed was pretty favoring here, yet today off the pace horses looked like they performed well. Earlier in the week was there concern about that?

CLAUDE SHUG McGAUGHEY: I thought the track would probably change. I thought we had, you know, the weather earlier in the week, Monday, Tuesday, we had a lot of rain. So you know I knew when -- I know when we get weather like we've had the last few days, and get this kind of overcast, colder days at Belmont, Belmont track is usually at its best. It holds its moisture. This is a true run of the race, they'll run mile and an eighth, that's the way it should be. I think the track is playing fair.

ERIC WING: Not trying to generate any controversy, Shug, Shadow is a fillie has to be given her due. However Pleasant Home is the Breeder's Cup winner. Would you expect her to be a player, so to speak, in champion or fillie or mare voting?

CLAUDE SHUG McGAUGHEY: We have to look back at who's going to be the champion baseball team. They won the World Series back in September they were going through their losing streak. We couldn't say it then, so I have to think a performance like she made today, we have to throw our hat in the ring. I have to put a plug in for Smuggler, too. I wish she could have been here and seen what she would have been able to do that. I think with her four races this year with three wins and a second in the eighth Horn and win the Mother Goose and the coach Club Oaks the way she did win those races, she needs kind of throw her hat in the ring for the three-year-old champion, too.

ERIC WING: Let's hope those two don't split the Phipps' vote in the election. Anything else for our winners? Congratulations on a terrific performance and continued success for each of you.

DENNY PHIPPS: Thank you very much.

CLAUDE SHUG McGAUGHEY: Thank you.

End of FastScripts...

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