'She moves like a cheetah': Mike Ryan brings Be Your Best to Fasig-Tipton

Cover image courtesy of Fasig-Tipton

Sometimes you have to save the best for yourself, and Mike Ryan certainly did that when retaining homebred filly Be Your Best (Ire) (Muhaarar {GB}), a four-time Graded winner who will bid to double her Grade I record this weekend at the Breeders’ Cup meet where she lines up in the GI Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf.

Breeding to win

Bred in Ireland under his St Croix Bloodstock moniker out of a half-sister to Group 1-producing sire Fortify (USA), Ryan brought Be Your Best to the States to race in his colours. The filly is a daughter of brilliant racehorse and four-time Group 1 winner Muhaarar (GB), who had yet to hit his straps when it was time to enter Be Your Best in a yearling sale, so Ryan opted to retain her instead.

“Expectations were very, very high for Muhaarar and he got superb mares, but he hadn’t quite delivered yet,” Ryan said. The Haras de Montaigu-based stallion has since produced 31 black-type winners, with Be Your Best amongst his five Group 1 winners.

“(Trainer) John Gosden said to me one day, ‘Mike, a lot of people think they're sprinters. They're not sprinters. They need time, and they want to go over a bit of distance’. So I brought her back to the States instead to try and do some good with her.”

Ryan brought the filly to Ocala to winter and grow out, and she started to show the promise he had hoped she would have.

“We brought her back and sent her to Horacio de Paz,” he said. “We liked what we saw from her. She trained superbly on the dirt as well as the turf. She moves like a cheetah. Her action is unbelievable.

“She won a maiden first time out by five lengths, and then she won the Listed PG Johnson very easily as well. We have come to understand she likes a firm turf course, like a golf green.”

Through the Grades

After a third placing at Grade III level, Be Your Best was sent for a tilt at the GI Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf, where she finished ninth, but she would be back bigger and better at three. Returning to the top level, the filly picked up second placings in the GI Del Mar Oaks and the GI Santa Anita American Oaks, both times to multiple Graded winner Anisette (GB) (Awtaad {Ire}).

“She was unlucky not to win the (GII) Lucky Again,” Ryan said. “The ground was not to her liking all year - it was a very wet summer.”

A move to Saffie Joseph Jnr and drier weather would see Be Your Best live up to her name as a 4-year-old, where she picked up Grade III wins in the GIII Suwannee River Stakes and the GIII Long Island Stakes, the latter of which she would lead the field wire to wire.

“She’s been great this year. She came back and won the GII Pegasus World Cup Filly and Mare Turf Invitational Stakes, and then she came out and won the GI Gamely Stakes.”

These performances earned Be Your Best a tilt at the Filly And Mare Turf on November 1, where she will line up as one of five top flight winners in a field of 14 of the world’s best turf mares.

“She’s in here with a shot,” Ryan said. “It’s a very deep field, which we knew going in because you're always going to get a lot of foreign participation. But she’s doing extremely well, and she’s very sound. Every time she works, you think you're watching the same piece of work every time, because she's so consistent in her work and she also works really good on the dirt.

“She’s been an incredibly sound filly all of her life and trainer Saffi has said multiple times, ‘I’d love to run this filly on the dirt. She trains so good on it, she moves so good on it’. She breezed (on Wednesday) and her stride is incredible. I would love to try her on the dirt, but when she runs so well on the grass, why go changing things?”

No sale like it

“She has a high cruising speed and she can accelerate,” Ryan said. “Everything depends on the ground (for the Breeders’ Cup), but she’s very sound, and has been low maintenance for all of her career. She’s a 5-year-old now and has 22 runs, and she has never missed a run due to soundness.

“She’s been a pure joy, and she’s helped the whole family. We sold her sister three weeks ago and she was bought by Amo Racing. Her dam has a colt foal by Cody’s Wish and is back in foal to Nyquist. She’s won just short of $1.2 million and she’s far exceeded anything we ever dreamt of.”

Be Your Best’s half-sister by Shadwell Stud’s 10-time winning champion Baaeed (GB) was a 410,000 gns ($864,000) purchase by Amo Racing at the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale.

“If she hit the board, it certainly would be a massive thrill for us and it would certainly help her value for sure.”

The thrills could continue two days later at Fasig-Tipton’s Night of the Stars on Monday.

“She is beautifully put together, very elegant with a lot of quality,” Ryan said. “She has the most gorgeous head on her, very feminine, and is very clean limbed. She has so much personality, it’s like she could talk to you.”

When asked why Fasig-Tipton was the place to sell his top tier mare, Ryan was emphatic: it just made sense.

“Over the last 20 plus years, there’s been no other sale like it,” he said. “I mean, it lives up to its name, the Night of the Stars. The parking lot will be full. It's very international, you get Japanese bidders, Australians, people from Ireland, England, and France, and the United States. It's a global market and it's not a huge catalogue, but it's heavy on quality.

“It was a natural fit for her. We could have sold her anywhere, but this sale is definitely an event now. It's a pretty unique occasion.”