Reflected Glory Is What Snow Chief’s Sire Finally Is Getting

Both as a runner and as a stallion, Reflected Glory has been a horse of unfulfilled promise. A knee injury curtailed his career on the track when he appeared to be at the height of his powers. Then Reflected Glory’s stud career was sidetracked before it started, by a belief that he was bashful around mares.

That’s enough of a reputation to make a stallion an outcast in the breeding shed, which was the status of Reflected Glory after two years at stud in Kentucky.

Brought to California in 1971 by Jim Buell, a veterinarian who owns a 2,800-acre ranch near Santa Barbara, Reflected Glory never became a top sire here, either. At Rancho Jonata, he did beat the rap that mares bored him, but out of almost 400 offspring, Reflected Glory still sired only a few runners that amounted to much. His stud fee in California actually dropped, from $2,500 to $2,000.

It costs only $2,000 to breed to Reflected Glory this year, but at 22 he might finally have the chance to gain some of the recognition that has eluded him. Reflected Glory is the sire of Snow Chief, the Kentucky Derby favorite who will try to add to his $1.4-million bankroll Sunday in the $500,000 Santa Anita Derby.

Should Snow Chief go on to glory in the Triple Crown races, he will achieve the prominence that was expected of Reflected Glory in 1967.

Reflected Glory and Reason To Hail were outstanding 3-year-olds in the barn of Hirsch Jacobs that year. Jacobs, who trained Affectionately, Hail To Reason, Straight Deal and Stymie--a $1,500 claimer--to win championships, was America’s winningest trainer for 11 of 12 years during a stretch that started in 1933.

The good ’67 crop included Damascus, Dr. Fager and In Reality, but Reflected Glory won the Flamingo at Hialeah. That was the third time that winter that Reflected Glory had beaten his stablemate, Reason To Hail, and the Jacobs’ entry was the odds-on favorite in the Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park.

In Reality won the race, Reason To Hail ran third and Reflected Glory cracked his knee while finishing seventh. Reflected Glory returned to win a couple of minor races in New York, but he was retired the next year after six unproductive starts as a 4-year-old.

Sent to Kentucky, Reflected Glory stood for Jacobs and his partner, Isidor Bieber, a wealthy New Yorker who had long bankrolled Jacobs’ operation. Reflected Glory’s original stud fee was $2,500.

“The first few mares he was bred to, they came back still in heat,” Buell said. “Bieber was a tremendously fair man. He had his farm manager put out the word what the situation was. There were questions about the horse’s fertility, and as a result no one wanted to breed to him.”

With a partner who no longer has an interest in Reflected Glory, Buell bought the stallion and moved him to Rancho Jonata, the family ranch that remained from a Spanish land grant that had been given to Buell’s grandfather.

Reflected Glory’s only two Kentucky crops resulted in nine foals. In California, his smallest crop has been 18 and Snow Chief was one of 53 foals in 1983.

The 53-year-old Buell has a reputation for successfully working with mares that are hard to breed, but he says there are no secrets behind Reflected Glory’s mating prowess in California.

“The first year in Kentucky, he was bred to only nine mares and had six foals, so that’s not too bad of an average,” Buell said. “Nobody wanted to send any mares to him after Bieber said he was a shy breeder.”

Carl Grinstead, the Chula Vista man who owns Snow Chief with Ben Rochelle of Beverly Hills, once trained his own horses and met Buell more than 20 years ago.

In 1980, Grinstead had a 2-year-old filly named Miss Snowflake who had tried to hurdle the fence at Caliente one morning. She tore up her shoulder and, for a while, it looked as if she might not survive. But Miss Snowflake did survive and finally did race, starting five times, winning once and earning $2,308.

In 1982, Grinstead sent Miss Snowflake to be bred to Reflected Glory. The mating resulted in Snow Chief, who in his last start won the Florida Derby, the race that led to the end of Reflected Glory’s running career.

Last summer, Buell visited Grinstead at Snow Chief’s barn at Del Mar. Walking down the shed row, Buell needed no introduction. He stopped at the door of a brownish 2-year-old colt and said: “That’s Snow Chief.”

Snow Chief looks just like his sire. “Reflected Glory is a little bigger,” Buell said. “But they’re alike in the head and in the shoulders, and they carry each other the same way.”

Nancy Foster manages Rancho Jonata, where Buell stands five other stallions.

“Reflected Glory might be 22, but he could pass for 11 in looks,” Foster said.

Buell was asked why he hadn’t raised Reflected Glory’s stud fee after Snow Chief’s win in the Norfolk Stakes at Santa Anita and the Hollywood Futurity last year.

“It’s a different (breeding) world in California than it is in Kentucky,” Buell said. “You don’t expect to hit the high levels here that you do back there. I once had Reflected Glory’s fee up to $2,500, but I set it back at $2,000 a few years ago.”

Despite the reflected glory of Snow Chief for Reflected Glory, there was no stampede for most of the sire’s offspring when they were offered at a sale of 2-year-olds last week at Hollywood Park. Trainer Donn Luby bought a good-looking Reflected Glory colt for $50,000, but five other progeny averaged just over $10,000.

There was one Reflected Glory filly who drew so little attention that she wasn’t even sold. By comparison, there was a reported offer of $2.5 million for Snow Chief early this year--before he won the Florida Derby.

Maybe if Snow Chief wins the Santa Anita Derby and the Kentucky Derby, Reflected Glory will get his overdue due. Twenty years late is better than not at all.