Brant Is Buying English-Bred Valley Victory for $1 Million

Valley Victory, an English-bred 3-year-old filly whose American career started inauspiciously in California but blossomed in New York, is being sold to Peter Brant for at least $1 million.

Sherwood Chillingworth, a member of the California-based five-man syndicate that bought Valley Victory last fall and raced her in the United States, said Saturday there is a verbal agreement with Brant to buy the filly. The sale is expected to be completed this week.

Valley Victory, a stakes winner in Ireland as a 2-year-old, did not win any stakes in California, but she won the Coaching Club American Oaks, a major race, at Belmont Park this summer. Before that, she finished fourth in the Mother Goose Stakes at Belmont. In her last start, she was second in the Alabama at Saratoga.

Valley Victory was scheduled to run this Wednesday in the Gazelle Handicap at Belmont but apparently will skip that race because of the sale to Brant, a Connecticut horse owner, breeder and publisher. Brant has won Eclipse Awards with distaffers Waya and Just a Game II and was a minority owner of Swale, who won the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes in 1984.

Besides Chillingworth, a Pasadena real estate developer, the other partners in the Valley Victory ownership have been Californians Fred Duckett, Richard Dick and George Tuerk and Texan Doug McClure.

There is a partial overlap with these men and the syndicates that raced major stakes winners Forzando II and Yashgan.

Buying foreign-breds at comparatively low prices, establishing their value in the U.S. and then quickly selling them at sizable profits has been the modus operandi of these partnerships. But the first horse they clicked with, Swing Till Dawn, was an American horse who, after winning the Santa Anita Handicap and the Widener at Hialeah in 1983, now stands at stud in Kentucky.

Of Valley Victory, Chillingworth said: “The credit should go to (trainer) John Sullivan. He developed the filly when she was in California and sent her to New York ready to win in stakes company. John also picked out the trainer, Leo O’Brien, who did a good job with her in New York.”