Killybegs Captain wins the 2019 Frank J. DeFrancis Memorial Dash at Laurel. Jim McCue/Maryland Jockey Club Photo.
Graded stakes winner Killybegs Captain was retired this month and will enter stud in 2021 at Anne Morgan’s and Tim Little’s Mill Creek Farm in Stillwater. The 7-year-old son of Mizzen Mast out of the Holy Bull mare Al Maha will stand his initial season for $2,500 live foal/stands and nurses.
Campaigned by Curragh Racing and trained by John Terranova, Killybegs Captain won seven of 27 starts with five seconds and three thirds for $572,453 in earnings. A $75,000 purchase at the 2016 OBS April 2-year-olds in training sale, Killybegs Captain was a winner at 3, 4, 5 and 6 and rose from the allowance ranks to become a stakes winner in his last two seasons.
Killybegs Captain scored his biggest victory in the Grade 3 Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash at Laurel Park in 2019, defeating a field that included He Hate Me and New York Central in 1:08.10 for 6 furlongs.
Third in the Grade 2 John A. Nerud Stakes at Belmont Park and Grade 1 Forego Stakes at Saratoga Race Course in 2019, Killybegs Captain also won back-to-back editions of the Pelican Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs in 2019 and 2020. He defeated multiple Grade 1 winner Imperial Hint in the 2019 edition of the Pelican, winning the 6-furlong stakes in 1:09.66.
Bred by H. Allen Poindexter, Killybegs Captain is the sixth foal out of Al Maha, a half sister to stakes winner Find the Treasure and the dam of multiple graded stakes winner Pontchatrain from the family of Grade 1 winner Past Forgetting and Grade 2 winner and sire Concerto.
Killybegs Captain is one of six winners out of Al Maha, who is also the dam of a now 2-year-old unnamed filly by Cross Traffic purchased for $50,000 by Tonja Terranova, agent for Curragh Racing at last year’s Keeneland September yearling sale.
“He was a beautiful horse – sound horse – he retired sound,” Tonja Terranova, assistant to her husband, told Daily Racing Form. “He beat Imperial Hint, he was third to Mitole. He was just a solid racehorse; ran short, ran long.”
