Step Dancer collects second stakes win in Wednesday’s Cab Calloway division of the New York Stallion Series. NYRA Photo.
By Tom Law
Robin Malatino stopped on the way out of the clubhouse early Wednesday afternoon, minutes removed from Step Dancer’s second Saratoga victory in as many starts and told the improbable tale of the winner of the $150,000 Cab Calloway division of the New York Stallion Series Stakes.
“If you want to hear the most incredible story, do you want me to tell you in a minute?” said Malatino, the self-appointed president, vice president, secretary, sergeant-at-arms, you-name-it supporter of Step Dancer’s sire War Dancer.
Step Dancer delivered for Malatino, who races with her husband Tony in the name Diamond M Stable, and their partners Richard and Donna Pressman, trainer Barclay Tagg and jockey Dylan Davis. Step Dancer won the 1-mile Cab Calloway by a neck after a furious stretch run to catch Dreamer’s Disease in the final strides for his second stakes victory and first from four starts this season.
He’s won three of seven with a second and two thirds for $219,800 in earnings. That’s impressive, for a stallion who stands for $7,500 out of a mare claimed for $16,000 in 2016 at Saratoga, but not nearly as remarkable as the story of how it all came together.
“After we claimed the mare … Carl Domino, who you saw here today, took her back to the barn and said, ‘oh, bowed tendon, this and that, we’re not going to race her,’ ” Malatino said. “So we took her back to the farm and bred her to War Dancer. She’s a maiden mare. She has the baby and she tried to kill him. I have videos, she’d try to bite him by the back of his neck like a lion. Then she’d kiss him, then she’d tried to kill him. We had to put a board up between him and his mom and he would sneak under the board. He was so little and he’d sneak under the board to nurse. He just wanted love.”
The Malatinos and the team at their Sugar Plum Farm just down the road from Saratoga Race Course on Route 9P across I-87 eventually decided to give Just Be Steppin away and put the young bay colt on a nurse mare.
That didn’t work any better.
“The nurse mare comes in and apparently she had a baby at one of these nursing places,” Malatino said. “She was angry. She rejected him, she was so angry. We had to put a mask on her face. We called her Hannibal Lecter. She tried to kill him, too. We had to take him away from her, too. So we wound up getting a half-paint, half-Thoroughbred mare that was so small he had to duck to get under her. But she loved him. He’s a Cinderella story. The poor guy, he was rejected by two moms, but here he is today.”
Bred by Sugar Plum Farm and Richard Pressman, Step Dancer went to post for the 1-mile Cab Calloway as the 7-5 favorite in the field of eight. He and Davis raced sixth through the early stages while Dreamer’s Disease, a son of the late Laoban, clicked off splits of :23.80 and :48.77 on a loose rein from David Cohen.
Dreamer’s Disease continued to lead into the lane, opening up by 2 lengths while Davis switched him to the outside for a run. Dreamer’s Disease flashed past the eighth pole 5 lengths in front but Step Dancer, a maiden winner in his debut at Saratoga last summer and winner of the Awad Stakes over open company in his third start on Halloween, sliced into the deficit with each stride.
Step Dancer continued on late and collared the leader just before the wire to win by a neck in 1:35.83 over the firm inner turf course. Dreamer’s Disease held second by 4 3/4 lengths from It’s Gravy with Gator Bite fourth.
“Just like the last race except he won this one,” Tagg said after watching the replay in the clubhouse, referring to Step Dancer’s runner-up finish in the Spectacular Bid division of the New York Stallion Series June 19 at Belmont Park. “He got away from the gate a little slower than I would have liked and he had a crowd to work through. That never helps I don’t think but he’s a competitive little horse. I love Saratoga. It’s great to win here.”
Step Dancer is the lone foal produced by Just Be Steppin, a daughter of English Channel who won one of eight starts with a second and a third for $21,885 in earnings. She scored that lone win in a 1-mile turf maiden claiming race for trainer Merrill Scherer at Fair Grounds in March 2016.
Just Be Steppin ran twice more – in a Churchill Downs $40,000 claiming race and an allowance race at Presque Isle Downs – before she was claimed out of her third-place finish in a 9-furlong dirt race Aug. 11, 2016 at Saratoga. Step Dancer is the leading runner for War Dancer, who stands at Irish Hill & Dutchess Views Stallions in Stillwater.
“We called him Step Son early and then he became Step Dancer,” Malatino said. “During training we’d go to see him in Florida and they’d show us all our horses and Barry (Berkelhammer) would say, ‘do you want to see Step Son?’ We’d ask what he thought and he said he’s OK. He’s cute, whatever, stuff like that. Now he’s our best one. … He looked like a monster coming down the stretch there.”
