Nice article about Terry and Mary Lou Griffin

Talk about upcoming sales or auction results.

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Tairaterces
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Nice article about Terry and Mary Lou Griffin

Postby Tairaterces » Fri Jan 28, 2005 5:00 pm

View from the Rail: Breeders cash golden ticket

By LARRY LEE PALMER
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Earlier this month, a mom-and-pop breeding operation in Buckley blew down the doors of a prestigious Kentucky thoroughbred auction with the sale of broodmare Cozzene's Angel for $1.35 million.

Terry and Mary Lou Griffin had purchased the mare in 2000 for a mere $35,000.

But it is the rags-to-riches story of how the tiny Griffin Place breeding operation came to be in the first place that's pure gold, a Homeric tale that begins with the proverbial horse of a different color.

The horse's name was Paint.

The Keeneland Auction near Lexington is the epicenter of bluegrass aristocracy, an equine cathedral of ivy-covered stone, a Valhalla of understated elegance.

As Mary Lou Griffin and her small entourage find their seats near the rear of the sales pavilion, her knees feel weak. Her hands begin to shake.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this, she thinks.

She gazes across the room at some of the wealthiest people in the world -- Sheiks like Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Malaysian multibillionaires, Japanese electronics magnates, and the powerful Irish conglomerate known as Coolmore Stud.

The bidding begins, rapid fire but somehow soothing, the cadence and tone of the auctioneers rising and falling like plain song, the staccato "tobacco chant" left over from Southern antebellum days now a language all its own.

It would be a while before her mare enters the ring.

Her thoughts wander.

When she met her husband, Terry, Paint already was 13 years old, but she could remember everything like it was yesterday.

Paint loved to eat and hated large-animal veterinary clinics.

When she was a freshman at Colorado State, Mary Lou rode her mare to school a lot; low cost vet care was difficult to come by. She had to go a different way each time -- Paint was hard to fool; one sniff of the vet linaments and she wouldn't budge. But riding home (in the general direction of the oat bucket), Mary Lou could barely hang on.

But she clung hard to her dreams about horses; Vietnam seemed far away when Terry's orders came to head for Fort Lewis. With little money, they meandered north and slept where they could, that old '57 Willy's Jeep hardly able to haul the horse trailer.

Who would believe that damn Jeep burned 17 quarts of oil or that the tongue of the trailer literally fell off in the street, or that they made do in a heated men's room in a horse arena one night to stay warm? Back then they were too dumb to believe in anything but dreams.

Paint was family; wherever they went, she went, too.

When they got to Fort Lewis, the only thing the Griffins could find to rent was a small apartment in a housing complex in Spanaway. The complex was on three acres, and they talked their way into erecting a temporary shelter for the ever-faithful Paint.

That's where they met Debbie and Rick Pabst. Lifelong friends are hard to come by, especially friends who sell you the first 10 acres of what is to become Griffin Place.

That was more than 30 years ago. Paint lived until she was 41. Eventually, they buried her on the place, but not before the old gal captured the heart of Dagger Dancer, a strapping son of Sword Dancer who once stood at Woodstead Farm.

Apparently, they used Dagger Dancer as a teaser (to get the mares aroused); some said Dagger Dancer wouldn't perform his breeding duties if Paint were in sight -- Dagger Dancer just didn't want to cheat on her.

With a lump in her throat, Mary Lou remembers Paint had his foal.

Then a few years back comes the run of luck breeders hunger for. They buy Cozzene's Angel in foal for a song ($35,000), an amazing price considering the owners paid $200,000 the year previous.

In partnership (because the stud fee was so high), they breed the mare back to two-time leading North American sire Deputy Minister.

Two years later, Cozzene's Angel's first foal, Toccet (named after a hockey player), becomes a multiple Grade I stakes winner and makes their breeding gamble look like holy writ.

Whatever her mare sells for today, the yearling sired by Deputy Minister will bring yet another financial windfall this September.

Suddenly, Terry squeezes her hand so tight her fingers turn white. Bidding for the mare begins.

The auctioneer starts at $700,000, what he thinks the mare might sell for. No takers. He backs the bidding down until they start at $75,000. Mary Lou thinks, "Oh, lord, we didn't set a reserve (the price under which they would not sell the horse)."

Not to worry. Two bidders go toe to toe and the price shoots upward, levels out at $600,000, and then marches lockstep toward the magic number.

One million! This can't be happening to us! She turns to Terry, who looks bewildered.

Mary Lou begins to cry.

Minutes later, one of the bidders fail to counter an offer of $1.35 million and the gavel comes down on a fairy tale.

The news of the chart-topping sale of Cozzene's Angel struck a chord deep in the tight-knit Washington racing community, proof to many small operations here that the courage to dream isn't divine provenance to those born of wealth and power.

Few will remember the mare Paint, or visit her grave on a Washington farm, or know she died the same day as Secretariat, or why that fact should matter.

To the racing elite, Paint was a common sort.

But the bloodlines of Cozzene's Angel -- rich as they are -- share a secret covenant with Paint and perhaps, with us; a covenant buried deep inside the cell itself where, as D.H. Lawrence proclaims "a horse prances."

In any event, it is somehow reassuring that sometimes -- without earthly reason -- good things do happen to good people.

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Mahubah
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Postby Mahubah » Fri Jan 28, 2005 5:43 pm

What a wonderful story. Thanks for sharing.
"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher...You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse." C. S. Lewis