TEMECULA, Calif. (July 5, 2016) — California-bred Sky Jack, a millionaire Grade I winner, passed away Tuesday. He was 20.
The gray gelded son of Jaklin Klugman, owned and bred by Rene and Margie Lambert, won the California Cup Classic and Grade III Native Diver Handicap in 2000 before needing more than a year off with knee problems and colic.
He returned in 2002 to win the Grade I Hollywood Gold Cup and Grade II Mervyn LeRoy, before going back on the shelf. He finished his career with a win in the Grade III Longacres Mile in 2003, setting a track record of 1:33, but was retired on the eve of taking another shot at the Cal Cup Classic.
“He was training very well and when we entered him, we had every expectation he would run another big race,” trainer Doug O’Neill told California Thoroughbred. “But the morning before the race, he came back from a routine gallop with some soreness. Not only did we have to scratch him, but we decided the horse had done enough and retired him on the spot. Maybe he could have come back with more time off, and maybe he could have handled another surgery. But we didn’t want to put him through any more.”
Sky Jack’s resumé shows earnings of $1,115,127, five stakes victories—and the same number of surgeries, three for bone chips in a chronically unsound right knee, and two for colic, a serious disorder which nearly took his life and which cost him a large portion of his intestine.
“He kept coming back for more after each surgery, against all the odds,” recalled Cathy Lambert, the daughter-in-law of Sky Jack’s breeders. “We can only imagine what Sky Jack might have been able to do if he had stayed sound.”
Sky Jack won the Native Diver by seven lengths in a quality field that included Cal-bred graded stakes winner Grey Memo. His winning time of 1:46.81 earned him a Beyer Speed Figure of 122, the highest in the country that year. When Laffit Pincay got off his back, he pronounced Sky Jack “the best horse in the country.”
O’Neill was in awe. “There couldn’t have been many horses who could have done what he did that day,” the trainer said. “That race stamped him as an amazing horse. Sky Jack was my first very good horse. He gave me the confidence that I could train a good horse. That’s why his win in the Gold Cup meant so much to me.”