Issue link: http://nytbreeders.epubxp.com/i/127475
sunny days ahead Dawn), won 14 races, including stakes at Monmouth and Hialeah. "My dad said that summer, when she'd won her first couple of races, 'Why don't we buy some horses together?' and I said, 'Are you sure you're feeling alright?' That was 1988, 25 years ago." In the New York City borough of Queens, the name Kupferberg is familiar to more than just racing fans. In 2006, 93-year-old Max donated $10 million to his alma mater, Queens College, for the Kupferberg Center for the Arts. A physicist who worked with his twin brother on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, N.M., Max and three of his brothers started Kepco, an international company specializing in electrical equipment and based in Flushing, Queens. Saul, who is Kepco's vice president of sales and marketing, shares his father's local philanthropic bent; he serves on the Arts Advisory Board at Queens College and on the board of the Queens Botanical Garden. The father-and-son team currently have nine horses in training with Parisella and a half dozen more at Finger Lakes with Sunny Desert winning the March 30 Broadway Stakes trainer Michael Ferraro. They also have five broodmares at Stonebridge Farm While many people get hooked on near Gansevoort, N.Y., near Sararaces when their parents bring them toga, though they get most of their to the track, it happened the other horses through claiming and at sales, way around for the Kupferbergs. where, according to Saul, they'll look "My dad wasn't interested in racfor horses "in the high five figures." ing at all when I was kid," recalled All of their horses, he said, are New Saul. "I became interested by watchYork-breds. Their best horse was ing racing on television, and I got Copper Mount, winner of the 1994 started in racing with a partner. Then Albany Handicap at Saratoga, but the we had the worst thing happen," he "best horse" title now clearly belongs said with a laugh. to Sunny Desert. "We got lucky with our first horse." As grateful as they are for their That horse, the filly Great Pass stakes-winning filly, her connections (Great Prospector—Via, by Cloudy AdAM CogliANese/NYRA tory her closest since a nose win in the New York Stallion Series Park Avenue Division last May at Belmont Park. Out of the Louis Quatorze mare Hoping for Sun, Sunny Desert was purchased as a weanling at the Ocala Breeders' Sales Co.'s October mixed sale in 2009 for $2,000 by Drs. K.K. and Vilasini D. Jayaraman, owners and breeders of Summer Bird, who won the 2009 Belmont, Shadwell Travers, and Jockey Club Gold Cup (all gr. I). She was bred by Breed of Characters and has earned $421,750, all but $6,750 of it for the Kupferbergs. "She's way better than we'd hoped, and John (Parisella) gets all the credit for that," said Saul. "She's a once-ina-lifetime claim." 32 are hoping for even bigger things from her later this year. In an effort to get her some graded stakes black-type, Parisella and the Kupferbergs entered Sunny Desert in the Top Flight (gr. II) at Aqueduct in March. She finished third but showed enough that this year's plan is to run her in graded stakes in the fall. "The truth of the matter," said Parisella, "is that she had a troubled trip and she should have been second instead of third." So, he said, after the New Yorkbred Showcase Day June 1 at Belmont Park, Sunny Desert will be given a break with an eye on bigger and better races. Not, Kupferberg is quick to add, that he doesn't appreciate the New York-bred program. "We're not trying to claim our way to the Kentucky Derby (gr. I)," Saul joked. "We just want to be reasonably successful on the New York circuit, and the improving purse money in New York has helped a lot. It's an incentive to continue to buy, to stay in the game. We want to race in New York and we want to have New Yorkbreds; it's a big advantage to have them." His biggest advantage at the moment is the New York-bred filly that he had to be persuaded to claim, as Parisella tells it. Describing himself as "a big replay guy," the trainer said that he watched Sunny Desert's second race "over and over." "I saw her check several times and finish with a little bit of a flourish," he said. "I couldn't pick it up the first time, then each time I watched it, I got more and more impressed." Still, he said, "It wasn't an obvious claim, but I talked him into it." Given what Sunny Desert has accomplished, Parisella likely won't have much trouble convincing Kupferberg in the future. "She's trained beautifully and she looks fantastic," said Saul. "She's more than we ever dreamed of." New York Breeder ❙ nytbreeders.org ❙ May 2013