Former 'shake' claim Vasilika headlines Yellow Ribbon

The shake happened Feb. 11, 2018, right after the first race at Santa Anita.

The reverberations of it have been felt in Arcadia, Calif., and San Diego 14 times since, and figure to be again tomorrow.

No, not the initial ground-moving tremor of an earthquake and aftershocks.

The procedure, known as the “shake” in racetrack parlance, is for determining the new owner and trainer when there is more than one seeking to acquire a horse from a claiming race.

Insert numbered marbles, assigned to each participating party, in a painted-over bottle.

Shake.

Remove one and award the horse to the person with the winning number.

Shakes are common occurrences.

But few prove as consequential as the one on Feb. 11, 2018 because it involved a 4-year-old filly named Vasilika in a $40,000 claimer.

The Kentucky-bred daughter of Skipshot had recorded four wins in 17 starts and had changed owners three times via the claim entering the one-mile turf race, which she won.

Hall of Fame trainer Jerry Hollendorfer won the shake for Vasilika on a claim filed on behalf of himself, longtime partner George Todaro and others.

In early March, Vasilika ran second in an allowance in her first start for Hollendorfer then started a streak of eight straight wins, from the allowance to Grade I stakes levels.

Her 2018 campaign ended with a fourth-place finish in the Matriarch (G1) here in December.

But she has come back to go 4-for-4 in stakes in 2019 capped by the Gamely (G1) in May at Santa Anita.

Vasilika will seek to make it five straight in the $200,000 Yellow Ribbon Stakes (G2) on Saturday and add to an earnings total that is now more than $1.3 million.

Of that, $1,209,528 has been accumulated since being claimed.

Do the trainers who lost out on Vasilika ever think “She could have been mine?”

“I think it to myself, and I say it to everyone around me every time she runs and especially every time she wins,” Jeff Mullins said Friday morning. “And she wins a lot.”

Word in the stable area was that it was a six-way shake for Vasilika.

Hollendorfer assistant Dan Ward recalled that there were four claims put in, two by Hollendorfer and two by Bill Spawr, who confirmed his two and remembered Mullins being in the mix.

Mullins said he put in one claim.

Both Spawr and Mullins have raised horses from the claiming ranks – acquired via solo bids or via shake wins – to stakes levels.

Spawr’s successes include Exchange, Sensational Star, Restage, My Sonny Boy and Skye Diamonds.

Mullins’ most notable claim was Choctaw Nation.

They can be commended for seeing the potential that few others did.

Vasilika had been claimed twice for $25,000 and once for $32,000 while running in Florida and New York before shipping in for her Feb. 11 California debut.

“Roddy Valente, who owned her back east, (and had her claimed away for $32,000) tipped me off that she would be a good claim, and in the 15 minutes before the race when we got to look at her, she looked beautiful,” Spawr said. “Roddy was right about her being a good horse, but wrong to let her go.”

Mullins didn’t require any outside information.

“She was stabled right across from my barn and you could see, just by the look of her, that she might turn out to be pretty good,” Mullins said.

That she has.

The field for the Yellow Ribbon was diminished by one with the Friday scratch of Causeforcommotion.

The field from the rail: Beau Recall (Drayden Van Dyke, 7-2), Youngest Daughter (Brice Blanc, 20-1), Storm the Hill (Rafael Bejarano, 5-1), Vasilika (Julien Leparoux, 7-5), Lemoona (Mario Gutierrez, 12-1), Valedictorian (Carlos Hernandez, 6-1), Toinette (Ruben Fuentes, 6-1) and Elysea’s World (Joe Talamo, 12-1).

The Yellow Ribbon goes as the eighth on a 10-race card.