Meet Peter Vegso, publisher of the popular “Chicken Soup for the Souls” series of books — and the winningest horse owner in Virginia Derby history. His powerhouse trio of homebred horses — Orchard Park, Silver Tree and Go Between — captured Virginia’s 3-year-old turf showcase at Colonial Downs in 2002, 2003 & 2006 respectively. Legendary trainer Bill Mott conditioned all three. Edgar Prado rode the first two to victory and Garrett Gomez was up for the latter. The 22ndedition of that race — now called the Old Dominion Derby — will be contested this Saturday at the New Kent track as the final event of a stakes-filled 10-race card. First post is 12 Noon.   

Vegso still has fond memories of Colonial Downs and that string of success. “I loved it. It’s a great track and I had a great time there obviously in terms of winning. I have so many wonderful memories.  Those three horses, they were three goodies and they all loved grass. I’ve always wanted to win the Triple Crown, and I feel like I’ve already won it in Virginia.”

Orchard Park is named after the town in Western New York where the Buffalo Bills football stadium is based. “I was up there on business and remember driving past the stadium and I just liked the name of the town. Orchard Park kicked off my run. He was special. He was one of my first ones that did really well. I was pretty excited about going to the Virginia Derby. He loved the grass and he loved coming from behind. And it was just the beginning of a good time.”

The son of Hennessy finished his career with six wins and purse earnings of $669,722. The Virginia Derby, which then had a purse of $500,000, capped off Orchard Park’s career.

Silver Tree, also a Hennessy horse, is named after a ski resort Vegso used to frequent. He accumulated 14 wins — six from graded stakes including the Fourstardave Handicap — and bankrolled over $1.7 million. “He is still at the farm enjoying life,” Vegso said. “He was a goodie and we had a great time with him.” 

“Go Between was an incredible horse that had his own unique running style,” said Vegso. “He let them hang out and then he’d come strong at the end and win by a nose. He’d get you excited every single time, including the Virginia Derby. He was an incredible horse.” When Go Between crossed first in the 2006 Virginia Derby, the purse was $1 million and the stakes had risen to a Grade 2 level.

After finshing fifth in the 2008 Breeders’ Cup Classic — which was preceded by a Grade 1 win in Del Mar’s Pacific Classic —  Go Between died after a workout in January, 2009. “If he hadn’t have died, he’d have won the Breeders’ Cup that year,” added Vegso. “He loved artificial turf and would have thrived at Santa Anita in November.” 

A son of Point Given, Go Between ranked sixth in earnings of all horses that competed in 2008. He finished his career with eight wins from 22 starts and earnings of over $2.9 million.   

Asked if breeding all three of his Derby winners added any special meaning to the victories at Colonial Downs, Vegso replied, “I don’t think so. Winning a race like that, you can’t describe it. It’s like the best drug in the world, ever. I mean you feel like you’re in heaven. It’s just the greatest feeling when you win a race of that caliber. It’s indescribable.”   

Vegso’s farm is Ocala, Florida and over the years, his horses have made over 2,500 starts. He got involved in the business in 1988 when he and buddy bought a five percent share in a group of horses and one turned into a nice filly. “I just started moving up and getting more involved from that point. I started buying my own horses and bought the farm in 1993. We still breed, we train and we race. We haven’t had any great luck in a bit. It’s hard because you never know when luck is coming, when a horse is really going to do it. Horses that win these Grade 1 races really want to do it. They enjoy it. I keep looking for one. I want to do it. I love horses and I love being at the farm. It’s still my favorite place to be.”

“Written by Chris McGrath for the Thoroughbred Daily News, originally posted on September 2nd, 2025.”

There are decades where nothing happens,” said Lenin. “And there are weeks when decades happen.” By the notoriously slow-burning standards of Thoroughbred breeding, however, for Amy Moore it has felt more like a decade when centuries have happened.

The way it began, in a sprint maiden at Saratoga on 16 August 2015, could hardly have been less auspicious. The previous September, as she prepared to surface from a 30-year immersion in employee benefits law in Washington D.C., Moore had bought a Blame filly at Keeneland. The idea was that someday this would be the first broodmare on the little Virginia farm she had promised herself in retirement.

Working up to this debut, the filly had actually been showing plenty of ability–enough to start second favorite. She finished tailed off. Moore was mortified, felt like slinking away from the racetrack “with a paper bag over my head.” What a waste of $170,000.

Scroll forward 10 years, to the day: 16 August 2025. Same racetrack, another sprint maiden over the dirt. It’s Our Time (Not This Time) wins with preposterous ease, by 17 3/4 lengths, melting the stopwatch even so. Where did this monster come from? Everyone checks the card. Breeder: South Gate Farm, Virginia. Amy Moore! Surely she hasn’t done it again?

For that Blame filly, of course, has since become celebrated as Queen Caroline. Winner of five stakes in Moore’s colors, after switching to turf, she duly arrived on the 126-acre farm at Millwood in 2019 as one of just two mares in the founding band. She had been sent to Violence, the first mating Moore ever arranged.

The resulting colt, Forte, won the GI Hopeful Stakes days before Queen Caroline’s second foal, a colt by Uncle Mo, appeared at the September Sale. He duly made $850,000, while Forte proceeded to confirm himself champion juvenile at the Breeders’ Cup.

Just about the only thing that had gone awry was that Queen Caroline had lost a Not This Time foal that spring. But now that Moore had funds, she could return to Keeneland in November for an in-foal mare to fill that void. And, in fact, one of the things that put triple stakes winner Shea D Summer (Summer Front) top of her shortlist, at $260,000, was the fact that she happened to be carrying a first foal by none other than Not This Time.

“I thought he was really an up-and-coming stallion,” Moore recalls. “And also a good match for this mare. She’s a compact, sprinter type, 15.3hh, and Not This Time is a taller, stronger, scopier horse. I thought they’d complement each other well. And Shea D Summer met all my criteria. Number one, for me: a mare has to have raced successfully. I know a lot of people do have success with unraced mares, but a small program like mine can’t be discovering whether or not they’d have had ability if only they’d been sound. She was versatile, too: she won on a fast dirt track, and on a wet dirt track; she finished second on turf. And she was also a young, attractive mare.”

She had blood, too: out of an Empire Maker half-sister to the dam of one champion juvenile, Air Force Blue (War Front), while the next dam is sister to another in Flanders (Seeking the Gold).

Shea D Summer followed what has become standard procedure for Moore: sent into the trusted care of Patricia Ramey at nearby Upperville, where she delivered a colt; then to Kentucky, along with her foal, to be covered by Bolt d’Oro; and then back to South Gate.

Amy Moore with Shea D Summer | Sara Gordon

“The colt was very attractive and well-balanced,” Moore recalls. “And had his mother’s mind. She’s a very calm, sensible, pleasant mare and her foals have so far had her temperament, which is a big plus. We swim yearlings, as part of our program to prepare them for the sale, and he was a good swimmer. He was just no trouble, always did what was asked.”

Also as usual, the colt entered John Stuart’s consignment for the 2024 September Sale. His Bluegrass Thoroughbred Services had been among several agencies tried by Moore, when first cutting her teeth with a few weanling pinhooks. “And he was the one that stood out,” Moore explains. “Not just for his very candid advice, but also for providing a lot of help besides selling horses. He would come from Kentucky to Virginia to see how my sales yearlings were coming along, and give me advice about how to prepare them. We’ve just had a good working relationship all the way along, so over time I’ve consolidated my business with John and his son Sandy.”

Gratifyingly, the Not This Time colt cleared the investment in his dam straight off, realizing $425,000 from Elza Mitchum.

“I was very pleased by that,” Moore says. “Like his mother, he’s not a big horse. When he went to the sale, he was just a respectable size, certainly not a great big yearling. But I kind of like a smaller horse. I think they’re sounder and come to hand more quickly.”

This one has proved a case in point for Tom Amoss.

“I keep tabs on them by following their workouts, and he was working very well,” Moore says. “In fact he worked a bullet at Saratoga, before that first start, so I actually thought he should have been shorter odds. It looked like he could run.”

In the event, it turned out that It’s Our Time could fly. Safe to say that his half-sister by Bolt d’Oro would have been promoted from Hip 1722 if the catalogue for next week’s September Sale were compiled now.

“She’s a very nice filly,” Moore affirms. “She looks a good bit like him: on the smaller side, just as he was, so someone’s got to be willing not to insist on a 16-hand yearling. But she has that same temperament, too, which I think stands them in good stead.”

Incredibly, Moore has produced Forte and now It’s Our Time from just nine foals of racing age–plus a third ‘TDN Rising Star‘ in Crimson Light (City of Light). For all the help she values, from the Stuarts and others, she’s plainly bringing something pretty special to the equation herself. Not that there’s anything extraordinary in her grounding: plenty of others have shown ponies and hunters as kids, while she is reliably self-deprecating about her principal attribute showing yearlings in her youth. (“I was popular because I’m short,” she says. “I could make a small horse look bigger.”) Perhaps, then, the secret is the mentoring she received from Jim and Faye Little, who had a stable locally in North Carolina, where Moore grew up, before moving up to Washington and getting into Thoroughbred pinhooking.

“Jim was a track coach,” she explains. “And I do think that experience helped him. He just had a very good eye for an athlete, horse or human. In each case, I think it’s more about the way they move than how they’re put together; about how the parts work together as a whole. I definitely learned a lot from Jim about conformation, about picking out the athlete.”

Bizarrely, those first nine foals have all been colts. This time, however, the three she is sending to the September Sale are all fillies.

“So this is the first time the question has arisen, whether I should keep a homebred filly as a future broodmare,” Moore says. “And I decided that the best thing to do is send them to the sale, see how they do in the market, and if they don’t bring a price that I think appropriate, then I’ll keep and race them.”

The other pair are both out of mares acquired at the 2023 Keeneland November Sale after the pragmatic if painful decision to cash out Queen Caroline, in foal to Flightline, for $3 million to John Stewart’s Resolute Farm. Lorena (Souper Speedy) was a five-time stakes winner round Woodbine and cost $160,000 in foal to Essential Quality; Strong Beauty (Overanalyze), whose black type score came among Louisiana-breds, carried a Jackie’s Warrior foal at $110,000. The resulting fillies are catalogued as Hips 805 (“big, strong, robust”) and 1751 (“smaller but very well made, quite flashy and attractive”) respectively.

Bolt d’Oro yearling filly out of Shea D Summer at South Gate Farm | Sara Gordon

Even now, there are only eight mares at South Gate and that is evidently as many as Moore intends to accommodate. She never planned to change the world, coming here: it was just a reward that had kept her going through all those years behind a desk.

“I enjoyed practicing law, but I was practicing at a level of intensity that didn’t admit many other activities,” she reflects. “When I retired, I wanted to have some land. I’d been living in the city for 30 years and wanted to be a farmer. And since horses were what I knew, horses were what I would farm.”

But knowing them as she did, didn’t some part of her fear that she had used up all her luck in one go, with Queen Caroline? Could she seriously hope for lightning to strike a second time?

“Well, I figured I could live at a lower level of good luck!” Moore replies. “I really enjoy the farm life. Racing is fun, also, but I think I’m more of a breeder and raiser than I am a racer of horses. I’m delighted when they have success for somebody else. I certainly didn’t expect to have another potential Forte quite so soon, but let’s see where he goes from here. I’m just very happy that he has started as well as he has.”

So much, after all, depends on the interventions of fate–as she found even finding this farm.

“I looked at a lot of places up and down Loudoun County,” she recalls. “But they were all house and no barn. You’d have some huge mansion, many times larger than I needed or wanted, and then a low dark barn and no fencing. But when I was looking at yearlings in 2014, and bought Queen Caroline, I needed someone to vet them for me and was recommended Dr. [E.C. ‘Pug’] Hart. And when I was trying to find a farm, down the line, it turned out that Pug and Susie were moving. So I came and looked at their place and it was perfect: a covered free walker, a horse swimming pond, lots of double-fence paddocks. So I was lucky there, too.”

So the guy who vetted Queen Caroline also ended up providing her pasture. But if Moore appears to have some kind of Midas touch, nor has she ever lost sight of what first animated the whole project. That passion for the horse, dating back to her girlhood, means that Moore essentially derives as much gratification from the quieter, daily joys of farm life as from showstoppers at the sales.

“I had a colt that I couldn’t sell because of some X-ray issues, so I raced him locally,” she says. “He started out last year at Colonial Downs, but it was like he thought the other horses must be afraid of something. He didn’t want to get anywhere near whatever was chasing them, and kept back in some other county! But then he ran in a $12,500 maiden claimer at Laurel and battled the whole length of the stretch to get his nose in front just on the wire. That was a tremendously exciting moment. And you can get that, lower down the scale. There’s a lot of satisfaction every day, just being in a beautiful place and surrounded by beautiful animals.

“I’ve been very lucky. But I know that as fast as you can go from the bottom of the valley to the top of the mountain, you can find yourself going back down even faster. Luck counts for a lot in the horse business, and I’ve certainly been very fortunate. But I have greatly enjoyed my good fortune.”

Saturday’s card at Colonial Downs featured a pair of Virginia-bred, -sired or -certified handicaps, with Ken Ramsey’s 6-year-old gelding Whenigettoheaven taking the $100,000 Meadow Stable and The Estate of R. Larry Johnson’s mare Hollywood Walk defending her crown in the $100,000 Camptown.

Trained by Nolan Ramsey and ridden by J.G. Torrealba, Whenigettoheaven went straight to the front in the Meadow Stable, setting the pace under pressure from odds-on favorite Determined Kingdom. After being headed in mid-stretch, Whenigettoheaven dug back in, regained the lead and held off the late surge of Going Up by a head. Defending champion Determined Kingdom held third.

Whenigettoheaven covered 5½ furlongs on turf in 1:01.74 and paid $11.00, $4.60 and $2.40.

Bred in Maryland by R. Larry Johnson, the Virginia-certified gelding now owns a record of 29-7-5-8 with $441,890 in earnings.

Hollywood Walk’s second straight Camptown title also came in dramatic fashion. Tracking leader Bosserati from mid-pack, she rallied up the rail in the stretch and put her head down just in time to hold off Chickahominy. Stablemate Noquestionaboutit finished third.

Trained by Mike Trombetta and piloted by Mychel Sanchez, Hollywood Walk completed 5½ furlongs on turf in 1:02.97. Sent off as the 4-5 favorite, she paid $3.60, $2.60 and $2.10.

Fresh off a victory in the open-company Andy Guest Stakes on the Arlington Million undercard, Hollywood Walk now boasts consecutive stakes wins. Bred in Maryland by R. Larry Johnson, the Virginia-certified 6-year-old mare has a career line of 27-7-4-8 with $542,731 in earnings.

Trainer Michelle Lovell confirmed that JAL Racing’s Doncho, who earlier this month set a world record going 5½ furlongs on turf, will be entering the $150,000 Da Hoss Stakes on Old Dominion Derby Day at Colonial Downs. Doncho had also been entered in Sunday’s Disco Partner Stakes at Saratoga but will scratch from that race.

“The Da Hoss was the original plan,” Lovell said. “It’s better spacing, four weeks after his race at Ellis, and four weeks until the Woodford at Keeneland, assuming everything works out.”

Facing allowance company on Aug. 8 at Ellis Park, Doncho led throughout and stopped the clock in :59.75, breaking the previous world record of :59.80 set by Cogburn in 2024.

“I just love the way he did it,” Lovell said. “The length of his stride, how smoothly he traveled. It was great. We weren’t planning on going to the lead. He was gliding around there beautifully. “He ran a really good race, but he worked on Monday like it didn’t take anything out of him. He’s doing fantastic. He’s just beautiful. After Just Might retired, he’s my new musclehead.”

Before the record-setting score, all Doncho’s success had come on dirt. In all, the 4-year-old gelding has four wins from eight starts, including the 2024 Gold Fever Stakes at Belmont Park.

Lovell previously won the 2021 Da Hoss with Just Might, who led all Thoroughbreds that year with seven stakes victories.

The Da Hoss Stakes is one of six turf stakes scheduled for Old Dominion Derby Day on Saturday, Sept. 6. The card features $1.3 million in total purses, headlined by the Grade 3, $500,000 Old Dominion Derby. Other stakes include the $250,000 Old Dominion Oaks (Listed), $150,000 Colonial Cup, $125,000 Rosie’s Stakes (sponsored by Exacta Systems), and the $125,000 Kitten’s Joy.

Post time for Old Dominion Derby Day is set for noon ET. Fields will be drawn Saturday, Aug. 30.

Congratulations to Quest Realty’s Amrit who took top honors in the $40,000 Virginia Breeder’s Fund 2025 Yearling Futurity held August 24 at the Warrenton Horse Show Grounds. Winner of the Virginia-Bred/Sired colt & gelding class, Amrit advanced to the final round — as did the top two finishers from four different classes that morning — and was named Grand Champion by judge Cary Frommer. The champ is by Oscar Performance out of Jumpin’ Nancy by Jump Start. Interestingly, this marked the second straight year the Futurity Grand Champion was out of Jumpin’ Nancy — the 2024 winner was Paynted By Nancy.

Reserve Champion honors went to Althea Richards’ Snapadoodle who was runner-up in the Virginia-Bred/Sired fillies category earlier that morning. She is by Army Mule out of For Finery by Not For Love.       

The biggest field of competitors came from Snapadoodle’s class where a total of 13 fillies entered. The winner was South Gate Farm’s Un-named dark bown filly by Essential Quality out of Lorena by Souper Speedy. Third behind Snapadoodle was another from Any Moore’s South Gate Farm — an Un-named bay by Jackie’s Warrior out of Strong Beauty by Overanalyze. Fourth place went to Becky Lavin’s Un-named gray by Blofeld out of Falsehood by Awesome Again, followed by Morgan’s Ford Farm’s Un-named bay by Omaha Beach out of Florida Fuego by Kantharos, Lynn Ashby’s Shy Ice Tea by Frosted out of Shifra Magician by Street Magician, James Day/Daybreak Stables’ Un-named bay by Corniche out of Callipepla by Yes It’s True, and Morgan’s Ford Farm’s Un-named dark brown by Upstart out of Crabcakes by Great Notion. 

The balance of the Virginia-Bred/Sired Colt & Gelding finishers in order behind Amrit was Mojallali Stables’ Unrelenting U by Frosted out of Unshakable U by Bodemeister, Doug Daniels’ chestnut Sandbar Island by Kantharos out of Dialed Me Perfect by Dialed In, Sugarland Equine Etiquette’s Un-named dark brown by Rock Your World out of Hopeful Angel by Majestic Warrior, and Darlene Bowlin’s Blow Smoke by Blofeld out of Dixie Dazzle.

Virginia-Certified classes for resident yearlings have been added to the program in recent years. In this year’s colt & gelding category, owner Pat Neusch and breeder Forever Young Racing’s The Ridd was awarded first place. The chestnut is by By My Standards out of Irish Pharoah by American Pharoah. Next was DMC Racing Stables & Holly House Farm’s Derry Walls who was bred by James Steele. The runner-up is by Gormley out of Irish Gal by Cape Blanco. The rest of the field is all owned by Sugarland Equine Etiquette — an Un-named bay by Japanese-bred Yoshida out of Signify by Speightstown, an Un-named brown by Peace and Justice out of Map of America by Liam’s Map, and Preux Chevalier by Take Charge Indy out of Potiche by Dixie Union. The respective breeders of the trio include Winstar Farm, Sugarland Equine/Matty Thoroughbreds, and Pia Kirkham.

Chad Carter’s Un-named bay by McKinzie out of Light the Causeway by Giant’s Causeway took top honors in the Virginia-Certified Fillies class while Sugarland’s Un-named dark brown by Tonalist out of Adopted Kingdom by Animal Kingdom was second. The rest of the field respectively included Avram Freeberg’s Un-named brown by Nashville out of Senorita Guzman by Constitution, Sugarland’s Un-named chestnut by Uncle Lino out of La Duquesa by Poseidon’s Warrior, and Sugarland’s Un-named bay by Improbable out of North Broadway by Quality Road. The breeders of third thru fifth place finishers include Everything’s Cricket Racing, Joni Fontana and Winstar Farm.  

A total of 28 yearlings competed between the four classes and $30,000 in prize money was distributed — $7,500 per class. In addition, separate $5,000 bonus pools will be awarded after the participants’ three-year-old racing seasons in both the Virginia-Bred/Sired category and the Virginia-Certified category. The top four, based solely on earnings to that point, will share a percentage of their respective pool. Grooms of the category winners and Grand/Reserve champion horses received $100 each.