A colt by 2010 Preakness Winner Lookin At Lucky, from the family that produced 2017 Derby runner up Lookin at Lee, Lookwhogotlucky was at the top of our list of horses in Book 4 of the 2020 Keeneland September Yearling Sale. The thousands of horses in Keeneland September are split up into five or six books each year with the earlier books possessing the better bred and conformed yearlings. In Book 4, our acquisition team only had a few colts on the list for the remainder of the auction. This colt was one of them, along with a colt by Connect who was only seven hips later. We happily landed both of them to close out our yearling purchases for that sale.
Lookwhogotlucky entered his race training under the expert eye of Hall of Fame trainer Steve Asmussen in 2021 and ran seven times for MyRacehorse. Just a year into his racing career, however, the Asmussen barn noticed some changes in how Lookwhogotlucky was training andv out of precaution, had X-rays taken. The X-rays revealed that overall, outside of the normal rigors of racing, everything looked fairly good. However, in the left hind fetlock, remodeling was found in the dorsal proximal phalanx (P1) with a small, displaced bone chip. The good news was this was not clinical and would heal with turnout and time out of training.
However, after discussions with Steve’s team, the MyRacehorse team and our partners L and N Racing, the group felt the best thing to do for Lookwhogotlucky was to retire him from racing. The decision was made as a means of protecting the opportunity for Lucky to heal the right way and provide him a second athletic career with no limitations. He was accepted into the New Vocations program, where he stood an amazing chance at finding his next career.
Lookwhogotlucky was adopted by junior rider Anna Tate of North Carolina from New Vocations in 2022. He is now lovingly called “Felix,” as it is the Latin for “Lucky.”
The young pair spent the 11 months following his adoption training to compete in the Retired Racehorse Project’s 2023 Thoroughbred Makeover in the Show Hunters division.
The Retired Racehorse Project, a 501(c)3 charitable organization, created the Thoroughbred Makeover to showcase the trainability and talent of off-track Thoroughbreds. The competition is intended to inspire good trainers to become involved in transitioning these horses to second careers. It is the only national gathering of the organizations, trainers, and farms dedicated to serving these horses when they retire from racing.
Marketed as the “largest Thoroughbred retraining competition in the world for recently-retired ex-racehorses,” the Thoroughbred Makeover is a celebration of the diversity of the Thoroughbred. It brings together professionals, amateurs, juniors and teams alike to the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington once a year to compete in ten disciplines for over $100,000 in prize money!
113 other horse and rider combinations were entered in the Show Hunter division that year, making Anna and Felix’s 18th-place finish even more impressive–especially given it was Anna’s first time at the Makeover and Felix was just over a year off track.
