Miss Behaviour wins the Miss Preakness. Photo by Laurie Asseo.
Miss Behaviour, the Pennsylvania-bred Jump Start filly who burst on the racing scene with three straight wins, including one in the 2013 Grade 2 Matron, to start her career, has been retired, trainer Phil Schoenthal said on Twitter. She reportedly had a suspensory ligament injury.
Miss Behaviour has been retired and booked to Speightstown. Progress in her rehab over 4 months hasn’t gone as hoped. @WinStarFarm #dreambig
— Phil Schoenthal (@PhilSchoenthal) February 26, 2015
Bred and owned by Cal MacWilliam and Neil Teitelbaum, Miss Behaviour went on to win five of 12 career starts and earn $790,834. In her three-year-old season, she added a second graded stakes victory, in the Grade 3 Charles Town Oaks, which she won by nearly 10 lengths, and placed in three other graded events, including the Grade 1 Test at Saratoga.
Schoenthal trained her, first at the Bowie Training Center and later at Laurel Park. She was the star of his small barn, earning five of his 14 wins last year, with her $548,000 in 2014 earnings accounting for roughly half of the barn’s purse revenue.
She was also a truly regional horse: bred in Pennsylvania, by a Pennsylvania sire out of a New Jersey-bred mare (Successful Romance, by Successful Appeal), and based in Maryland. What’s more, she earned victories at four different mid-Atlantic tracks: Parx Racing, where she broke her maiden; Monmouth Park (the Sorority Stakes); Pimlico (Miss Preakness Stakes) and Charles Town.
Miss Behaviour was just 3-1 at post time when she won the Matron. But that didn’t stop Schoenthal from wondering whether he was in the right place.
“You can’t help but have a little David and Goliath feeling,” he told Teresa Genaro in a story on The Racing Biz. “You look down the shedrow, you see Pletcher, you see Zito, you see Dutrow—the guys you grow up watching on TV. Here I am with my modestly bred filly, and they’ve got horses that cost $300,000.
“You struggle to feel like you belong a little bit, but thank goodness they actually run the race instead of handing out the money at the entry box.”
Under jockey Garry Cruise, she earned a one-length victory over the favorite: Todd Pletcher trainee Sweet Whiskey.
Miss Behaviour finished 2014 as the second-ranked horse in the Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred/The Racing Biz Top Midlantic-bred Poll.
