Watching the replay of the first race at Saratoga Race Course July 19, Margaret Davenport and Jon Stillman were almost dazed, overwhelmed by the magnitude of what had just happened.
“This is our first racehorse,” said Davenport. “Oh my God. This is absolutely incredible.”
Davenport and her husband, Stillman, are no strangers to horse racing; for more than 20 years, they’ve been breeding and selling Thoroughbreds and other equine breeds, and they own a farm about a half-hour’s drive from Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
They usually breed to sell, not to race, but something about Shakti made them hold on to her.
“She’s our breakaway horse,” said Davenport. “She showed talent to everyone that worked with her.”
“We thought she really looked the part,” said Stillman, “and we have her dam, and we really wanted to help make her.”
“And we thought we were the people to do it,” said Davenport.
And based on Shakti’s first race, they were absolutely right.
There’s not much to say about the race itself, except that the 2-year-old dark bay filly broke well under jockey Ricardo Santana Jr. and went to the front, and that’s where she stayed, winning by five lengths.
Shakti is by Unified , who was standing at the time at Lane’s End Farm in Kentucky. He has since moved to Lacer at Aztec Equine near Sunset, La.
“He was relatively inexpensive and we thought, we don’t really know that this mare is going to do anything,” said Stillman. “We knew he could put a runner on.”
The dam is She Throws Heat (Honor Code), who had been purchased by Bill Parcells’ August Dawn Farm at the 2018 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Select Yearling Sale. She raced eight times (1-1-2) before being retired with a minor injury.
Stillman and Davenport had seen her race once and kept an eye on her, and when they heard She Throws Heat had been retired to ReRun Thoroughbred Adoption, they approached the farm to inquire about adopting her as a broodmare.
Ordinarily, ReRun doesn’t adopt horses as broodmare prospects but, after an interview process and getting Parcells’ approval, the couple were able to take the filly home to their farm. Shakti is her first foal.
A half sister to Shakti by Early Voting is cataloged as Hip 368 in next month's Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Sale of New York-bred yearlings. She Throws Heat foaled a Taiba filly this year and is in foal to Kingsbarns , who stood the 2025 season for $20,000 at Spendthrift Farm near Lexington.
“Jena has been such a big help for us,” said Stillman, referring to the filly’s trainer Jena Antonucci. “We agonized over who to go with. We want this filly to have a chance, but if she doesn’t have a chance, we’ll do something else. We’ve got other horses like that, and this horse is ours, and she deserves whatever aftercare is appropriate. Jena is all over that, and she has a really humane approach to training.”
Stillman and Davenport own six mares on their own and share ownership in a seventh. Their background is in dressage and hunter-jumpers, and they lived not far from Saratoga, so they decided one day to make a trip to the track. That led to their attending the sales, which led to their buying their first mare.
That purchase took place at the 2014 Fasig-Tipton Fall Mixed Sale, where they paid $1,500 for a Fusaichi Pegasus 6-year-old named High Flying Adore. She’d raced five times for a record of 1-1-1.
“She’s still with us,” said Stillman.
“She was our beginner mare,” said Davenport.
“She has beautiful conformation,” said Stillman. “I had that part down. It took a while for us to figure out all the other ins and outs, which isn’t to say that we’ve got it all figured out yet.”
Maybe not, but a romping maiden special weight debut winner at Saratoga would suggest that they’re well on their way.
