Peppers Pride

Thoroughbred racehorse infobox
horsename = Peppers Pride


caption =
sire = Desert God
grandsire = Fappiano
dam = Lady Pepper
damsire = Chili Pepper Pie
sex = Mare
foaled = 2003
country = USA flagicon|USA
colour = Dark Bay/Brown
breeder = Joe Allen
owner = Joe Allen
trainer = Joel Marr
record = 17 Starts: 17 – 0 - 0
earnings= $884,585
race = New Mexico Cup Juvenile Fillies Stakes (2005)
Rio Grande Senorita Futurity (2005)
New Mexico Cup Championship Fillies Stakes (2006)
La Senora Handicap (2006)
La Coneja Handicap (2006)
Sydney Valentini Handicap (2007, 2008)
New Mexico Cup Fillies and Mares Championship Stakes (2006, 2007)
Lincoln Handicap (2007)
New Mexico Racing Commission Handicap (2007)
Russell & Helen Foutz Distaff Handicap for New Mexico breds (2008
honours = New Mexico-Bred Champion Older Mare (2007)
One of only 5 Thoroughbred racehorses to win 16 consecutive races.
The only Thoroughbred racehorse to win 17 consecutive races.
updated= October 4, 2008

Peppers Pride (b. March 24, 2003 in New Mexico), is a multiple stakes winning American Thoroughbred race horse. At the age of five, and following in the hoofprints of Citation, Cigar, Mister Frisky (going into the 1990 Kentucky Derby with this record) and Hallowed Dreams (running only against Louisiana-breds), she was the fifth thoroughbred to win 16 North American races in a row. The record of consecutive races won is considered one of racing’s greatest achievements. On October 4, 2008, she entered the record books as the first and only race horse to win 17 consecutive North American races. She has also never been defeated.

Her dam is the Chili Pepper Pie mare Lady Pepper who placed in the 1990 Bluebonnet Stakes.

As of October, 2008, the undefeated Peppers Pride (her grandsire the winning Fappiano by the influential stallion Mr. Prospector), has competed only in her birth state, New Mexico, always against New Mexico breds and has been ridden by the same jockey, Carlos Madeira, in every one of her 17 starts and 17 wins. Beginning in July of 2005, trained by Joel Marr, and under increasing weight, Pepper’s Pride has so far won from five and a half furlongs to one mile, twelve times in stakes company, and always against fillies. Peppers Pride first showed her worth at two, making a four-wide rally on the turn to win the New Mexico Classic Cup Juvenile Fillies. This is the premier race for two-year-old females during New Mexico Cup day.

Her owner/breeder, Joe Allen of Abilene, Texas, said: “"We know that this filly is not Citation or Cigar," Allen said. "We haven't been the ones to compare her to those horses. We're just glad to have her."

She was nearly beaten in 2006 running in a prep allowance race when she got up by only a nose after a late run, but went on to win that year's New Mexico Cup Championship for Fillies by a length as the 11-10 favorite.

Called the “Queen of New Mexico Racing,” Peppers Pride was expected to try for her seventeenth win in her seventeenth start on July 27th, 2008 in the $55,000 Lincoln Handicap at Ruidoso Downs, thereby beating the modern standing record. The Lincoln Handicap is a restricted six furlong race which the mare won in 2007 by by one and three-quarters lengths. Pepper's Pride would have been the 127-pound top weight, carrying at least 11 pounds more than any other horse entered. July 27th was her owner's 62nd birthday. But the track was inundated with rain from Hurricane Dolly just before the date. In a six-furlong allowance race at Zia Park on October 4, 2008, she succeeded in her attempt to set the record for consecutive wins. Her record over the Hobbs oval at Zia is now six-for-six. After this, Peppers Pride is pointed once again to the New Mexico Cup Championship for Fillies and Mares so long as she's in good order after her allowance race. New Mexico Cup day is November 9, 2008, and the $2 million in purses makes that program the richest day for any state-bred racing program.

Allen says he is planning on retiring his mare at the end of 2008. "She’s smart, and you can rate her; you can really do anything with her,” Allen said. “She just seems like she wants to win. She’s a wonderful mare. We would love to retire her undefeated, but more than anything else, we want to retire her sound; she’s been so good to us. We’ve had a little criticism for not running her in open company and not running her in this or that and all this other stuff. But Joel Marr said it best, ‘If it’s so easy, I’m surprised there haven’t been 100 of them like her.’”

Sharing the old record of 16 consecutive wins is a Paint horse out of Oklahoma called Got Country Grip. Paint Horses are sprinters, no turns, just a flat out run for the wire.

References

* [http://www.pedigreequery.com/peppers+pride Pepper’s Pride, pedigree, stats, and photo]
* [http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/horse/columns/story?id=3310294 National opinion about Pepper’s Pride]