Leslie's Lady hits the mark again as Mendelssohn romps home in UAE Derby

There was plenty to recommend Leslie's Lady when she came on to the market as part of the estate of James T. Hines Jr at Keeneland in November 2006. Anyone with a respect for soundness and durability in the thoroughbred would have appreciated her page, which featured 24-time winner Malcoha and ten-time winner Bucking Bird, both stakes performers at their peak, under her granddam. Such assets had also manifested themselves in Leslie’s Lady, a veteran of 28 starts whose five wins had included the Listed Hoosier Debutante Stakes at Hoosier Park.

On the other hand, she was a daughter of the nondescript Clever Trick stallion Tricky Creek and although her second dam One Last Bird was a half-sister to Grade 1 winner Roanoke, there were no Graded stakes winners under the first two dams. Indeed, she had sold for only $8,000 when first offered in 1997 as a short yearling.

It took a bid of $100,000 for Fred and Nancy Mitchell's Clarkland Farm to secure Leslie's Lady, making her just one of only two horses by Tricky Creek, then in the twilight of his stud career in New Mexico, to sell for six figures at Keeneland over a 17-year period.