Terlingua

Terlingua (February 7, 1976 – April 29, 2008) was an American thoroughbred bred in Kentucky by Tom Gentry. She was a chestnut filly from the second crop of Triple Crown winner Secretariat. Terlingua was out of a Crimson Satan mare, Crimson Saint, who was a graded stakes winner as well as a very successful broodmare. Besides Terlingua, Crimson Saint produced 1990 Ireland Champion 3yr-old and European Champion 3yr-old Miler Royal Academy and the grade one stakes winner (full brother) Pancho Villa along with four other winners, one of which was a minor stakes winner with another that was stakes placed. Terlingua was a record-breaking stakes winner, and was also the dam of the two-time leading sire in North America, Storm Cat. Through him and Littleprincessemma, she was the great-great-grandam of 2015 U.S. Triple Crown winner American Pharoah. Terlingua was known as The Crown Princess. Race career Terlingua was purchased by her trainer, Hall of Famer D. Wayne Lukas, as a yearling in 1977 for $275,000 on behalf of L. R. French, who later partnered with Barry Beal. Expected to be a winner, she lived up to the expectations. Her first race was a stakes at Hollywood Park. Terlingua won the Nursery Stakes by four and a half lengths and broke the stakes record. She then won the grade II Hollywood Lassie Stakes by three and a half lengths before she challenged males in the Hollywood Juvenile Championship, which she won by two and a half lengths. In her next start, she defeated fillies in the Del Mar Debutante by nine lengths. Talk of her replicating her father's Triple Crown sweep soon started. This, however, was not the case when Terlingua returned to the track as a 3-year-old, because she never regained her 2-year-old form. She did win two stakes at age 3, her 3yo debut Santa Ynez and 3yo finale Las Flores, while breaking the stakes record--she lost 5 in a row between these two stakes wins, and one more at age 4. She also broke one more stake record at 4, in the third running of the La Brea @ 7 furlongs, before she was retired at the end of that season to Overbrook Farms following an injury to her right front knee. Terlingua brought Lukas so much attention he made the decision to become a full-time thoroughbred trainer.