The horse of your life

He was one of the best trotters the world has seen and went on to become an even better stallion before he died too soon. The story of Ready Cash is a fascinating tale of coincidences, but most of all the story of one of the most legendary trotters ever.

Ready Cash was born May 20, 2005 at breeder Pierre Tebirent’s farm Haras De La Fresniere in La Chapelle-Rainsouin in the Mayenne department of France. However, the story starts much earlier. Originally from Paris, Tebirent did not grow up with horses and became familiar with them while on holiday trips in Normandy. He bought his first trotter, Corail de Lakmee, when he was 19, but sold the horse relatively soon as it was, in his own words, “not particularly talented.” That was clearly an understatement since Corail de Lakmee did not earn a single franc – and instead he bought Dalila L, a relatively good filly trained by Ali Hawas. A few years later Tebirent came into contact with young trainer Philippe Allaire and they developed a lasting friendship. When Tebirent, in the early 1980s, was ready to buy a broodmare, his eyes fell on Ocre et Verte. Allaire, who owned her, had already negotiated a sale with another buyer and instead sold Tebirent her sister Nera for a low price. Using the breeder name “d’Or” for the first years, the first horse Tebirent bred was Regle d’Or by Duc de Vrie out of Nera. This was a good horse who earned just over 70,000 euros in the 80s. The mare Nera would later figure prominently in Ready Cash’s early life, but more on that later.

“You’re nuts“

Tebirent’s first contact with the maternal family who later produced Ready Cash took place in 1984. He was with Allaire at Vincennes when the latter was asked to fill in to drive the filly Oceanide in a race for trainer Bernard Giot. Even though she payed a whopping 45:1 to win, she did in fact get to the finish line first and Allaire was naturally happy with the filly. Tebirent was so enthusiastic that he immediately submitted a bid for the 4-year-old, a bid that was immediately rejected. Jump eight years ahead and Tebirent is browsing through the catalog for the annual yearling auction in Caen. The name “Oceanide” captures his interest, he calls Allaire and they agree to look at her foal together. The inspection was rather disappointing, though, as the yearling, Doceanide du Lilas, a daughter of Workaholic and Oceanide, was very small and didn’t get a single bid. However, Tebirent couldn’t get the yearling filly out of his head and made a deal with breeder Anne Marie Alix to try her for eight days; if he liked her and Allaire gave up the thumbs up he would buy her, otherwise “we would at least have the pleasure of getting to know each other.” When Allaire first saw the tiny filly, the reaction was immediate and crystal clear, “you’re nuts.” But when he started to drive her, the tone changed immediately. “Listen to me, buy her,” he told Tebirent – and nobody would regret it when Doceanide du Lilas grew up, though still very small, 156 cms (a little over 15,1 hands) to become one of the better fillies in the D-crop, born 1991, as a youngster. A victory in Prix Marcel Dejean as a two-year-old was followed by second places in Prix Gelinotte, Masina, Roquepine and Une de Mai – while she “only” finished fourth in Prix Uranie.

Doceanide du Lilas won 3 of 24 races in her career – and interestingly enough all three came as a two-year-old. As a four-year-old, Tebirent felt that she had done her bit on the track and bred her to Tarass Boulba, a mating that produced Iacopo. The horse only earned € 7,874, but according to Tebirent it was a talent horse suffering from bad legs. Iacopo qualified in June as a two-year-old. After his first start in August that same year he was injured and did not return to the racetrack until he was four, but Iacopo only races 18 times in his life. The third offspring, the filly Kidea, by Jean-Pierre Dubois and Anders Lindqvist’s star Extreme Dream, excelled early as a special talent. After impressing in her qualifier in June as a two-year-old, she won at 1.18,2 (2:05.4) at Enghien in her second start two months later. Another two months later that she was narrowly beaten by Kiss Melody in the Prix Marcel Dejean. Kiss Melody was a star filly who earned almost one million euros (approximately $1 million) for Allaire senior during her career. Towards the end of the season, Kidea needed a knee operation and instead of competing against the top of the crop she lost a whole year before returning. However, the operation was not successful. When Kidea’s first three starts back from injury ended with two disqualifications and one finish out of the money, she was returned to Tebirent and entered the broodmare ranks.

In 1999, when Kidea was a yearling, Tebirent had become ill. The back problems he initially thought was due to his horses and too much manual work, turned out to be kidney cancer. Naturally, he reduced his holdings to just a few horses. At the same time, he also received a bid on his property from a sheik in Abu Dhabi. Since he contemplated moving anyway, he accepted the offer. When he found a new dream resort in Mayenne, he only had a small broodmare band consisting of Kidea, Doceanide du Lilas, his first broodmare Nera and her daughter Urne d’Or (who was also a good broodmare). Almost all other broodmares were sold – including Harmony Blue, a daughter of Nera, who gave Tebirent her own “farewell gift” by nailing him really good with her back hooves shortly before her departure. Harmony Blue would also come back and play a role in this story later.

American bloodlines

Tebirent always had a love for American bloodlines and stallions. In 2001, he bred Nidorina, an unstarted mare by Viking’s Way and Urne d’Or, that he really liked type-wise. When it was time to select a stallion for Kidea’s third foal in 2004, the choice fell on the Viking’s Way-son Indy de Vive. Tebirent had liked the stallion after seeing him race at both Enghien and in Le Croise-Laroche. That year, Indy de Vive stood at Haras de Vaiges just a few kilometers from Tebirent’s new farm. When invited to look at the stallion, the choice became easy since he found Indy de Vive simply “beautiful in every way.”

The foal by Indy de Vive out of Kidea looked really nice and instead of selling, Tebirent chose to keep him. When he separated foals from their dams, the French breeder usually put the colts with two ponies, but Ready Cash had so much energy that he was put with his then-35-year-old mare Nera. She was basically given the task of raising the energetic colt before he was sent to Allaire as for training – and Nera did a great job before she died the following year, 36 years old. Early in the new year as a two-year-old Allaire called Tebirent and the message was impossible to misunderstand, “This is not an ordinary horse, this is the horse of your life. You should send the broodmare back to the same stallion.”

Both Kidea and Doceanide du Lilas were thus sent to Indy de Vive in 2007, and the year after the very good mare Upper Class 1.11,7/€ 338,950 (1:55.2/around $338,950) and Utello (unstarted) were born. It was a good thing Tebirent sent the mares to Indy de Vive that season; the stallion died in April 2008 at 12. Oddly enough, both the sire and damsire of Ready Cash died at 12. And in this story of coincidences, it seems reasonably to repeat the story of how close French trotting was to not have Indy de Vive: his breeder had taken (Indy de Vive’s dam) Tekiflore to be bred Viking’s Way. However, when he saw the stallion who was handicapped following laminitis, he blurted out to Christophe Toulorge that “I’m not breeding my mare to that horse!” Toulorge responded that “Try him once, if she is empty then you can change stallion.” As it turned out, Tekiflore got in foal on the first (and only?) attempt, and the following year Indy de Vive was born.

Dominating his crop

Ready Cash followed the family tradition of qualifying early, trotting 1.21,1 (2:10.2) on Jun 15, 2007. His debut in Reims ended with a simple victory and the next race at Enghien was won in the same way. Ready Cash was also on his way to victory in his next race, his first at Vincennes, but was disqualified when he broke because of a shadow on the track. This was just an exception, and the spectacular colt then went on a run of nine consecutive wins, including in Criterium des Jeunes. After winning the latter, the owners were offered 1 million euros shortly after the race. After a brutal opening he surprisingly lost the Prix de l’Etoile but it was his only loss in a three-year season that produced 10 wins in 11 starts.

Things didn’t go just as smoothly at 4. In his first start of the season, in the Prix de Selection, he lost to Rolling d’Heripre, his arch-nemesis in 2009. Tebirent played a huge part in his pedigree, too, as he is the breeder of Rolling d’Heripre’s dam, the previously mentioned Harmony Blue – and Nera, who raised Ready Cash, is thus the maternal grandmother of Rolling d’Heripre.

A selfless change

Allaire opted to try his luck against the older elite in the spring, and Ready Cash acquitted himself well with a sixth place in the 2009 Prix de l’Atlantique. After that, the colt was given a few months off to focus on stallion. Back on the track he took five victories in the late summer and the beginning of the winter meeting. But despite the victories, something had changed. On the track Ready Cash was more stressed, and Franck Nivard, who had replaced Bernard Piton as a driver, struggled to calm him down. In Criterium Continental he met the European four-year-old elite but it ended with disappointment when Ready Cash’s wheel got hooked with the wheel of Italian Le Touquet, broke stride and was disqualified. But it is dubious, anyway, if he could have done anything with an exceptional Rolling d’Heripre the way the race unfolded. The latter beat the rest of the European elite by 15-20 lengths in a raw demonstration of supremacy. Despite the loss, Ready Cash was still one of the favorites in the 2010 Prix d’Amerique, but an equipment change backfired as he again broke stride and was disqualified.

The eight first starts of the 2010 season ended with only one win and four disqualifications. The downward spiral culminated in Criterium des 5 ans, a race it was widely considered that Ready Cash couldn’t or shouldn’t lose. Sitting pretty in the lead at the bottom of the hill at Vincennes, without any apparent reason Ready Cash threw himself into a break and kept going in the wrong gait to the finish line. Allaire decided that enough was enough and communicated this to the other owners, Tebirent and Pascal and Carole Berthou. Tebirent simply replied with his standard answer to his old friend, “just do what you think is best.” While many trainers would tinker and try various things, Allaire show himself as both humble and great when he took the extremely unusual step of sending his elite horse to another trainer, Thierry Duvaldestin in Normandy. “I wanted a second opinion and at the same time I thought it would help to move the horse away from Grosbois where he had been for four years. Grosbois is a great place to train horses but it’s limited with big fencing so my choice was one with facilities in Normandy where there are also large outdoor areas for the horses.”

Bouncing back

Duvaldestin started with a full veterinary check which revealed a small back problem, and with the move Ready Cash was now allowed to be outside 24 hours a day and only taken in on very cold nights. The training was also switched as Duvaldestin let him work out a bit on the beaches of Normandy. Duvaldestin also switched driver back to Franck Nivard, Allaire had most recently used Jos Verbeeck, even though Duvaldestin also drove in some minor races. The racing tactics were also changed; when trained by Allaire the colt was usually moved forward early to sit in the lead, but Duvaldestin wanted him to attack from cover much later in the races.

The rest is, as they say, history. Under Duvaldestin’s knowledgeable tutelage, Ready Cash took 18 victories including wins in the Prix d’Amerique (x2), Prix de France (x2), Prix de Bourgogne (x3), Prix du Bourbonnais (x2), Prix de Paris, Grand Prix de Wallonie and, perhaps the most impressive of them all , the UET Trotting Masters in 2013, where he was parked outside of Commander Crowe before turning on the turbo down the final stretch, basically making a mockery of the European elite including Timoko, Sebastian K and Main Wise As. Surprisingly, though, the latter was his last career win. Only four months later he broke in the last turn of the Prix d’Amerique while Maharajah was gearing up for his successful attack on Up and Quick in the pouring rain.

After weak performances in the Prix du Bourbonnais and Prix de Bourgogne in the 2014/15 winter meeting something seemed off and the decision was made to retire the superstar. But not so long after, at the end of January 2015, Allaire was jogging Ready Cash lightly at his Bouttemont farm to keep him in shape … and the star seems back to his old self. Allaire immediately called his Danish wife Gitte and asked her to enter the horse in the Prix de France. She was, however, not able to enter him as the deadline was the previous day. She suggested calling and trying some sweet talk to get him entered – who wouldn’t accept it, it is after all Ready Cash? But no, Allaire takes it as a sign that there should be no comeback for the superstar and Ready Cash stayed in the ranks of retirees.

A dominant stallion

Ready Cash retired 40-8-3 in 70 starts. His fastest time was 1.10,3 (1:53.1), though that is the mile time rate set over a longer distance – many believe he could go 1:51 or even better at a fast Solvalla track had he gone to the Elitlopp. His career earnings were €4,282,300, roughly 5.4m USD.

But however great he was on the track, at stud Ready Cash was even better. He’s sired superstars such as Face Time Bourbon, Bold Eagle and Readly Express, all Prix d’Amerique-winners, and numerous other group 1-winners all over Europe. His get has also done well in the US. In 2020 Ready For Moni and Back Of The Neck finishing second and third in the Hambletonian. He is also the damsire of budding superstars such as Allaire’s Elitlopp-winner Hohneck and Swedish star San Moteur. No wonder Allaire later said that “Ready Cash has changed my life.”

Ready Cash tragically died from colic on the early morning of Aug 9, 2023.

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