Thoroughbred Racing

[BullNBear52]

I've seen some of them myself. I wouldn't call Southern Phantom a Paint though. Something obviously got mixed up when the sperm met the egg.



It is hard to stay mad at a social media sensation whose unusual look has been talked about since he was born on June 5, 2016, at the central Kentucky farm of his breeder and owner, Southern Equine Stables.

His sire, Bodemeister, was a speedy sort who finished second in the 2012 Kentucky Derby and had a white blaze on his face. But that mark was nothing compared with the chrome trimmings of his tie-dyed son. Southern Phantom’s trainer Eric Guillot also was in charge of the racing career of his mother, Out for Revenge.

“She was a bay with not a drop of white on her,” he said. “I had his brother, too, a horse named Stronger, and he had a dot of white on one of his legs. That’s it.”

So what happened? Guillot, a Cajun famous for his backside crawfish boils and his penchant for hanging voodoo dolls in his barn to signify a hex on a rival horse or trainer, sells a theory about a mishap in the breeding shed. In his telling, the teaser stallion brought in to prepare the mare for Bodemeister was an Appaloosa.

“That old boy fell in love with ole Out for Revenge, jumped the fence and cut Bodemeister out of the deal,” Guillot said, his singsong patois helping to make it plausible. “That’s why Phantom looks like a real pretty paint horse.”