SBOANJ

WHITE COLT IS A STAND OUT

CREAM RIDGE, NJ – May 22, 2012 – He needs a name, but he already has an email address: whitecolt@ustrotting.com.

A true rarity, a white standardbred with blue eyes [Photo by Vicki Wright].

The weather cooperated and so did the 16-day-old colt for a media day at Mark Mullen’s Fair Winds Farm in Cream Ridge, NJ when photographers, videographers and reporters had their first chance to see an equine rarity, a white pacing colt, a genetic anomaly born to two bay parents.

The white colt and his mom, Cocchie Mama, walk over to a paddock at Fair Winds to meet the press [Photo by Vicki Wright].

The son of Art Major-Coochie Mama is the first white standardbred registered in North America since 1998 when a filly named Historicallyunique was foaled in Dutton, Ontario. Since then, there have been 200,000 registered standardbreds before this youngster was foaled at Fair Winds on May 6, 2012.

The colt’s coloring is most likely a genetic mutation. His progeny would have a 50-50 chance of being white.

Among those watching the colt and his mom in a paddock at Fair Winds was his owner, Peter Congilose, and Mark Harder, who trains Congilose’s stable and might find this colt in his barn in two years.

The white colt and his dam, Coochie Mama, in action [Photo by Ken Weingartner, USTA].

Congilose, executive vice president of the boutique financial planning company called C&A Financial Group in Manasquan, has owned horses for 25 years.

“The first horse I claimed was on June 22, 1987, Toliver Lobell, for $20,000,” Congilose recalled. “By August he had paid himself out. The first yearling I bought was named Secretariat. All the horses I’ve bred are descendants of her. Cochie Mama was her fastest mare.”

Congilose and his wife, Mary Beth, reside in Toms River, NJ. They are the parents of 27-year- old Renee Mass, who is expecting their first grandchild, and 24-year-old Christie, a second-year grad student.

Congilose is inviting racing fans to submit ideas for a name for the white colt to whitecolt@ustrotting.com.