After a last-gasp triumph in the world’s richest race, Senor Buscador is now chasing the Dubai World Cup. Amanda Duckworth with the amazing story of the unheralded six-year-old taking on the racing world
In April 2008, a Thoroughbred filly was born in New Mexico. In February 2024, her son won the richest race in the world and gave both his trainer and his owner-breeder their first G1 victories. In between, a story of loyalty that has spanned generations unfolded.
“It all started with one horse,” said trainer Todd Fincher. “She was very successful on the track, a very fast filly, and now the tree is just blooming. It’s storybook, actually, because the New Mexico breeding program isn’t Kentucky, that’s for sure. It’s an unbelievable story.”
Likely fields for Dubai World Cup card
New Mexico-bred Rose’s Desert spent her racing career under the care of Fincher. The homebred filly, who raced for the late Joe Peacock Sr., won 10 of 15 starts, was never worse than second, and earned $626,035. She was also the first horse the Peacock family sent to Fincher.
Following her retirement, Rose’s Desert was the only broodmare the family had for a number of years. Fincher has now trained all of her foals, including four stakes winners. That tally includes Senor Buscador, who last month landed the world’s richest race, the $20 million Saudi Cup in Riyadh, where he flew home for a last-stride victory by a head from Japan’s Dubai World Cup winner Ushba Tesoro in a thrilling climax.
“Our goal was never quantity, it was quality,” said Joe Peacock Jr. “We wanted to compete at the highest level, and I’ve always thought if we could win a Grade 1, it would be awesome. We hadn’t won one until this one, and I gotta say if Buscador had to pick one race to win, he picked the right one.”
Family ties
The elder Peacock died in September 2020 – as it happens, Senor Buscador is the last horse he planned the mating for – but he instilled a love of racing within his family that continues.
Peacock Jr. lives in San Antonio, Texas, where he works in the oil and gas business. The family currently has three broodmares, including Rose’s Desert and her stakes-winning daughter Our Iris Rose, and they enjoy racing their homebreds.
“I have always loved the races,” said Peacock. “My parents started racing Quarter Horses in the 1960s, so I grew up going to the racetrack. We spent all summer in Ruidoso, New Mexico, getting to go down to the barns, go to the backside, have breakfast in the track kitchen, and watch the horses workout. The animals are just magnificent.”
Although the Peacock family keeps their broodmares in Kentucky now, to this day they still send all of their horses to Fincher in New Mexico to be trained.
“That started with my dad,” said Peacock. “Rose’s Desert was foaled at A&A Ranch in New Mexico. They were standing Desert God at the time. When it was time to send her to start training, I am 90% sure they are the ones that recommended Todd to my dad.
Long-term relationship
“He was a young trainer then, but he was having really good success and winning a lot of the New Mexico Thoroughbred races. My dad sent Rose’s Desert to Todd, and we have been with Todd ever since.”
Fincher, 52, also followed his family into the horse business. His grandfather was a trainer, and his father was a jockey and a trainer. Although he is six feet tall, Fincher rode both Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses from 1988 to 1997 before turning to training. In February 2019, he saddled his 1,000th winner, though he has never scored above G2 level in America.
As for Peacock, who is 65, he dabbled in racing himself, but then life happened, and it took a backseat. Although he stopped being an owner, he still enjoyed his parents’ stable, and then Rose’s Desert brought him back into the game.
“After I got out of school and got married, my wife and I had one Thoroughbred,” said Peacock. “Then we started having a family, and we realized one had to go: the kids or the horses.
“We kept the kids, and we got out of racing for a while,” he added. “But my parents were still racing, so it was fine. After we got all of our kids raised and out of school, we had time to devote to it again. Plus, my dad was getting up there in years.”
Around that time, Rose’s Desert was nearing the end of her racing career. The breeding industry was never Peacock Sr.’s passion, and so it seemed like a good time for Peacock Jr. to become involved again.
“My dad was always kind of antsy, and he liked immediate action,” said Peacock. “The breeding side is long term. When it was time to send Rose’s Desert off to Kentucky to start her second career as a broodmare, he asked me if I wanted to continue on with the horses, and I said, ‘Absolutely, I do.’
“We had this phenomenal mare, and she deserved a chance to prove herself as a broodmare. Every single one of her foals has been a superior racehorse. It doesn’t get any better than that.”
Continued success
In addition to Senor Buscador, Rose’s Desert is also the dam of three other stakes winners, including G3 winner Runaway Ghost, who earned $783,509. She is also responsible for Our Iris Rose, who earned $307,880, and Sheriff Brown, earner of $603,681. Both Runaway Ghost and Senor Buscador were on the Kentucky Derby trail, but injuries kept them from competing for the roses.
“I kind of felt like for the longest time, because she was a New Mexico-bred, the industry kind of looked down their noses at Rose’s Desert,” said Peacock. “But, if you look at her pedigree, she’s by Desert God, who was a son of Fappiano out of a mare who won the Kentucky Oaks. Yes, she’s a New Mexico-bred, but it’s a sneaky good pedigree.
“You can look at her produce record, and I would stack that up against almost anybody else’s mare and say I would be happy to keep mine rather than trade.”
In 2018, the family planned a trip to Kentucky to see Runaway Ghost, who won the 2018 Sunland Derby, run on the first Saturday in May. Although he didn’t make the starting gate, they took the trip anyway and used it as an opportunity to visit Rose’s Desert at Shawhan Place. They were hoping to visit with her new foal as well, but the colt arrived a few days later on May 6.
Senor Buscador – whose name is a play on Mr. Prospector – was worth the wait. The six-year-old multiple graded stakes winner has won seven of his 18 career starts and has finished second or third four times.
Thanks in large part to the Saudi Cup, he has also earned in excess of $11.4m, and his victory in Saudi provided the Peacocks and Fincher with their first G1 victory.
“It was great to experience that with the Peacocks,” said Fincher. “They have been great to me. But the validation for the horse is the most important thing to me. I made excuses for him all the time because he puts himself in a bad position every time, but people don’t want to hear your excuses. I don’t have to make excuses for him anymore. He has validated his abilities.
Mining for gold
A stone-cold closer, Senor Buscador made his talent known from the start. However, he debuted during the pandemic and also faced a series of unfortunate injuries early in his career.
“We were ready to run at Zia Park, and it was the pandemic in the fall of 2020,” said Fincher. “None of the races would fill, and he was so ready to run. I wanted to keep him home, keep him comfortable, and give him a good experience, but they could not get a race to go. So right off the bat, we had to stick him in a horse trailer and haul him six-seven hours to Remington Park.
“We had to run him at 5½ furlongs because that’s all they had offered there. He ran an unbelievable race, and we hauled him back to New Mexico and prepared him for the Springboard Mile.
“Then we hauled him back and he won again by open lengths. That’s just how his life has been. He knows when he gets in the trailer that he’s going somewhere to run. He’s a traveler.”
Following Senor Buscador’s victory in the Springboard Mile at Remington Park in Oklahoma in December 2020, the Peacock family turned down multiple offers for their homebred. He made his three-year-old debut in the G2 Risen Star, where he ran fifth behind Mandaloun, and then while prepping for the Rebel Stakes he came out of a workout with a suspensory injury.
While recovering, things got worse, as Senor Buscador had a stall accident that led to a severely infected hock. That injury almost cost him his life, and he did not race again until July 2022.
“We knew how good he was, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if he never made it back to the races,” said Fincher. “It wasn’t only a long time to get him back into training, but from training to his first race back was also an extended period of time.
“We didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks, and we didn’t push him whatsoever. It was unbelievable patience by his owner. He stuck with me and put his faith in me, and we just listened to the horse. It paid off.”
Senor Buscador’s first graded stakes score came in the G3 Ack Ack in October 2022, and last year he won the G2 San Diego Handicap. He ended 2023 with a second-place effort in the G2 Cigar Mile and started this year finishing second in the Pegasus World Cup, where he narrowly failed to peg back Preakness winner National Treasure. The margin at Gulfstream Park was a neck.
“We have been swinging for the fences and trying to win G1s and G2s since the start of his three-year-old year,” said Peacock. “I have to be honest, we got fortunate to pick up Junior Alvarado. His first mount on Buscador was in the Cigar, then he rode him in the Pegasus and in the Saudi Cup. He’s a really good fit for the horse, and he’s an excellent rider.”
Loyalty rewarded
As for Rose’s Desert, she remains the pride of the family. She is in-foal to Into Mischief for this year and has been booked back to Uncle Mo.
“We don’t intend to sell any of her foals,” said Peacock. “We are all-in believers in her genetics, her pedigree, and what she is able to pass on. I don’t see how I could go to the sales and buy anything that could compete with what we can raise, so we are going to keep doing it old school: breeding, raising, and racing our own.”
Peacock has also been very open about the fact their horses go where Fincher goes.
“Todd is a phenomenal horseman,” said Peacock. “He doesn’t take any risks with the horses, he is extremely cautious, and there is no BS. We have total faith in everything that Todd does, and that’s honestly the only reason we are still sending our horses to New Mexico from Kentucky.
All of the Peacocks’ horses are sent to Fincher for their early lessons as well as proper training, meaning he knows what he is working with from the start.
“He likes to break his own horses, get them started, and access their talent level,” said Peacock. “He also has really good folks working for him. We can go wherever we need to go to race and feel confident in that.”
As for Fincher, he remains loyal to his New Mexico roots. He currently has a string of 90-95 horses and isn’t looking to expand beyond that.
“I might be hard-headed, but I am hoping New Mexico will start paying a little more attention to the horse racing aspect instead of the casino aspect,” said Fincher. “They have a golden egg. They just need to hatch it and put more into the racing. I think it can be outstanding.
“Also, this is where my guys are. I have an outstanding crew, not only at the racetrack, but the crew that I have used for many years to break the babies. They do an outstanding job. That’s a huge plus.”
Prior to his Saudi Cup victory, minority ownership in Senor Buscador was leased to Sharaf Mohammed S. Al-Hariri. That deal remains in place through his next anticipated start, the Dubai World Cup on March 30. The Peacock family is looking forward to traveling to Meydan to cheer on their well-traveled homebred.
“All my kids are really starting to get interested into horse racing,” said Peacock. “Let’s face it: racing is the fun part. If we were just in it to retire them to the breeding shed, we would have retired a lot of them earlier than we do. We like to race our horses. If they are healthy, happy, and competitive, then we want to go win races.”
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