Challenge


Alberta-Bred Mott The Hopple Is Looking For His Best Run In Albuquerque
Mott The Hopple is named in honor of the rock band Mott The Hoople.

© Andrea Caudill / AQHA Racing
Alberta-Bred Mott The Hopple Is Looking For His Best Run In Albuquerque

By Andrea Caudill

Q RACING—OCTOBER 21, 2020—An Alberta bred, traveling to Albuquerque by way of Altoona, is looking for a big run in the Adequan® Derby Challenge Championship (G3).

Mott The Hopple races for his breeder, Mark W. Cassel, of Shelby, Montana, and prepares to make just his seventh career start in the race with an estimated purse of $150,000.

Mark has raced horses since 2005, but he is an experienced horseman specializing in training roping horses.

Getting involved in racing, he says, is a God thing.

“I was making head horses, and I just figured that you can spend a whole two years getting a horse ready to rope on, and if he can’t run, you wasted two years,” Mark says. “I thought, I’m going to buy racehorses, because I know they can run, and make them into rope horses.”

He has done so successfully, with horses like Misty Eyed Angel, a warhorse that made 50 race starts who ended up competing successfully at the National Finals Rodeo with roper Shane Schwenke.

Mark became friends with well-known Montana horsemen Ed and Mary Kyler. Mary was the recipient of the Mildred N. Vessels Special Achievement Award in 2009, and they successfully bred and raced horses for many years. Mark was drawn into racing and started his first racehorse, Hot Increase, in 2005.

Mott The Hopple’s dam, SR Rode Tah Glory, was bred by the Kylers, and Mark acquired her after she was sold in-utero to a mutual friend. He called the friend and told him that if the mare, KR Mia La Jolla, had a filly, he’d like to buy it, and they agreed on a price.

“About three months later he called me up and said, well you’ve got a filly,” Mark says.

SR Rode Tah Glory was a graded stakes winner who won or placed in 13 of 19 career starts and herself contested the 2014 Distaff Challenge Championship (G1) at Prairie Meadows.

Mark crossed her on Dashair to produce Mott The Hopple, who had two starts as a 2-year-old, was rested and returned to the races this year at Prairie Meadows in Altoona, Iowa. The Adequan® Prairie Meadows Derby Challenge was only his second start of the year, and he tired in the final strides to finish second, but has won both of his starts since.

“He can flat motor,” Mark says. “They haven’t seen the best this horse can do by a long ways.”

Mott The Hopple’s namesake is the rock band Mott The Hoople, although the horse has a slight spelling variation. Mark is a fan of the English rock band, which has been active since the 1960s, and he is a fan of his horses that have brought him on a wild ride on the racetrack.

“Basically I’m in racing by accident because that’s where the Lord put me,” Mark says. “You have your ups and your downs….but I’ve had pretty good luck. You don’t have to spend $100,000 to have a winner, you just have to be wise and study the genetics hard.”

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