Rumours Have It Looks to Make Mom Proud in Sheer Drama

Daughter of Songbird Makes Stakes Debut in Saturday Co-Feature

HALLANDALE BEACH, FL – Mandy 5Pope’s Whisper Hill Farm homebred filly Rumours Have It, a 4-year-old daughter of Songbird, will attempt to give the Hall of Fame mare her first stakes winner in Saturday’s $75,000 Sheer Drama Handicap at Gulfstream Park.

The seven-furlong Sheer Drama for fillies and mares 3 and up sprinting seven furlongs on the main track, a prep for the $200,000 Princess Rooney (G3) Sept. 20, is the headliner on an 11-race program that includes the $70,000 Frolic’s Revenge overnight handicap on the turf.

Rumours Have It, a son of Tapit and grandson of Medaglia d’Oro, became Songbird’s first winner when she graduated in a 6 ½-furlong maiden special weight April 19 at Gulfstream, her first start for trainer Kent Sweezey after going winless in two starts with Hall of Famer Todd Pletcher.

Second in a six-furlong optional claiming allowance May 31, beaten five lengths by Saffie Joseph Jr.-trained four-time winner Julee’s Legacy, Rumours Have It came back in a similar spot going 6 ½ furlongs July 4 and romped by 10 ¼ lengths in front-running fashion over a sealed sloppy main track. “She has an amazing pedigree. She broke her maiden. and we said, ‘Let’s see if she can’t just increase her earnings.’ I’m happy that it’s going to say on the page that she’s a winner,” Sweezey said. “We didn’t really change anything with her. If we did anything we trained her a lot lighter than she had been training.

“I think she breezed one time, like a six-week gap between races. In other barns, they might breeze every week,” he added. “She’s a light, slender type of filly that doesn’t need to take a bunch of training. Who knows? Maybe the stars aligned and she freaked last time. We’re hoping she can do that same thing again this weekend.”

Songbird had 13 wins, nine in Grade 1 stakes, two seconds and nearly $4.7 million in purse earnings from 15 starts. The champion 2-year-old filly of 2015 and champion 3-year-old filly of 2016 was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2023.

Rumours Have It is the second of three Songbird foals to race. The first, a full sister named Magical Song, was winless in seven starts. A 3-year-old colt by fellow Hall of Famer Curlin named McCorvey was 0-for-2 this year for Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott.

“She ran really good in the allowance coming back first time against winners and got beat by a pretty nice horse of Saffie’s. When she came back and won the allowance, we knew she was training good, but we didn’t think she’d run off the screen like that,” Sweezey said. “I think it was a combination of her just being really happy [and] I’m sure she skipped over the tight, sealed track that day, which is kind of one of the reasons I brought her back down there.”

A regular at Gulfstream’s winter Championship Meet, Sweezey keeps his main string in Kentucky in the summer, this year adding a small contingent at Del Mar run by his assistant, Julie Stormfelt. He looked around the country to find the right spot for Rumours Have It and opted to keep her in familiar surroundings. “I nominated her to everything I could think of. I took her to Kentucky. We didn’t leave Florida, but my assistant, Julie, went to Del Mar for the summer and so we had a limited string down there,” Sweezey said. “I wanted to see this filly every day because obviously she’s nice and so we brought her to Kentucky, and she’s trained right here at Churchill. We nominated her to probably 10 different stakes. It was going to be a matter of shipping her and it’s super-hot up here and I wasn’t sure what to do with her.

“If you go and try and do a main-track-only type of thing you might ship and not get to run, so I said maybe the best thing to do was to go back to Gulfstream, where she obviously likes the track and can get the same jockey,” he added. “The distance won’t be a problem, and it rains so much that she might get the same kind of track that she won on – in which case, who knows if she’d love it again or not? But maybe the others won’t like it. We’re trying to find something to give us a little bit of an advantage someplace.”

Rumours Have It drew outermost Post 9 and is rated third on the morning line at 7-2 behind the Joseph-trained pair of Grade 2-placed Claret Beret (7-5) and Grade 3 winner Haulin Ice (9-5). Jose Morelos, up for her last start, returns to ride at 118 pounds – six fewer than Claret Beret and nine less than Haulin Ice.

“She shipped down there really good again,” Sweezey said. “She’s a really pretty filly. Thanks to Whisper Hill and Mandy, I’m happy to have her.”