The Road to the 2021 Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve gained momentum with the turn of the calendar, as one qualifying points prep was held on New Year’s Day and another on Jan. 2. Two horses – one under the radar, another arguably the biggest “buzz” horse of the prep season so far – jumped onto the contenders list, and now the action picks up going forward with major races scheduled almost every weekend.
Month: January 2021
Posthumous Championship for Deep Impact
For the first year since 2008 there will be no Deep Impact (Jpn) foals born this season, but the late Shadai resident was still Japan’s champion sire in 2020, a title he has held without pause since 2012. That was the year his eldest runners were four; he had also been champion first-season sire in 2010.
He had already been responsible for former Horse of the Year Gentildonna (Jpn) but Deep Impact’s crowning glory among his many talented colts has come posthumously, with his son Contrail (Jpn) having become his sixth Derby winner–and third in a row–on the middle leg of taking the 2020 Triple Crown. Bred by Koji Maeda’s North Hills Farm, Contrail has been beaten just once in his eight starts when finishing second at the end of November in the Japan Cup to the country’s retiring champion Almond Eye (Jpn). There’s no shame in being defeated by the Horse of the Year and Contrail ended 2020 with a rating of 122, just two behind Almond Eye.
The 5-year-old Almond Eye has a huge following even beyond Japan and she is very much the star performer for her sire Lord Kanaloa (Jpn), who was the leading active sire of 2020. The 13-year-old sired Group 1 winners in three different countries in 2020, with Almond Eye being backed up by Tagaloa (Aus), winner of the G1 Blue Diamond S. in Australia, while Danon Smash (Jpn) took the G1 Hong Kong Sprint.
Like Deep Impact, Lord Kanaloa has been graced with huge books ever since his retirement to stud. From 2014, when he covered 254 mares, he climbed to a high of 307 in 2018.
While Deep Impact’s dominant father Sunday Silence still features as either sire or grandsire of six of the top 10 stallions in Japan in 2020, Kingmambo’s influence remains strong. That comes essentially through his late son King Kamehameha (Jpn), who was champion sire in the two years before Deep Impact’s long reign started and was fifth this time around, and through King Kamehameha’s sons Lord Kanaloa and Rulership (Jpn).
Sunday Silence’s 20-year-old son Heart’s Cry (Jpn) was runner-up in 2019 and slipped a place to third in 2020. His leading performer, Salios (Jpn), chased home Contrail to be second in both the Japanese Derby and 2000 Guineas and won the G2 Mainichi Okan.
The 2011 Triple Crown winner Orfevre (Jpn) was next in the table and among his group stakes winners in 2020 was the durable mare Lucky Lilac (Jpn), who has won at the highest level as a 2-year-old and at four and five. In 2020, she recorded her second win the G1 Queen Elizabeth II Cup as well as victory in the G1 Osaka Hai, beating subsequent G1 Arima Kinen winner Chrono Genesis (Jpn) (Bago {Fr}).
The aforementioned Rulership (Jpn) is another among the Japanese ranks to have previously been represented by a top-flight international performer with his son Mer De Glace (Jpn) having won the 2019 Caulfield Cup. The 14-year-old’s sixth place finish in the sires’ championship helped boost the sire-of-sires claim of King Kamehameha, who, like Deep Impact, died in the summer of 2019.
Of note among the younger sires bidding to establish themselves, last year’s freshman champion Kizuna (Jpn), a son of Deep Impact, was 12th overall. He improved on his previous season’s tally of 27 2-year-old winners to make it 31 this time around. His second crop of foals, though still large at 138, was down from 184 in his debut season. He is yet to sire a Group 1 winner but had two Group 2 and two Group 3 winners last year.
His contemporary in the stallion ranks, Epiphaneia (Jpn), by Symboli Kris S, may have notched 50 fewer winners than Kizuna but he has the distinction of having a first-crop winner of the Fillies’ Triple Crown, Daring Tact (Jpn), who was also third behind Almond Eye and Contrail in an epic running of the Japan Cup.
Japan’s first-season sires’ list was headed by King Kamehameha’s Japanese Derby and Guineas-winning son Duramente (Jpn), who covered almost 300 mares in each of his first two seasons at Shadai Stallion Station and recorded 35 winners from his first group of runners. Close behind him on 32 was the good-looking Maurice (Jpn), a son of Screen Hero (Jpn) who won six Group 1 races in Japan and Hong Kong and has also shuttled to Arrowfield Stud in Australia.
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Update: Mineralization Of Neck Ligament Not Related To Headshaking
Headshaking in horses remains a frustrating mystery for the most part, with little relief for the horses it affects. One recent hypothesis was that headshaking was caused by the mineralization of the longitudinal odontoid ligament, a fan-shaped ligament in the neck. In a study published in 2020, three headshaking horses showed mineralization of this ligament in CT scans.
Much remains unknown about headshaking other than it is assumed that trigeminal neuralgia is the underlying cause. Other veterinarians and scientists suggest that musculoskeletal pain may also cause head shaking.
Imaging a horse's cervical spine used to be difficult, but diagnostic equipment has improved to the point where imaging this portion of a horse's spine is now possible. Drs. Alison Talbot, Miguel Rodrigues and Thomas Maddox re-examined CT scans of 97 horses that came through the Philip Leverhulme Equine Hospital, a part of the University of Liverpool.
They looked for records to indicate any relationship between the mineralization of that ligament and the primary issue, as well as breed, age, sex and use. They also looked for any association with neck pain, head shaking or restricted range of motion in the neck.
They team found that 25 of the 96 horses (26 percent) had some mineralization of the ligament, but they found no association between mineralization and either idiopathic head shaking or any other clinical signs. They did discover that increasing mineralization was linked to age and sex: it primarily affected mares.
They determined that the mineralization of the ligament had nothing to do with head shaking or neck pain. They recommended that the significance of the mineralization be interpreted cautiously.
Reade the study here.
Read more at HorseTalk.
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Hall Of Famer Azeri Pensioned From Broodmare Duty In Japan
Hall of Famer Azeri, who earned the Eclipse Award for Horse of the Year in 2002, has been pensioned from broodmare duty, per a video released by Japan's Northern Horse Park.
The 23-year-old daughter of Jade Hunter will spend her retirement as a “lead horse,” turned out with young horses after they've been weaned to watch over them as they develop. The video shows that Azeri is one of several former broodmares employed by Northern Horse Park to watch over the youngsters, also including Biwa Heidi, the dam of Japanese Horse of the Year Buena Vista.
Azeri had 12 foals during her broodmare career, producing nine winners from as many runners. Her most successful foal on the racetrack to date is Wine Princess, a daughter of Ghostzapper who won the Grade 2 Falls City Handicap and the G3 Monmouth Oaks.
Before selling to Japan's Katsumi Yoshida for $2.25 million at the 2009 Keeneland November Breeding Stock sale, Azeri also produced the Giant's Causeway filly Arienza, who was Grade 2-placed. Once she was relocated to Japan, the mare's top runners have included Group 2-placed Leukerbad and Shirvanshah, both by Deep Impact.
Azeri's final foal was a filly born last year from the second crop of Eclipse Award-winning sprinter Drefong.
On the racetrack, Azeri was the most dominant North American racemare of the early 2000s. A winner in 17 of 24 starts, and an earner of $4,079,820, Azeri earned champion older female honors each year from 2002 to 2004.
Her strongest season came during her 2002 campaign, when she earned Horse of the Year honors with a resume that featured seven graded stakes victories, including the Breeders' Cup Distaff. She tallied 14 graded wins over the course of her career, 11 of which were in Grade 1 company. Azeri was named to the National Museum of Racing's Hall of Fame in 2010.
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