If I've learned anything from our readership through the years, it's that it is human nature to seek answers in the wake of disappointment or confusion. People like simple, concise explanations for things they find upsetting. Unfortunately, horses (and horse racing) have taught me that reality is rarely so simple.
In each of the so-called fatality spikes that we've seen in the last decade – Aqueduct in 2011-12, Santa Anita in 2019, and now Churchill Downs – racing fans have been justifiably horrified and saddened, and wanted an explanation for why so many horses were lost in a short time. In the wake of the first two events, regulators, veterinarians and safety experts worked together to identify potential risk factors and to make new rules to better protect horses going forward. A racing fatality is thought to be a little like a plane crash in that there isn't just one reason it happens, but a cluster of risk factors converging at just the same time.
And what many of us tend to forget, therefore, is that even the most renowned minds in the field never were able to sketch us out an explanation as to why exactly the spikes in New York and California started when they did. What many people do seem to remember is roughly how many horses died, and that they felt badly about it.
I bring all this up because the difference between the Churchill spike and the others is that most of horse racing is now regulated by the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, thanks to a federal law passed in 2020. People have pinned all kinds of hopes and fears onto the Authority, often without actually reading the law or the Authority's regulations first.
I feared at the time of its creation that people would believe this organization would mark an end to fatality spikes like we saw at Santa Anita, and it's probably true that those perilous months when racing was close to losing its social license to operate helped push the passage of the federal law. I've seen many people question in recent weeks why the Authority doesn't put a stop to the fatalities or why they don't shut down racing at Churchill Downs.
The reality is that the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act tasked the Authority with making safety and medication rules to promote safety and making those rules national, not specifically halting fatalities. The goal was to require states like Arizona, which has had a well-documented problem with higher-than-average fatalities and has outdated safety regulations, to come into line with states like California and Kentucky, which are among the strictest in these areas. It was also to bring together experts from a range of subject areas to constantly improve safety and medication rules based on data and scientific research, which is why they're monitoring the current Churchill situation so closely. And that's a good thing.
But the reality is that people wanted a centralized authority that would make racing safer. And “safer” means, on a practical level, something different to different people. I've always thought the Authority could do that, but maybe not immediately in the one way the public expected – by stopping these multiple fatality events from happening in the first place.
The Authority's racetrack safety arm tries to make the sport safer by codifying best practices and requiring all tracks to adhere to those practices in order to keep their legal ability to send out a simulcast signal. But in a state like Kentucky, a lot of those regulations were already in place before the Authority's existence. Between the state and the track, horses at Churchill are already subjected to pre-race veterinary examination, the required surface testing was already happening, and pre-race authorization from private veterinarians was already required. There's no evidence I'm aware of that the Authority's rules weren't followed this spring, and no reason they wouldn't have been, since they're not new to horsemen, vets, or track managers there.
That means that while Lazarus acknowledged the Authority could recommend Churchill pause racing if it found cause to do so, it can't independently choose to suspend racing there. It can (and is) leading discussion and investigation to try uncovering additional risk factors, and will probably use that information to inform the creation of new rules in the future. But if what you'd expected was either total prevention or unilateral control over an “emergency shutdown lever,” this solution is not that.
From a legal perspective, it's probably a challenging idea to map out a set of circumstances that could trigger an automatic shutdown of racing at a given facility. And rightly so. As Lazarus pointed out in a media call May 30, people's livelihoods rest on horses entering races and earning money. Many people live on the backstretch, which will only keep providing housing as long as horses are stabled there. A disruption in training/racing cycles could also, over time, alter a horse's skeletal remodeling and we don't know whether that would be a net loss for the horse's safety. It can't and probably shouldn't be that easy to bring things to a sudden, crashing halt.
But stakeholders must remember – these complexities don't seem relatable to much of the public, be they casual racing fans or once-a-year watchers of the Derby. They just want answers. And they want the breakdowns to stop.
The post Voss: On Churchill Fatalities, HISA, And The Answers We May Not Find appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
We're rounding the turn for home during the 2-year-old auction season of 2023, and things are about to get dirty.
The recently completed Fasig-Tipton Midlantic May 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale was the first multiple-session auction on the calendar to offer a dirt surface during its under-tack show, meaning stallions whose offspring are predisposed to North America's dominant footing got their first opportunity to shine under their perceived ideal conditions. They'll get another chance to rack up some more dirt works next month when Fasig-Tipton returns to Timonium, Md., for its newly-minted Midlantic June sale.
Whether it was the surface, the region, the point on the calendar, or some other unseen factor, the Power Rankings saw a fair bit of upheaval in its upper echelon following the Midlantic May sale, with two new members of the top five.
One of the new members finally cleared all the thresholds to qualify for the list, and he made his presence known in a monumental way. The other let the field come back to him, and found himself in the lead flight.
We're up to 100 qualifying stallions on the list, and there are still two major sales to go in June. Though we have likely moved past the last sale that would be expected to produce a seven-figure offering, the Power Rankings stand to remain competitive as horses keep clocking times in breeze shows and rank-and-file offerings help solidify median sale prices.
As a reminder, here are the requirements to qualify for the Power Rankings. If you notice a sire is missing from the list, it's almost definitely because they didn't hit one of these marks:
1) At least five horses sold during a major 2023 juvenile sale, regardless of distance breezed.
2) At least five horses that breezed an eighth of a mile, whether they sold or not (as much as I love a good quarter-mile breeze, there just aren't enough horses doing them to make a fair average).
Also important to note: For the sake of calculating averages, I stretched out each breeze time from fifths to tenths. If you see a :9.8 time somewhere, do not adjust your stopwatches.
Let's get a look at those rankings…
After finishing first in last year's Power Rankings, Justify continues to make himself comfortable at the top of the list in 2023, after clearing the eligibility bar following the OBS Spring Sale.
The Justifys have blazed over the track during this season's breeze shows, averaging a best-in-class eighth-mile time of :10.067 seconds through the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic May sale. He entered the sale with an average breeze time of :10 flat, and having a pair of juveniles go in :10.4 seconds (remember, we're working in tenths, not fifths) barely put a dent in that average. That's how fast they're going en masse.
Justify's quartet of workers to go in :9.8 seconds over the season thus far is tied for the third-most among eligible sires, and none of his juveniles to go under the stopwatch to date have gone slower than :10.4 seconds.
This continues a trend Justify established last year with his debut crop, which also finished atop the rankings by average breeze time, at 10.120 seconds.
Justify sits in fifth by median sale price, at $300,000, led by Tennessee, a colt who hammered to Maverick Racing and Siena Farms for $1.2 million at the OBS March sale; the auction's second-highest price.
The dark bay or brown colt, offered as Hip 215, is out of the Grade 3-placed Smart Strike mare Zinzay, whose foals of note includes Grade 1-placed stakes winner Moon Over Miami. He breezed an eighth in :10-flat during the under-tack show for consignor Hartley/De Renzo Thoroughbreds.
Welcome to the list Maclean's Music, who finally cleared the “five horses sold” threshold after the Midlantic May sale. What a way to make an entrance.
Maclean's Music was part of a quartet of stallions to tie for the fourth-highest average breeze time, in :10.2 seconds (or :10 1/5 seconds if you want to keep it traditional), joining Florida sires Bucchero and The Big Beast, along with another sire we'll discuss momentarily.
That time was propelled by a pair of juveniles who breezed an eighth in :10 flat during the OBS March Sale, and another who achieved the same time a month later at the OBS Spring Sale. Five of his seven horses to breeze have gone in :10.2 seconds or faster, which can do wonders for an average.
He finished eighth by median sale price $240,000.
The clubhouse leader among that group hit their high mark at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic May Sale, when Legion Bloodstock, agent, went to $450,000 for Hip 284, a colt out of the winning Yes It's True mare Martini. The Maryland-bred full-brother t0 stakes winner Dirty breezed an eighth in :10.2 seconds, and he was consigned by Hartley/De Renzo Thoroughbreds, agent.
If you're sitting on a Maclean's Music for the upcoming yearling sales, this should all come as wonderful news.
The juveniles of 2023 were conceived at a lull in Maclean's Music's stud book in 2020, when he covered 57 mares. In 2021, he entered the breeding season off big campaigns by his sons Jackie's Warrior and Drain the Clock, and that increase in demand led to North America's biggest year-to-year increase in mares bred, with 221. Though he got a classic winner from his first crop in 2017 (Cloud Computing in the Preakness), it felt like Maclean's Music fully earned the public's trust in the early 2020s, and on top of the bulk numbers, breeders felt comfortable sending the best mares they had to him.
Something is clearly working for Maclean's Music in the 2-year-old market, and next year, he'll see a boost in both quality and quantity. Seeing how hard the pinhook buyers dig in for them when they're restocking this fall should be fun (and profitable) to watch.
Remember that other sire whose foals averaged an eighth in :10.2 seconds that I said we'd talk about later? It's later.
Remarkably, Medaglia d'Oro climbed from eighth on this list to third without having a single horse go through the Midlantic May sale. He set a strong pace with his youngsters during the two OBS sales earlier in the season, and the ebbs and flows of other sires during the Midlantic May sale settled him here.
His breeze show performers have been incredibly consistent, with five of his eight to clock one furlong doing so in :10.2 seconds. Two more went in :10-flat.
As one of the breed's commercial stalwarts, a high median sale price is practically expected at this point, and he lived up to the billing at $220,000, ranking him ninth.
The star of that group came during the OBS Spring Sale, when MKW Racing and Breeding landed Hip 1170, a filly out of the Grade 2-placed Distorted Humor mare Virginia Key, for $325,000. Consigned by Wavertree Stables, the filly was one of Medaglia d'Oro's two juveniles to clock an eighth in :10-flat.
Medaglia d'Oro finished tied for third in the 2022 Power Rankings, so this is familiar territory for the veteran sire. He has two cataloged in the OBS June sale, and a solid performance there could ensure he stays in this lofty position as the season draws to a close.
A top-10 sire in last year's Power Rankings, Speightstown remains hot in 2023.
Speightstown's under-tack horses carried the most weight to this position, with his average of :10.217 seconds ranking him ninth. Among them was a filly who went an eighth in 9.6 seconds at the OBS Spring sale to tie for the fastest time at the distance.
That filly, offered as Hip 1012 from the consignment of Scanlon Training and Sales, agent for Excel Bloodstock, is out of the Grade 3-placed Ghostzapper mare Spooky Woods, and she hails from the family of Arabian Knight. She sold to Bradley Thoroughbreds, agent, for $485,000.
That filly is also Speightstown's most expensive offering of the season so far, helping propel his median sale price to $215,000; 10th-best of the class so far.
#4 (tie) – Into Mischief, Spendthrift Farm
The commercial paramount of today's Thoroughbred marketplace holds steady in fourth after the first Midlantic sale.
Into Mischief sits in second by median sale price, at $330,000 (the late Arrogate tops all sires with a median of $342,500, and he ranks 17th overall), led by a $1.3-million dollar colt who sold to More Play at the OBS Spring Sale.
Offered as Hip 967, the colt is out of the Grade 3-placed stakes-winning Ministers Wild Cat mare Singing Kitty. He's one of six horses tied for the fastest time for an eighth this season, stopping the clock in 9.6 seconds. Wavertree Stables consigned the colt, as agent.
Into Mischief's average breeze time of :10.245 seconds ranked him 17th in that category. His seven-figure colt spearheaded a trio of sub-:10 workers, joined by seven more that breezed in :10-flat.
This crop of 2-year-olds was conceived in 2020, on the heels of Into Mischief's first of what's become four straight years as leading general sire by earnings the previous year. He was getting top-shelf books of mares before this crop, but this was his first formal season of breeding the best to the best, in terms of sire list rankings. For as meteoric as Into Mischief's rise has been, it might be ready to enter warp-speed now that we're seeing the foals conceived at the top of the mountain.
The post The 2023 2-Year-Old Sale Sire Power Rankings: Maclean’s Music Makes Big Debut After Fasig-Tipton Midlantic May appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
