Officials at Keeneland announced it will offer a share in Upstart (r, 10, Flatter-Party Silks, by Touch Gold), sire of leading classic prospects GISW Zandon and MGSW Kathleen O. in his second crop, at its April Horses of Racing Age Sale, to be held following the races on closing day Friday, Apr. 29 . The share will be the final offering of the sale. Shareholder involvement will begin with the 2023 breeding season.
Upstart, who stands at Airdrie Stud in Midway, Kentucky, is a graded stakes-winner who earned $1.7 million. Other notable progeny includes 'TDN Rising Star' Green Up, a 3-year-old filly with two wins and a second in three career starts, including a four length allowance victory at Gulfstream Apr. 21; MGISP and 'TDN Rising Star' Reinvestment Risk, a 4-year-old colt who was second in the recent GI Carter H.; and Masqueparade, winner of the 2021 GIII Ohio Derby.
“What Upstart is doing right now is really pretty incredible,” Airdrie Stud Vice President Bret Jones said. “Zandon and Kathleen O. are the headliners, but there's so much depth in each of those first two crops. Reinvestment Risk, Green Up and Masqueparade all look poised for breakout seasons, and Upstart's 2-year-olds have averaged over $300,000 at the juvenile sales this year. He throws beautiful sales horses that can handle their early training and get better with racing. And he's shown the ability to sire not only quality horses, but elite horses. He's on that climb right now that the really top sires all make.”
The winning bidder will have the right to offer to purchase the share for the hammer price subject to a 24-hour post-auction inspection period during which the winning bidder may review all applicable documentation. The winning bidder may only purchase the share upon satisfactory review by the parties and the satisfaction or waiver of any applicable rights of first refusal or other restrictions under the syndicate agreement. Interested parties should contact Bret Jones or Ben Henley at Airdrie Stud at (859) 873-7270 for additional information regarding the share, or to inspect the stallion.
“The Derby gods.” It's a device that tells us rather more about us than them. We know there's no such thing, really; and that if they did exist, they would find sadistic satisfaction in stringing us along in the delusion that they will ultimately even out their torments and benedictions, only to let the ground fall away beneath us just as we reach for the stars.
But that's actually how our way of life-inherently so frivolous, just a herd of ponies running round in circles-connects us with the fundamentals of our place on this planet. To some among the lucky few to have sieved a horse all the way down from a foal crop of 20,000 into those 20 coveted gates at Churchill, the GI Kentucky Derby will unfold in conformity to some divine dispensation largely unreadable by us mortals. For others, no doubt, it will merely condense the random forces that determine where we finish up in the roulette wheel of life.
To be fair, the Derby gods are pretty flexible about these things. Setting any spiritual convictions to one side, you might say that they serve as shorthand for either “fate” or “destiny”. Fate implies that things are going to happen the way they're going to happen, and that there's no point trying to rationalize why. Destiny, in contrast, might suggest that our fortunes-while indeed inexorable-obey some kind of coherent narrative.
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So which side are you on? If you're not quite sure, then ask the same question another way. After what happened to Midnight Bourbon (Tiznow), are you now looking to those Derby gods to clear a path for Epicenter (Not This Time)?
Because if you were directing our little world from on high, right now you would surely be feeling pretty disgusted with yourself. Of all horses, you chose Midnight Bourbon!
His loss was attributed to some out-of-the-blue “gastrointestinal event”. Well, if even those of us who admired him from afar felt some empathetic nausea, on hearing the news, how must it feel for those closest to a creature that had, until that moment, appeared the very incarnation of physical majesty in the Thoroughbred?
Because if we were in the business of perceiving some latent pattern in the chaos around us, then we would have to discern some almost witting purpose in the alacrity with which Midnight Bourbon salvaged our community, at an especially vulnerable moment, from fresh disaster.
Moreover in that split second when he somehow retrieved his balance in the GI Haskell S. roughhouse last summer, Midnight Bourbon exhibited a blend of athleticism and courage, exceptional genetic attributes of body and soul, that promised a further redemption. And that was to the sire-line extending through Tiznow to Man o' War and ultimately the Godolphin Arabian.
Now, sadly, that heritage has again been rendered precarious. We have lost something precious, equally, in Midnight Bourbon's maternal line: his mother was bred from a mare who duplicated the 29-for-45 Bayou legend Monique Rene not only as her own second dam, but also as that of her sire Yes It's True.
Not too many breeders would have doubled down there, and fewer yet would have combined the result with Tiznow, himself son of the Cinderella blue hen Cee's Song. But the result was such a physical paragon that he raised $575,000 as a yearling and then earned nomination at least as Best Supporting Actor in the sophomore crop.
Midnight Bourbon (inside) misses Travers victory by a neck | Credit: Sarah Andrew
In running Essential Quality (Tapit) to a neck in their duel for the GI Travers S., Midnight Bourbon confirmed himself the perfect foil to a nearly robotic rival. Their respective win ratios could scarcely have been in starker contrast: that day Essential Quality went to eight-for-nine, while Midnight Bourbon has now exited with just two wins from 16 starts. Yet he yielded little to his rival, in terms of merit or consistency.
Instead he volunteered himself as a champion for those of us uncomfortable with the exorbitant value our industry places on first place, distilled in the bitter axiom “second sucks”. There's something so engaging, romantic almost, about a horse whose strivings tend to be as unavailing as they are unmistakably ardent.
That's why Midnight Bourbon will have been especially cherished by anyone who responds to sport as a mirror to life; and why any such person will be imploring Epicenter, representing the same owner and trainer, to meet his cue at Churchill.
Not because winning the Derby would serve as any kind of salve to their present pain, even for a trainer whose resume contains so few other omissions. No horseman would even begin to understand the notion that there might be any kind of equivalence between this disaster and any such triumph-other, that is, than as the famous “twin impostors” of Kipling's poem.
And that's the point really. The Derby gods can't actually redress what happened on their home patch this week. All they can do is make us shake our heads and thank the Thoroughbred, not for piecing together a puzzle we can never solve, but just for taking us closer-through all the joys and sufferings they bring us-to the mystery and wonder of life.
A bit like, say, when you sit out on the deck at Saratoga on a sultry summer night and gaze at the stars as you tinkle the ice in your midnight bourbon. Yes, even his name was perfect. Here was a horse that reminded us of the shared margin between grandeur and spirit in the elite racehorse, and rebuked our puerile obsession with first place.
How heartbreaking, that this living hymn to vitality should have been so abruptly, so cruelly, reduced to the most harrowing indignities of mortality. Midnight Bourbon has been denied the legacy he deserved, in the breed itself, and must make do with a less tangible immortality in our memories and hearts.
These, too, will be finite. In the meantime, however, let's raise a midnight toast to the lesson he bequeaths. For while those racing gods may not be interested in what horsemen may or may not “deserve”, here was a horse that at least showed us what it is to be worthy.
Less than a year after an apparent win in the GI Kentucky Derby turned into a nightmare for Amr Zedan, the owner is set to return to Churchill Downs with a chance to wash the bad taste out of his mouth. A win by GI Runhappy Santa Anita Derby winner Taiba (Gun Runner) would be a redemptive one after his Medina Spirit (Protonico) was disqualified from the win in the 2021 Derby after testing positive for the substance betamethasone, which kicked off what has been a bitter fight waged by Zedan and trainer Bob Baffert on one side and Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission on the other.
But Zedan doesn't see it that way.
“I go into the Kentucky Derby with absolutely no ill feelings toward anyone,” Zedan said. “I carry no grudges. I just keep walking, keep going. The due process is in process and I firmly believe that when it comes to our case we will have a satisfactory ending to to the saga. Absolutely, there will be no sense of redemption or wanting to get even with anybody.”
Imagine, though, a scenario where Zedan accepts a trophy from his adversaries, like Churchill Downs Inc. CEO Bill Carstanjen. Zedan says that won't be a problem.
“I haven't sued Churchill Downs,” he said. “I have absolutely no ill feelings toward anybody. The racing commission made their decision, which I have the right to disagree with and, according to the law, I have the right to appeal. Right now we are in the appeals process. The most civilized thing to do when it comes to the dispute is to appeal to the right jurisdictions and that's what we are doing.”
As recently as the beginning of March it didn't appear that Zedan had a horse for this year's Derby. Taiba sold for $1.7 million as a 2-year-old at the 2021 Fasig-Tipton Gulfstream same, but had a few minor issues that prevented him from racing as a 2-year-old. Taiba didn't make his debut until March 5 when he ran away from his competitors to win a six-furlong Santa Anita maiden by 7 ½ lengths, earning a 103 Beyer figure.
After Taiba's debut, Baffert was forced to accept a 90-day suspension handed down by the Kentucky Racing Commission for the betamethasone positive and the colt was turned over to trainer Tim Yakteen
His debut was a promising performance, but conventional wisdom suggested that it was a matter of too little, too late when it came to the Derby. At least that's what Yakteen and Zedan's bloodstock advisor Gary Young told the owner. They were against running in the Santa Anita Derby.
“They wanted to wait things out and then target the Lexington,” Zedan said. “I had to overrule everybody. I told them that our entire program was built around trying to win the Kentucky Derby. I didn't want to go to bed at night knowing that we didn't give it our best chance. I thought we had to give him a shot. Sometimes talent compensates for experience and he showed that.”
It was a huge test, and one he passed with surprising ease.
Facing off against GII San Felipe S. winner Forbidden Kingdom (American Pharoah) and stablemate and GIII Robert B. Lewis S. winner Messier, Taiba appeared to have his hands full and was sent off at 4-1. With Mike Smith replacing John Velazquez, who stuck with Messier, Taiba got past Messier inside the final furlong and drew clear to win by 2 1/4 lengths.
“Considering everything, it was a real relief that we pulled this off,” Zedan said. “Everyone on the team was ecstatic.”
The Santa Anita Derby was far from an easy spot, but Zedan knows that the Kentucky Derby will be much tougher.
“There are so many more moving targets now,” he said. “You have the post position draw to worry about, the kickback, the traveling, a 20-horse field and not a five or six-horse field. I am managing expectations. We're up against tremendous competition. It is a good crop. There are three or four horses that come to mind that are very good horses, very fast horses and horses that stay. It is anyone's race.”
The Medina Spirit saga turned tragic in December when the horse died of an apparent heart attack after a workout at Santa Anita. For Zedan, the experience has been more bitter than sweet. But he came to understand that his best option was to simply move on.
“It's been a roller coaster ride over the last year,” he said. “In one year, I've seen all the ups and downs of the sport. It sounds cliche, but what doesn't break you makes you stronger.”
Of course, having a horse like Taiba makes the process easier. He will be attempting to become the first horse to win the Kentucky Derby in his third start since Leonatus did it way back in 1883. It won't be easy, but he has given Zedan what once seemed highly unlikely–a second chance.
