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Bloodlines: Arazi Leaves Behind A Globetrotting Legacy

In general, American dirt racing is dominated by horses with a high turn of early speed. Relatively few winners come from far back, especially in the most prestigious races. As a result, those who do make a greater impression. Few would forget Secretariat's run from last in the first quarter of the 1973 Kentucky Derby to winning in record time.

Likewise, those of us who were there at the Breeders' Cup races at Churchill Downs in 1991 won't forget the Grade 1 Juvenile victory by Arazi (by Blushing Groom). The first trans-Atlantic juvenile champion, Arazi had come into the race with a grand reputation.

Second on his debut at Chantilly on May 30, Arazi had won all six of his subsequent starts, all stakes, including the G1 Prix Morny, Prix de la Salamandre, and Grand Criterium. The acknowledged juvenile champion of Europe, Arazi was untested and untried on dirt, but he was the favorite for the race at slightly more than 2-to-1 over the quick California colt Bertrando (Skywalker).

The latter sped the first two quarters in :23 and change for a half in :46.63, and he ran a remarkably brave race to finish second, beaten five lengths. All the other horses who had attended the early pace were more than 10 lengths behind Arazi, and the colts who were 12th (Snappy Landing) 13th (Arazi), and 14th (Offbeat) at the first quarter-mile finished 1st (Arazi), 3rd (Snappy Landing), and 4th (Offbeat).

Even allowing that the pace took a serious toll, the move that Arazi made had to be seen to be believed, and one of the joys of the internet is that the race is available for all to see. The dashing chestnut in the red, white, and blue silks of co-owner Allen Paulson captured the imagination of the racing public, including thousands who watched racing only occasionally, and for the next several months, anything that Arazi did was news.

The first bit of news about the lovely colt wasn't good, however. He came out of the race with a chip in a knee. That was operated on, and the winner of seven races from eight starts wintered uneventfully with trainer Francois Boutin in France and made his 1992 debut a winning one in the Prix Omnium.

If Arazi fever had been simmering over the winter, it went to a heady boil immediately. With only a single start since the 1991 Juvenile, Arazi was made the odds-on favorite to win the Kentucky Derby.

In the race, Snappy Landing led the field down the stretch the first time, with an opening quarter in :24; at that point, the Irish-bred Dr. Devious (Ahonoora) and Arazi were 15th and 17th in a field of 18. Going into the far turn, Arazi was moving rapidly outside, his diminutive form visible between horses as he picked off one after another. The chart credits the colt with reaching second, but as the field passed into the stretch, the writing was on the wall. This would not be a coronation. Instead, it was a realization that a miler with an exceptional turn of foot was at a great disadvantage in the American classics.

From the quarter pole home, the big classic colts, Lil E. Tee (At the Threshold) and Casual Lies (Lear Fan) took control of the race, and Arazi faded just a bit to finish eighth, a head behind Dr. Devious. A month later, Dr. Devious finished really well up the rising ground at Epsom Downs to claim the Derby after his good prep in Kentucky.

Arazi likewise went back across the Atlantic, where he was unplaced in the G1 St. James's Palace Stakes over a mile at Royal Ascot, then was third in the G3 Prix du Prince d'Orange at Longchamp on Sept. 20. The colt returned to win the G2 Prix du Rond-Point and crossed the Atlantic again to compete for the G1 Breeders' Cup Mile at Gulfstream.

Sent off as the favorite against some of the top milers in the world, Arazi was inexplicably close up early as Lure (Danzig) set fire to the track, made every pole a winning one, and took the Mile by three lengths in 1:32.90, a new track record. Arazi must have been wondering what they were smoking after three-quarters in 1:09.09, and he backed up to 11th, the worst finish of his career.

That was the end of Arazi's racing, but his long breeding career began in 1993. Sold to Allen Paulson as a foal at the 1989 Keeneland November sale, Arazi had a world-class pedigree to go with his distinguished racing class. As a top-class juvenile who hadn't quite trained on at three, Arazi nonetheless had shown good form, and he was an attractive stallion prospect.

Sheikh Mohammed had purchased a half-interest in the chestnut colt for $9 million prior to the 1991 Grand Criterium and sent the colt to stud in England at his Dalham Hall in 1993. Arazi was a son of the top 2-year-old Blushing Groom, who stood at Gainesway Farm in Kentucky. Bernie Sams recalled the chestnut champion and leading sire, saying, “Blushing Groom had the best temperament you could find in a stallion. You could work with him, and he'd never get aggressive. His favorite treat was watermelon rind.”

Arazi apparently got much of the generous disposition of his sire and was characterized as a gentleman during his term at stud in Kentucky at Three Chimneys Farm. While there he sired his very best racer, the big chestnut Congaree, who was third in the 2001 Kentucky Derby behind Monarchos. In addition, Congaree won Grade 1 races at seven, eight, nine, and 10 furlongs, showing the versatility and durability that is possible with the Thoroughbred.

Out of a daughter of Northern Dancer, Arazi was pedigreed to be an outstanding sire, but the chestnut champion did not consistently sire racers with his own type and talent. His best in Europe was probably America, a filly who won the G2 Prix de Malleret and G3 Prix Vanteaux. At stud, she is best known for producing Americain (Dynaformer), who won the 2010 Melbourne Cup and entered stud at Calumet Farm in Kentucky.

In 1997, Arazi was sold to stand at the Breeders Stallion Station in Japan. From there, the stallion was sent to stand in Australia at Independent Stallion Station in 2003 in Victoria, spent a single covering season in Switzerland, then returned to the Land of the Koala to spend the rest of his life.

At the time of his death on July 1, age 32, Arazi was a pensioner at Stockwell Stud.

The post Bloodlines: Arazi Leaves Behind A Globetrotting Legacy appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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The Week in Review: Arazi’s ‘Move’ Long Outlives His Hype

Off the top of your head, how many Thoroughbreds can you name who have been immortalized by having their characteristic in-race “move” named after them?

Only three leap to mind for me: The “Silky Sullivan move” was coined in the late 1950s in honor of a California fan favorite who made a career out of lagging far behind and closing with a flourish, sometimes from more than 40 lengths off the pace. This phrase made its way into the lexicon of other sports and even American politics to signify an improbable victory under last-to-first circumstances.

A generation later, Secretariat's audacious seizure of the lead, rocketing from sixth to first through the first turn in the 1973 GI Preakness S., stood out so emphatically as a display of raw-torque dominance that inhaling the field with an outside rush on the clubhouse bend became known as the “Secretariat move.” This tactic is not often attempted, primarily because of how difficult the move is to execute successfully to win a race.

And then there was the “Arazi move” unleashed in the 1991 GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile.

Right up until he died peacefully last week in Australia at age 32, the compact chestnut with the jagged white blaze and offset right knee managed to carry outsized cachet here in the States on the basis of our collective respect for one of the most jaw-dropping, sluice-through-the-pack winning runs ever uncorked in a race for 2-year-olds.

That widespread appreciation wasn't always so. Initially, when the dual-continent juvenile champ fell underwhelmingly short of international Classics expectations at age three, Arazi was roundly criticized as an overhyped flop.

Yet when Arazi retired late in 1992 after finishing well-beaten in his career finale, Joseph Durso of the New York Times hinted at a lasting legacy by writing, “So, they won't have Arazi to kick around anymore as a media superstar. But the mystique and the mystery will linger.”

Phenoms who don't follow through generally don't get remembered kindly–if they get remembered at all–in our sport. Arazi couldn't live up to his premature stamp as the defining Thoroughbred of his era. But he retained iconic status in America almost entirely on the basis of that one sublime, sustained run at Churchill Downs Nov. 2, 1991.

When the France-based colt (who had never before raced on dirt or over a counter-clockwise layout) blasted into contention at the head of the lane in the Juvenile after dropping far back from the undesirable 14 post, even Breeders' Cup announcer Tom Durkin seemed taken aback by the “menacing rush” that left America's top 2-year-olds “stunned…with the move here of Arazi, and he's pouring it on! Just an incredible move as they come to the top of the stretch!”

As Arazi kicked clear, widening by five lengths under wraps, Durkin speculated that the son of Blushing Groom (Fr) out of a Northern Dancer mare could have easily won by 10, exuberantly punctuating the performance by exclaiming, “Here, indeed, is a superstar!”

It's impossible to recall Arazi's aura without placing into proper context the outlandish hype he generated in that pre-internet era. He became the immediate winter-book favorite for the 1992 GI Kentucky Derby (back when you had to actually go to a Las Vegas casino to get down a futures wager on America's most important horse race). His odds were as low as 8-5 even though it was well-reported that Arazi had undergone arthroscopic surgery in Kentucky to remove bone spurs on both knees four days after the Breeders' Cup.

Three weeks later, the colt returned to France, where old-school trainer Francois Boutin was not overly enthused about providing the detailed status reports about Arazi's progress that American turf writers constantly craved.

Prepping his star in private on the wooded trails of Les Aigles, Boutin legged up Arazi by training him five miles a day at differing gaits and speeds. In the weeks prior to Arazi's one and only pre-Derby prep race, Boutin unintentionally created a media frenzy by criticizing the decision by co-owners Allen Paulson and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum to have Arazi undergo the knee surgeries.

“Personally, I don't think that his knees are any better now than they were before,” Boutin allegedly said (later claiming he was mis-translated). “If anything, they are more of a problem than they were…. At the time of the operation, I didn't think it was necessary…. He does not need to do better to win the Kentucky Derby.”

Then in mid-March, a different controversy broke in the press: Arazi's connections were apparently already looking past a presumed win on the first Saturday in May, and were at odds over whether Arazi would pass up the final two U.S. Triple Crown races to try to become the first winner of both the Kentucky Derby and the Epsom Derby. “This is where we may have a problem,” Boutin said at a press luncheon. “If it was left to me as trainer, if I was to arbitrate, my preference would be for the Epsom Derby.”

On Apr. 7, 1992, Arazi easily won the listed Prix Omnium at Saint-Cloud. With 25 days to the Kentucky Derby, the fervor intensified, with Arazi drawing rave comparisons to Secretariat. Bear in mind that even though Secretariat was followed in the late 1970s by a string of elite Triple Crown aspirants like Seattle Slew, Affirmed, Alydar, and Spectacular Bid, none of them had been seriously or widely compared to him. Arazi was different, though.

Even Daily Racing Form's Joe Hirsch, the ultra-conservative dean of American turf scribes, couldn't resist the hyperbole.

“[Arazi] is such an extraordinary animal that he makes other great horses look like hacks,” Hirsch wrote. On the eve of the Derby, sports media columnist Richard Sandomir of the New York Times previewed ABC's Derby broadcast as a “90-minute Arazi Show” that would use 24 cameras and 164 microphones “to show Arazi's expected coronation.”

Arazi, though, was essentially a no-show for his own Derby party.

Trying to mimic his move in the Breeders' Cup, jockey Patrick Valenzuela parked the 9-10 favorite at the back of the pack. The colt began to unwind approaching the far turn, with announcer Dave Johnson intoning that “Arazi is flying…gaining ground with every stride!” He ranged up to challenge the leaders off the far turn, then suddenly had nothing left to give. Arazi backpedaled to eighth through the stretch, weakening behind 16-1 upsetter Lil E. Tee.

Deflated, Arazi flew back to France. He lost at Ascot in June and at Longchamp in September prior to winning the Oct. 4 G2 Prix du Rond-Point at Longchamp. He was aimed for another stateside run in the Breeders' Cup, with his European-based rider, Steve Cauthen, angling for the mount in the GI Mile on the grass at Gulfstream Park.

Valenzuela, who had absorbed more than his fair share of flak for Arazi's Derby defeat, ended up retaining the ride in the Mile, with Paulson promising him the gift of a Rolls-Royce if he won with all four of Paulson's Breeders' Cup entrants (P-Val won with two and presumably did not get half a Rolls). He tried to put Arazi closer to the early action, but the phenom faded to 11th as the 3-2 favorite. “No excuse, no rally” was the chart caller's comment. Three weeks later, Arazi was retired to stud in Newmarket with nine wins from 14 starts and earnings of $1.2 million.

While Arazi spent the next several decades traveling the globe in a workmanlike stallion career that took him from England to Three Chimneys Farm in Kentucky and later Japan, Switzerland and Australia, his human connections spiraled off in different directions.

Boutin was diagnosed with liver cancer around the time Arazi retired. He died in 1995 and always maintained that Arazi was the best horse he had ever seen.

Paulson, incredibly, got a rare second chance at a “horse of a lifetime” two years after Arazi's last start when Cigar captivated America with his 16-race winning streak. Paulson died in 2000.

Sheikh Mohammed is still chasing that elusive first Derby win. His Godolphin racing operation is now 0-for-12 in the Run for the Roses. In 2021, 29 years after Arazi's odds-on loss, another Godolphin color-bearer, 'TDN Rising Star' Essential Quality (Tapit), also went down in defeat as the Derby favorite.

Valenzuela, considered one of the continent's premier riders at age 30 when he piloted Arazi, never sustained long-term success in the saddle because of a decades-long litany of substance-abuse problems. But P-Val has repeatedly said Arazi was the best horse he ever rode.

Arazi himself never was able to leap that grand chasm of hype between his stellar juvenile season and a puzzling, physically compromised sophomore campaign.

But the “Arazi move” has stood the test of time for nearly 30 years.

In fact, Independence Day weekend came to a close Sunday night with a 6-year-old gelding named–believe it or not–Arazi Like Move (Graydar) entered in the seventh race at Mountaineer Park in West Virginia.

The ambitiously named 7-for-38 sprinter has a seemingly impossible moniker to live up to (the 9:30 p.m. post time for that allowance/optional claimer was scheduled too late for the results to be included in this column).

But you can bet Arazi Like Move always has fans rooting for that spark of sensation that was once so boldly embodied by his namesake.

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Arazi Dies Age 32

Arazi (Blushing Groom {Fr}-Danseur Fabuleux, by Northern Dancer), whose five-length victory in the 1991 GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs is regarded as one of the greatest performances ever at the Breeders' Cup, has died at 32 at Stockwell Thoroughbreds in Victoria, Australia.

In a feat rarely seen nowadays, Arazi traveled to the Breeders' Cup in 1991 to take on the best American colts on the dirt. The chestnut was favoured even though he had never run on the surface and despite the presence of leading American 2-year-old Bertrando, so dominant had his campaign been in France. Second on debut at Chantilly, Arazi-bred by Buffalo Bills football team owner Ralph C. Wilson Jr. and bought by aviation magnate and racehorse owner Allen Paulson as a foal for $350,000 at Keeneland November-subsequently rolled through five consecutive victories for trainer Francois Boutin, all in stakes company including the G1 Prix Morny, G1 Prix Salamandre and G1 Grand Criterium under Gerald Mosse by a combined 11 lengths. So tall was Arazi's reputation that by the time he lined up in the starting gate at the Breeders' Cup, Sheikh Mohammed had purchased a 50% share in the horse for a reported $9-million.

Breaking from the extreme outside gate 14 under the Twin Spires and partnered by leading American rider Pat Valenzuela for the first time, Arazi was soon among the back markers in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile on the short run into the first turn. Meanwhile, Bertrando had broken like a rocket and grabbed the early advantage, allowing him to control the race uncontested through moderate fractions while Arazi languished a dozen lengths in behind with just one horse beaten. Suddenly, however, Arazi was languishing no more. Kicking into a scarcely believable gear with about a half mile to run, Arazi and Valenzuela weaved their way through the field, suddenly arriving alongside Bertrando at the quarter pole. And just as quickly as he got there, Arazi buried his rival, effectively bolting off the turn as he left Bertrando in his wake and charged down the middle of the track on the wrong lead. Arazi pulled further clear with each stride, building up an advantage of as much as 10 lengths by the time Valenzuela eased him approaching the wire, with the official margin coming in at five lengths-a record for the race at the time. Arazi became the second European-trained winner of a Breeders' Cup dirt race, the first having come just hours earlier when Sheikh Albadou (GB) (Green Desert) won the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint.

Bertrando was a further 3 1/2 lengths clear of any other rival in the Juvenile. In a cruel twist of fate, Bertrando would again be second at the Breeders' Cup two years later, once again stunned by the freak performance of a French-trained horse on the dirt, on that occasion the 133-1 Andre Fabre-trained Arcangues (Sagace {Fr}) in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic.

Arazi's feat in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile was masterfully immortalized by legendary American race caller Tom Durkin, who exclaimed as Arazi made his move: “there goes the European star Arazi, he's coming with a menacing rush to Bertrando, and now the stage is set as they move toward the top of the stretch…and Arazi runs right by him! Bertrando stunned at the inside with the move of Arazi and he's pouring it on.”

Arazi was named Europe's Horse of the Year-the only horse still to have achieved that honour as a juvenile–and America's champion 2-year-old. He is also the only horse ever to have been a finalist for Horse of the Year in America off a single North American start as a 2-year-old.

Arazi began his 3-year-old campaign with a facile five-length win in the Listed Prix Omnium going a mile on the grass at Saint-Cloud under Steve Cauthen three weeks out from the GI Kentucky Derby, prompting a press frenzy in the lead-up to America's greatest race. Another victory at Churchill Downs seemed a foregone conclusion, leaving reporters and racing fans to speculate as to what might come next. Would the French-trained colt stay in America for a crack at the Triple Crown, or would he head to England and attempt to become the first horse to win the Kentucky Derby and the Epsom Derby? Words like “mythical”, “mystical” and “extraordinary” were tossed around in the media.

In the end, however, racing displayed its uncanny ability to humble. After making a move on the turn at Churchill Downs eerily similar to what he had done six months earlier, Arazi came up empty at the top of the stretch, struggling home eighth behind longshot Lil E. Tee (At The Threshold). Arazi had had bone chips operated on between his 2- and 3-year-old campaigns, something Boutin had reportedly been against, but of course whether that was a culprit in his below-par 3-year-old campaign cannot be known. Arazi ran four more times, returning to Europe to finish fifth in the G1 St James's Palace S., third behind Arcangues in the G3 Prix du Prince d'Orange and winning the G2 Prix du Rond Point before returning to America for one more shot at recapturing the glory at the Breeders' Cup in the 1992 GI Mile. Arazi was sent off the favourite but could manage no better than 11th of 14. He was retired to stand at Darley's Dalham Hall Stud in Newmarket with nine wins from 14 starts and earnings of $1,212,351.

Arazi later embarked on a globetrotting stud career. Following his stint at Dalham Hall, the chestnut relocated to Three Chimneys Farm in Kentucky and later stood in Japan, Switzerland and Victoria, Australia. His stud career was not nearly as storied as his racing one, but he can lay claim to Congaree, winner of the GI Hollywood Gold Cup, GI Swaps S., GI Carter H. and two renewals of the GI Cigar Mile. Arazi also sired the French Group 2 winners First Magnitude (Ire) and America (Ire), and his legacy will also be felt as a broodmare sire; his daughters have produced six Group 1 winners including the G1 Dubai World Cup scorer Electrocutionist, GI Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf victress Lahudood (GB) and G1 Melbourne Cup winner Americain.

Arazi had lived out his final years at Stockwell Thoroughbreds in Victoria, which said in a statement, “It is with immense sadness that Stockwell Thoroughbreds announce the passing of one of the racing world's most revered champions, Arazi, at the grand age of 32 years. The little chestnut with a crooked blaze that made him almost instantly recognisable captured the minds of racing people around the globe when in 1991 he produced one of the most memorable performances seen on a racetrack in coming from last to take out the Breeders' Cup Juvenile by an easing five-length margin. Farewell to our mate–you were indeed a superstar.”

Stockwell's Mike Becker said, “It has been an honour never lost on us to have been guardians to such a beloved horse. He had major bowel surgery as a 4-year-old and has lived with a major heart murmur for the past 16 years, but in the end it was his body that gave out, not his big heart. He will be very missed around here.”

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From TDN Look: The Incomparable, Invincible, Unbeatable Cigar

Twenty-five years ago, Cigar put together a perfect 10-for-10 season in the middle of a streak of 16 straight wins. We remember it here.

It was the sixth race on an ordinary Friday card in October at Aqueduct some 26 years ago and there was nothing to suggest that the $34,000 allowance event would ever have any relevance. Jose Santos was aboard the favorite, a recent allowance winner who started out at Suffolk Downs named Golden Plover. Julie Krone had the mount for Tom Skiffington on second-choice Taddarruj. The third choice in the field of six was a Bill Mott-trained 4-year-old making the switch over to dirt after a lackluster 11-race run on the turf. His name was Cigar.

That’s where and how it began, on a quiet fall day at the Big A when no one could have seen this coming. Owned by Allen Paulson, Cigar started off his career in California for trainer Alex Hassinger, Jr., winning just two of nine starts. Transferred to the barn of Bill Mott, he lost another four straight races, all of them allowances on the grass. Perhaps the shift to the dirt would help. They were running out of options.

“It was just the process of elimination for us,” Mott said. “We tried him on the turf and that wasn’t working out well enough, so we switched him to the dirt. There was no magic in it.”

Cigar was dominant that day, winning by eight lengths. Twenty-one months, nine racetracks and two countries later, Cigar had pieced together an historic 16-race winning streak that is among the most extraordinary feats put together by a modern horse. It was the streak that would earn him two Horse of the Year titles, 11 Grade I wins, a spot in the Hall of Fame and legendary status. It was a streak that, for those who were part of it, will be forever etched in their memories.

I was fortunate to be there for almost all of it, 14 of the 16 wins. That was at a time when newspapers still mattered and not all had given up on horse racing. I was the racing writer for the New York Daily News, which allowed me to dart around the country, and to Dubai, to follow this horse.

“Greatness is neither easy to describe nor to qualify, but the criteria surely includes the ability to rise to any challenge, to be invincible,” I wrote after Cigar won the 1996 Dubai World Cup, his 14th straight win. “This is Cigar, a champion.”

Such breathless praise might ordinarily seem over the top, but not with this horse. He did what no other horse had done since the great Citation in 1948, who also won 16 in a row. Always show up. Always win. As the streak stretched on, through New York, California, Massachusetts, Florida, he really did seem to be invincible.

“Somebody asked me one time, ‘Was he the best horse that you ever rode?'” said Jerry Bailey, who was aboard Cigar for 15 of his 16 wins during the streak. “I think he’s almost the best horse anybody could have ever ridden.”

Click to continue reading and to watch the tribute video at TDN Look.

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