This Side Up: River Levels Rising

They used to say that when you think you have two Epsom colts in your stable, you don't have any. The axiom has long since been decommissioned, however, by the skills of Aidan O'Brien and his patrons, albeit with the inane complicity of a commercial market that is disastrously diluting competition. And it looks as though it no longer transfers to the GI Kentucky Derby, either.

Having (eventually) landed running with champion Essential Quality (Tapit), and with Caddo River (Hard Spun) and Mandaloun (Into Mischief) testing their own credentials over the next eight days, Brad Cox is hoping to win three trials across four weekends. As such, the middle leg of this sequence has the potential to weigh quite significantly in the shifting balance of power at the top of the North American training profession.

Because the man who continues to set the standards, for Cox and everyone else, awaits Caddo River in the GII Rebel S. with a staggering record of seven winners, three seconds and a third from 13 starters since he first shipped here in 2010. And a week after producing an Authentic (Into Mischief) imitation, as it were, here comes Bob Baffert with a doppelganger for Nadal (Blame).

In fact, the evolution of Life Is Good (Into Mischief) and Concert Tour (Street Sense) seems so closely aligned to their predecessors in the barn–November maiden at Del Mar/GIII Sham/GII San Felipe for one; January maiden at Santa Anita/GII San Vicente/GII Rebel for the other–that we have to remind ourselves that these are different individuals, setting their trainer fresh challenges.

That said, when Baffert sticks to a formula it's because he has made it work. Certainly he has changed the way trainers think about the Triple Crown trail, having proved that his adolescent racehorses don't need the kind of grounding once considered essential. No doubt that reflects the experience his horses instead derive from the aggressive, speed-oriented works he imported from Quarter Horse training, often giving his better horses the chance to hone their velocity and confidence with a “punchbag.” That's exactly what Baffert arranged for Concert Tour the other morning–i.e. an inferior workmate released as a target to run down–and the response was electric.

Baffert has a genius for the fast horse that keeps going: precisely the challenge awaiting Cox with Caddo River on Saturday. The signs are promising, so fluidly has this guy maintained his cruising speed in different scenarios for his last two starts; and remember how his sire held out for second to Street Sense in the Derby, nearly six lengths clear of the third (horse called Curlin) after blazing away early. Street Sense and Hard Spun, of course, have long since shared the same stallion barn so it'll be fun for the Jonabell team to see them carry on their rivalry by proxy here.

Effortless speed is also the trademark of Life Is Good, just as it was with Authentic. And while the Horse of the Year has definitively confirmed their sire's eligibility as a Classic influence, in tandem with the upgrading of his mares, Life Is Good has also shown something of the mental immaturity we saw this time last year. Authentic, crucially, was indulged with a September Derby but this time round the race will, we trust, be run at its customary date. Life Is Good was conspicuously granted a clear run last week and, while he took freakish advantage, we'll have to see whether he will know how to respond when stretching out against 19 hostile rivals.

Life Is Good, who was sold as a yearling, and the homebred Concert Tour are both graduates of a program that notoriously has unfinished business with the GI Kentucky Derby.

In returning to Oaklawn, Gary and Mary West will remember the day their whole Turf adventure hit a different key, 28 years ago, with the 108-1 rock-your-world success of Rockamundo (Key to the Mint) in the Arkansas Derby. That horse was saddled by Ben Glass, who was fortunately persuaded to stay on as racing manager when deciding to quit training a couple of years later. When this team started out, they were claiming horses for $2,500 at places like Grand Island, Nebraska; and, in the convincing testimony of Glass, their experiences on a long road since have cultivated in his patrons exemplary standards of stoicism and attention to welfare.

He remembers when they went to the barns at 5 a.m. to see Buddha (Unbridled's Song) on the eve of the 2002 Derby. This was after the Wests had begun to raise the stakes: Glass had picked him out as a $250,000 yearling, and he had beaten Medaglia d'Oro in the GI Wood Memorial. And here was the second favorite for the Derby emerging from his stall, the morning before the race, holding off his left fore. An immediate scratch. Glass couldn't believe how Gary West took it on the chin. He just shrugged and said: “Well, I'm going back to bed.”

Ben Glass with Gary West | Sid Fernando photo

So the Wests and Glass had seen it all by the time they took Maximum Security (New Year's Day) to Churchill a couple of years ago. Or so they thought. No need, here, to reprise everything that happened then, and subsequently. Suffice to say that a) Thoroughbreds never cease schooling us in adversity; and b) whatever the rights and wrongs of Maximum Security's Derby, and indeed of his trainer at the time, we can all be grateful to the Wests for the priorities driving their program. Because the two races they most covet are the Derby and the Travers, and their investment in the type of Thoroughbred best adapted to those historic measures of the two-turn sophomore will only serve the breed well.

That's why it's always so edifying to review the purchases made by Glass at the September Sale. You won't see him joining the witless stampede for rookie sires whose averages will almost invariably never be so high again. Last year, he bought 15 colts catalogued from 29 to 2186, for between $65,000 and $360,000: two apiece by Blame, Distorted Humor, Flatter, Street Sense and Union Rags; plus one by Candy Ride (Arg), Empire Maker, Ghostzapper, Quality Road and Uncle Mo.

'TDN Rising Star' Concert Tour upon arrival at Oaklawn this week | Coady

Concert Tour is out of a Tapit mare, giving the Gainesway phenomenon yet another foothold in this year's Derby quest. So, again like Nadal, he looks bred to relish this second turn after showing his raw class sprinting. Certainly the Wests will be hoping to efface that nose defeat for their reappearing champion Game Winner (Candy Ride {Arg}) in this race two years ago.

Game Winner subsequently passed the post sixth in the Derby, after a messy trip. That kind of thing rather goes with the territory, you would say, and let's hope nobody congratulated his owners on his promotion to fifth. Unfortunately Game Winner only managed one more start, though kept in training at four; but even that was one more than Buddha, after he was found to be lame that Friday morning. To that extent, we must hope that Concert Tour ceases to impersonate Nadal after the Arkansas Derby. Because you can safely say that this would be a Rebel winner with a cause.

The post This Side Up: River Levels Rising appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Taking Stock: West-Bred Life Is Good and Concert Tour Top Baffert Barn

Gary and Mary West bred last weekend's hugely impressive Gll San Felipe S. winner Life Is Good (Into Mischief) and Saturday's leading Gll Rebel S. contender Concert Tour (Street Sense), both 'TDN Rising Stars', both trained by Bob Baffert and probably the two leading Classics aspirants in his barn, with five wins, three graded triumphs and no losses between them. That's quite a feat for the Wests and their racing manager Ben Glass–clients of Werk Thoroughbred Consultants–because the Baffert barn is loaded with expensive and well-bred auction purchases for a number of big-time outfits, including the “Avengers” group that raced Gl Kentucky Derby and Breeders' Cup Classic winner Authentic (Into Mischief) last year, and their former partners in Triple Crown winner Justify (Scat Daddy), WinStar and CHC, which races Life Is Good.

The Wests don't race in partnerships, going it exclusively alone–a rarity these days. They mostly buy yearling colts at Keeneland with a focus on Classic types with the aim of developing stallions, and their nascent breeding operation is mostly based around supporting their young horses at stud, including champions Game Winner (Candy Ride {Arg}), West Coast (Flatter) and Maximum Security (New Year's Day), plus American Freedom (Pulpit). That they've raced three Eclipse Award-winning colts in the last four years tells you all you need to know about their program, but Life is Good and Concert Tour, plus the promising 3-year-old homebred filly and 'TDN Rising Star' Slumber Party (Malibu Moon), are now showcasing the power of their broodmare band, too. Eventually, the plan for the Wests is to sell yearlings commercially, and selling a top colt like Life Is Good, which WinStar and CHC purchased for $525,000 at Keeneland, is good business to that end.

But did the Wests sell or keep a potential Derby winner? Much can happen between now and then, but if Concert Tour and Life Is Good were to meet in the Derby, it would test that question and add some drama to the race for the Wests–not that they need any more drama in Louisville after getting disqualified from first in the Derby with Maximum Security in 2019.

At the moment, Life Is Good, who is out of the Distorted Humor mare Beach Walk, is widely considered the most exciting and talented colt of his class, and that he won the San Felipe by open lengths with a massive 107 Beyer Speed Figure in early March makes him look like a man among boys.

“Based on what I saw today, Life Is Good is by far the best 3-year-old right now,” Gary West told me after the race. “But he will not make an uncontested lead in the Derby. Pace makes the race.”

He's right, of course, because there are questions about the colt's ability to see out 10 furlongs at Churchill Downs, certainly based on the speed he shows early in races. One of the reasons Life Is Good was sold and Concert Tour, who's from the Tapit mare Purse Strings, was retained is that the former is by Into Mischief, a horse who a few years ago was mostly known as the sire of outstanding sprinter/milers, while the latter is by a Kentucky Derby winner.

Perceptions about Into Mischief have changed since Ben Glass sent us an email in late 2016 that said, “Mr. West has put Into Mischief on his list this year [for stallions to use].” The stallion's fee had been rising steadily since it hit a low of $7,500 in 2012, and it was bumped to $75,000 for 2017 from $45,000 the year before. Nevertheless, Into Mischief was represented by only two Grade l winners at that time, Goldencents and Practical Joke. The former had established himself as a premier miler and the latter, from a Distorted Humor mare like Life Is Good, was a 2-year-old of 2016 that had accounted for two Grade l races at 7 furlongs and a mile, the Hopeful and the Champagne, respectively. By the time Life Is Good was foaled in 2018, Practical Joke had reverted to sprinting after a fifth-place finish in the Derby and won the Gl H. Allen Jerkens over seven furlongs, but Audible had won the Gl Florida Derby in early 2018 and would go on to finish third in the Derby, hinting at what Into Mischief could accomplish under the right conditions.

In the August 23, 2019, column “Into Mischief's Changing Profile,” I foreshadowed the arrival of horses like Authentic when I wrote: “With the better mares he's being bred to, it's easy to project that his Grade l output at 1 1/8 miles and up will increase in the coming years. When that happens, his progeny earnings should rise that much more, which means that his rivals on the General Sire list are in for a greater tussle in the ensuing years. The latest chapter of this impressive stallion's book is just being written. Stay tuned.”

To date, Into Mischief is the sire of eight Grade l winners, and he led the General Sire list for the second consecutive year in 2020 with $22,507,940 in progeny earnings, almost $10 million more than runner-up Medaglia d'Oro. The year before, he'd led the list with earnings of $19,179,389, a little more than $3.5 million ahead of Curlin.

The Wests, however, decided to sell Life Is Good in 2019 because he was bred on the same cross as sprinter/miler Practical Joke, but they were only prepared to let him go at their price. They got it–$525,000–from WinStar and CHC, who'd raced Into Mischief's son Audible, and it was a no-brainer for the partners to send him to Baffert after their success with Justify and Baffert's handling of Authentic and the outstanding speed filly Gamine (Into Mischief) last year.

The Figure-8 and Baffert

In Gamine, the $1.8 million Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-year-old sales topper in 2019; and Authentic, a $350,000 Keeneland September yearling, Baffert had a bird's-eye view of the best of Into Mischief–and the stallion's limitations and potential as well. Both Gamine and Authentic were fast, but the filly, a champion sprinter, had distance limitations at nine furlongs like many past top Into Mischiefs while the colt proved he could carry his speed 10 furlongs against the best, surprising many in the process.

Both Gamine and Authentic are lighter and more elegant physicals, whereas Life Is Good is a more robust and masculine model. Like the other two, speed is his game, but how far he can carry it remains the question. In his second start, you'll recall, Life Is Good was cruising easily on the lead and building a sizeable margin in the stretch of the Glll Sham S. before Baffert's Medina Spirit (Protonico), a $35,000 OBS July 2-year-old, took a substantial bite out of that lead at the finish.

As Baffert was preparing Life Is Good for the San Felipe, I noticed he'd called an audible for the colt's last work before the San Felipe and fitted him with a Figure-8 noseband, which is used for control and for encouraging proper breathing through the nostrils by keeping the colt's mouth shut. I texted Baffert last Friday, before the San Felipe, inquiring in text-speak: “Noticed you put fig8 on Life Is Good for 2/28 work and have galloped him in it since. Rare for you. Should help his air, right?”

Baffert replied: “Put it on more for control. Slow him down. His air is great.”

The move proved both inspired and effective, because Life Is Good had eight lengths on Medina Spirit at the end of 1 1/16 miles whereas he'd held the same colt to a 3/4-length margin in the Sham at a mile. As Gary West pointed out, however, Life Is Good had it easy on the lead in the San Felipe with Medina Spirit hard held early to give his stablemate breathing room and the others not wanting to tangle early, but that triple-digit Beyer and the manner in which he won, even with the drifting to the middle of the track, was undeniably impressive and a move in the right direction if 10 furlongs is the goal.

Triple-Digit Beyers

The Twitter persona known as @o_crunk–if you're not following him, you should, because he's the master of stats– tweeted after the race that since Jan. 1, 2010, there have been 132 3-year-olds that have earned Beyers of 100 or more from January through April, with Baffert training 32 of them and Todd Pletcher 27 in second place. In a follow-up tweet, @o_crunk put this in context, noting that Baffert and Pletcher also get the most expensive auction purchases to work with, and he included an old blog post titled “The Toddster in context” that backs up this hypothesis with auction numbers.

Note, too, that over the same time span Baffert has trained six of the past 11 champion 3-year-old colts, the cheapest of which was Authentic at $350,000 if you don't count homebred American Pharoah's $300,000 “sale” as a yearling. Justify was a $500,000 yearling, West Coast was a $425,000 yearling, Arrogate cost $560,000 as a yearling, and Lookin At Lucky was a $475,000 2-year-old.

There's a reason why folks pay good money for yearlings and 2-year-olds at auction, and why they send them to Baffert, too.

Sid Fernando is president and CEO of Werk Thoroughbred Consultants, Inc., originator of the Werk Nick Rating and eNicks.

The post Taking Stock: West-Bred Life Is Good and Concert Tour Top Baffert Barn appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Bloodlines Presented By Diamond B Farm’s Rowayton: Life Is Getting Interesting For Life Is Good

The name of the winner of the 2021 Sham Stakes might as well be the year's motto: Life is Good.

And getting better.

The dark bay son of Into Mischief (by Harlan's Holiday) had won a maiden on his debut that staggered the speed figure makers, as the colt coasted home by 9 1/2 lengths on Nov. 22 at Del Mar. The sheets and graphs and figs were all very strong on this powerful-looking bay, and Life is Good had been working well and looking good in the meantime.

In the meantime, both the second and fourth in the maiden won by Life is Good have returned and won their maiden specials. Second-place Wipe the Slate (Nyquist) came back on Dec. 26 to win and earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 88. On Jan. 3, the fourth-placed Centurian (Empire Maker) made his second start and won by 3 3/4 lengths, going a mile and a sixteenth in 1:44.88. This looks like a key maiden, and more black type is likely to come to its participants.

For his stakes debut on Jan. 2, Life is Good was the 1-to-5 favorite and won the Grade 3 Sham by three-quarters of a length over Medina Spirit in 1:36.63. The second-place finisher had 13 lengths on third-place Parnelli (Quality Road), and Medina Spirit (Protonico) was the peanut butter in a price sandwich among the top three finishers.

Whereas the winner sold for $525,000 at the 2019 Keeneland September sale and Parnelli sold for $500,000 at the same auction, Medina Spirit brought $1,000 at the 2019 OBS winter mixed sale as a short yearling, then resold last year at the OBS June (in July) sale of 2-year-olds in training for $35,000.

As a great breeder once said, “Horses can't read their pedigrees or their press clippings, and it's a good thing.”

Although the “thousand-dollar wonder” made a race of it, Life is Good was strong to the end, and the son of leading sire Into Mischief became the 84th stakes winner for the top Spendthrift Farm stallion.

Life is Good was bred in Kentucky by Gary and Mary West, who also bred and raced Maximum Security (New Year's Day). The Wests' racing manager, Ben Glass, said: “Life is Good was a really nice colt. We liked him a lot, but the consensus at the time was that the Into Mischiefs wouldn't go a mile and a quarter. So Mr. West told me to go ahead and put him in a sale.

“We breed enough foals every year that we have to sell some, and we have to sell some of the nicest ones because people notice if the yearlings don't include some serious prospects. For the nicer horses, we put a proper reserve on them, and if they bring it, they sell. Mr. West told me to put a half-million reserve on the Into Mischief colt,” and he brought $525,000 from China Horse Club and WinStar Farm LLC.

Owned by two of the principals behind Triple Crown winner Justify (Scat Daddy), Life is Good went into training with the man who trained the last two Triple Crown winners, Bob Baffert. The bay colt is now unbeaten in two starts and is poised to race along the same path that 2020 Kentucky Derby and Breeders' Cup Classic winner Authentic (Into Mischief) trod a year ago.

Nor is Life is Good the only Into Mischief colt pointing toward the classics. On the same day and a continent's width away from Santa Anita, the bay Mutasaabeq (Into Mischief) won the Mucho Macho Man Stakes at Gulfstream, covering the mile in 1:35.98. This was the progressive colt's third victory in five starts, and it was his first stakes victory on dirt.

After finishing third in the G1 Hopeful last summer, Mutasaabeq had tried turf and won the G2 Bourbon Stakes at Keeneland, then finished unplaced in the G1 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf after an eventful trip.

Trained by Todd Pletcher for Shadwell Stable, Mutasaabeq was bred in Kentucky by Black Ridge Stables LLC. He is out of the Scat Daddy mare Downside Scenario, a half-sister to G3 stakes winner Cool Cowboy (Kodiak Kowboy). Winner of a maiden special, Downside Scenario sold to Black Ridge for $250,000 at the 2018 Keeneland January sale when she was carrying Mutasaabeq.

Expectations are that Mutasaabeq will try the classic trail, and he and Life is Good are two more examples of why Into Mischief is such a popular stallion: his racers are fast, enthusiastic competitors and everybody wants one.

Not surprisingly, the dam of Life is Good is already booked back to Into Mischief for a 2021 mating. Beach Walk is in foal to Candy Ride, carrying a colt, and due in the coming weeks. For breeders, it's simple. Glass said, “We love Into Mischief. We bred three mares to him in 2017, including Beach Walk, and bought a share in him. Then we sold the best one, and if we had to do it again, we'd probably do the same thing.”

The post Bloodlines Presented By Diamond B Farm’s Rowayton: Life Is Getting Interesting For Life Is Good appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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