Tag: black lives matter

The Weekly Wrap: Reynier Rules

Yes, it's Derby week in Epsom and Chantilly, and it's all about the Classic generation, but as we briefly cast our minds back over the past seven days, let's hear it for the oldies.

At ParisLongchamp on Sunday, the 6-year-olds Skalleti (Fr) (Kendargent {Fr}) and Marianafoot (Fr) (Footstepsinthesand {GB}) pulled off a group-race double on a stellar weekend for owner Jean-Claude Seroul and trainer Jerome Reynier, while their younger stable-mate Elusive Foot (Ire) (Footstepsinthesand {GB}) brought up a memorable treble in the Quinté. These followed Saturday's listed Derby du Medoc victory for the same owner/trainer combination with Paco (Ire) (Paco Boy {Ire}). 

On board the G1 Prix Ganay winner Skalleti and Paco was Gerald Mosse, now back in his native France following a bit of a European tour in recent seasons. Mosse is 54, the same age as this season's 2000 Guineas-winning jockey Kevin Manning, and he rode his first Group 1 winner when the 35-year-old Reynier was a toddler.

The combination of youth and experience has proved a fruitful one as Mosse also rode Reynier's listed Grand Prix du Bordeaux winner Monty (Fr) (Motivator {GB}) on Saturday. The pair also combined for one of the trainer's early major wins when Royal Julius (Ire) (Royal Applause {GB}) landed Italy's G2 Premio President della Repubblica.

It's safe to say that Skalleti has now stolen the title of stable star from Royal Julius, becoming the first Group 1 winner for his trainer, his sire Kendargent, and for Seroul. The latter, now in his 80s and a prolific owner/breeder in France over many years, bred his other three weekend stakes winners but not Skalleti, who was bred by Guy Pariente, owner of both Kendargent and Skalleti's listed-winning dam Skallet (Fr). The 13-year-old mare is a daughter of the well-bred former Haras des Faunes resident Muhaymin, by A.P. Indy out of the 1000 Guineas winner Shadayid (Shadeed). 

Skallet's offspring have been dominating ParisLongchamp this season.  Not only has Skalleti won the G2 Prix d'Harcourt as well as the Ganay, the previous weekend his full-brother, the up-and-coming stayer Skazino (Fr), won the G2 Prix Vicomtesse Vigier following his easy success in the G3 Prix de Barbeville in early May. Then there's the 7-year-old Skalleto (Fr), not quite as talented as his illustrious siblings but listed-placed nonetheless and winner of a handicap at the track on May 16. The mare has so far produced four foals, all by Kendargent, the youngest of which is the unraced 2-year-old gelding Skalli (Fr), and she is now back in foal to the 18-year-old stallion.

Reynier has done his bit to boost the profile of the southern French training centre of Calas, near Marseille, and he is proving something of a dab hand at nurturing the careers of his horses through to maturity. Six is clearly not old for a horse–it just seems so in an increasingly precocity-obsessed industry. 

Skalleti, and his fellow 6-year-olds Marianafoot and Monty, have won 23 races between them and counting. As a gelding, Skalleti can race on unhindered by concerns of a stud career while his mind and body allows. Reynier has already stated that his long-term aim for this season is a return to Ascot for the G1 QIPCO Champion S., in which he was second last year. Skalleti only needs another seven wins to equal a former wonder of the French ranks, Cirrus Des Aigles (Fr) (Even Top {GB}), who won the Champion S. 10 years ago and returned to Ascot in three successive years to finish runner-up twice. 

We look forward to welcoming Skalleti back for years to come, and we can expect to hear plenty more about his trainer. From 12 runners last week, Reynier saddled seven winners and he now lies in third place in the French trainers' table behind those multiple champions Jean-Claude Rouget and Andre Fabre.

Anything Euchen Do

On the subject of equine golden oldies, there are few more admirable horses in training than William Johnstone's homebred Euchen Glen (GB) (Authorized {Ire}), who sprang something of a surprise when winning the G3 Coral Brigadier Gerard S., run in memory of the late Joe Mercer, as the 20/1 outsider of four.

Granted, the soft ground at Sandown played to his strengths, but there's plenty to love about the Jim Goldie-trained 8-year-old, who was recording his 11th win from 37 starts after having the best part of two years off the track with a tendon injury after winning the John Smith's Cup in July 2018. His impressive list of wins includes last year's G3 St Simon S in heavy ground and G3 Cumberland Lodge S. on soft. Even more impressive is that his victories have come from 1m2f at almost every distance up to 2m, the latter being his win in the Shergar Cup Stayers. 

Sandown's Brigadier Gerard meeting is arguably the best evening fixture of the year in Britain, and this year the two group races on the card were plundered by Scottish and Irish raiders. Jim Goldie took the Brigadier Gerard trophy back to Renfrewshire and Henry de Bromhead proved that he's far more than just an excellent National Hunt trainer, by sending the 4-year-old Lismore (Ire) (Zoffany {Ire}) to land the G3 Coral Henry S. 

The statuesque filly, who races for her breeders Sonia and Anthony Rogers, would certainly not look out of place in a field of smart jumping mares, but she may well now be aimed at following the example of fellow Irish-trained Princess Zoe (Ger) (Jukebox Jury {Ire}) later in the season with a raid on the G1 Prix du Cadran on Arc weekend. In a year in which her trainer has captured the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle, Champion Chase and Grand National, we should perhaps expect nothing less than to see him adding a Group 1 victory on the Flat to his outstanding record.

Golden Moment

The one other stakes race at Sandown's Thursday meeting provided a special first for the team behind the 2000 Guineas winner Galileo Gold (Ire). It was actually a second first, as Ebro River (Ire), winner of the listed National S., had already become his sire's first winner on May 15 for Galileo Gold's former trainer Hugo Palmer and owner Al Shaqab Racing. Extra lustre was provided by the fact that he was bred by Tally-Ho Stud, where Galileo Gold stands.

His stud-mate Cotai Glory (GB) is ahead of Galileo Gold in the table with eight individual winners, and Ardad (Ire) is further clear still on nine. But Galileo Gold is the first of the freshman sires to notch a stakes winner and Ebro River looks likely  to head next to the G2 Coventry S.

The chestnut colt is out of the Balmont mare Soft Power (Ire), a half-sister to the dam of top sprinter Slade Power (Ire) (Dutch Art {GB}), and the 10-year-old mare is now back in foal to Galileo Gold at Tally-Ho Stud.

Barbe Goes Back For Black

In a week in which the first anniversary of the death of George Floyd was widely marked around the world, Black Lives Matter (Fr) (Panis) was an appropriately named winner of the opening 2-year-old maiden on Sunday's ParisLongchamp card.

The colt, who was bred by Frederic and Christine Ehlinger, went through the Arqana Autumn Sale in the draft of Haras des Faunes, where his sire stands. His buyer, at €7,500 was bloodstock agent Patrick Barbe, who had previously owned and bred his dam Magic Potion (Fr). Barbe also had a close connection to the mare's sire Divine Light (Jpn) (Sunday Silence), whom he had been responsible for importing to France from Japan, and who made his mark as the sire of 1000 Guineas winner Natagora (Fr).

“We had the grandam and the dam,” Barbe recalled. “I originally bought into this family because the third dam was Magic Night (Fr), a champion filly in the 80s. She was second in the Arc and the Japan Cup and won the Vermeille.”

He continued, “This colt was named Blackmagic to begin with but we didn't like the name so we thought Black Lives Matter was a better one and we changed it in December. Gradually he'll be aimed at a listed race and then hopefully a Group 3. We'll see. So far, so good.”

Barbe added, “I am also a great fan of Panis, who has covered very few mares recently. I love Panis because I used to love his sire Miswaki, who is the broodmare sire of Galileo (Ire).”

Magic Potion, whom Barbe bred in partnership with Jean-Paul Marchand, was second in the listed Prix la Flèche at two, produced three foals for the partners before she was sold to the Ehlingers in December 2015. Her second foal, Magic Song (Fr) (Kendargent {Fr}), was a five-time winner in France, while the third, Shadow Noel (Fr) (Le Havre {Ire}), was exported to Japan, where she won four times.

Barbe has long had strong links with Japan and the connection continues through Black Lives Matter's trainer the Chantilly-based Satoshi Kobayashi. The former assistant to Mikel Delzanges and John Hammond had celebrated his first Classic victory the previous weekend in the G2 Derby Italiano with Tokyo Gold (Fr) (Kendargent {Fr}) for owner/breeder Teruya Yoshida.

Gold Medal Standard

The stallion in demand at Arqana's Breeze-up in Doncaster last Friday was Darley America's Medaglia d'Oro, whose three colts in the sale were among the eight leading lots on the day and returned an average price of £438,333. 

They included the £675,000 sale-topper and most expensive breezer in Europe this season, who was sold to Godolphin and will join the stable of Andre Fabre. The French maestro has previously enjoyed success with Medaglia d'Oro's striking Breeders' Cup Turf-winning son Talismanic (GB), who is now at stud for Darley in Japan.

American sires have generally fared well at the European breeze-up sales, and Medaglia d'Oro has previously been responsible for the Brown Island Stables graduate Mshawish, who was picked up by Johnny Collins and Chad Schumer for $10,000at the Keeneland September Sale and sold at Arqana's 2012 breeze-up for €170,000. He went on to listed success in France before becoming a dual Grade 1 winner for Al Shaqab in Florida. Now at Taylor Made Farm, Mshawish was represented by his first stakes winner on Saturday when Sainthood landed the GII Pennine Ridge S. at Belmont Park.

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: ‘Was This A Grade 1?’

Kendrick Carmouche celebrated when he crossed the wire first aboard the Jack Sisterson-trained True Timber in Saturday's Grade 1 Cigar Mile at Aqueduct, but it wasn't until he was jogging back to the winner's circle that the 36-year-old jockey recognized the full scope of his accomplishment.

“Was this a Grade 1?” Carmouche asked, voice full of emotion. “Oh, this is my first Grade 1!”

Asked to relive that moment during a telephone interview, Carmouche's voice wavered before he found the right words.

“What you see (in that video) is just half of it,” he explained. “There was so much that was built up to get up to this point of my career, so much push and so much fight, and not only a Grade 1, but the Cigar Mile. It's just unbelievable. I didn't even know it was a Grade 1 until I came back, because I don't look at the top of the program. I just look at the horses.”

A favorite of fans and fellow jockeys alike, Carmouche has mastered the art of being tough during the races while still retaining a high level of sportsmanship and humility on the ground.

His emotional win in the Cigar Mile came after more than 20,000 career starts and over 20 years in the saddle, but it wasn't Carmouche's only milestone achievement of the weekend. On Sunday, the veteran jockey wrapped up his first New York riding title. 

“I give thanks to everyone who put a good effort into supporting me and pushed me along to win this meet. I'm very appreciative,” Carmouche said. “I seized the opportunity at hand and I'm grateful for all the trainers and owners for letting me show other people that I can win races. I'm very blessed to say that I've come to New York five years ago and I got a title for the fall meet.”

Carmouche has now won 3,314 races since first acquiring a jockey's license. The son of jockey Sylvester Carmouche had spent years following his father around to different racetracks across Louisiana on the weekends, watching and learning everything he could about the sport he loved. 

Some of his favorite memories come from the small bush tracks, though one mount during a match race when he was 15 years old was enough to convince him to stick to exercise riding on a sanctioned racetrack.

“It was fun to watch it every single Saturday and Sunday of my life, and it was the best weekend any kid could have ever had,” Carmouche remembered. “It was just all friends, people coming together and having a good time. People played cards, ate good food, and just enjoyed each other; it was all good people and good memories. It got me where I'm at today.”

When Carmouche earned his apprentice jockey's license at 16, he spent four months riding in his home state, but his first real break didn't come until a family friend suggested he try Pennsylvania.

“My father told me to never pass up an opportunity,” Carmouche said. “You know, my father never really taught me about riding, he just told me to pay attention and listen. If I did have a question he gave me an answer, but mostly I just followed that.”

Over the next 14 years, Carmouche earned seven riding titles at Parx Racing.

He also rode all around the Northeast during his twenties, and remembers well the grind of long days on the track. There were days he would wake up to work horses at Delaware Park before riding the afternoon card there, then drive down to Charles Town in West Virginia to ride another six or seven races that evening. All that time he'd eat little besides a few ice chips, just enough to keep up his energy.

“This a hard world, but I'm from Louisiana, and working hard is the first thing they teach you in life,” Carmouche explained. “I got two kids, I gotta lead the way.”

Since his move to New York in 2015, Carmouche's accomplishments include receiving the 2017 Mike Venezia Memorial Award, the prestigious honor awarded to jockeys who exemplify extraordinary sportsmanship and citizenship.

With these latest two accomplishments under his belt, Carmouche said he's humbled by the faith others have put in him.

“It's just been such a journey,” said Carmouche. “I love the people and the racehorses, and the jockeys. I love everything about it.

“Believe me when I tell you, your dreams can come true. You just gotta believe in your skills. You have to stick to a couple things in life and just drill on it, and just know that if you keep fighting in life you can keep strong and your dreams can come true.”

It was extra special to share the triumphs with his agent, Kevin Bubser. Carmouche brought him into the racing business, but the two have been best friends longer than they've been business partners. 

“I knew what I was getting into,” Carmouche said, laughing good-naturedly. “We get mad at each other, but then we forget about it in the next 30 seconds. That's my boy; he's a good guy. He's getting really good at his craft, and I'm doing my part as a rider. 

“I wish he was here with me; I just want to give him a hug! He's just a big teddy bear. He's 6'5” and he's solid, my brother with another mother.”

The distance from his agent and from the backstretch has been one of the most unique challenges presented by 2020, but it won't be the most difficult memory Carmouche has of this year. 

In June, after watching the video of George Floyd's death at the hands of four police officers, Carmouche found himself unable to sleep for four nights until he shared a video of his emotions on social media.

“It is very sad to see what is going on in the world,” Carmouche said in the video, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I have a white wife and two kids and it's sad to see that it just never ends. It just never ends.”

Racism isn't something he's experienced on the racetrack, Carmouche said, but he can't deny that the rest of the world often sees color before anything else.

“I feel some type of way about things that are still going on in 2020, and I just don't understand some people,” he lamented. “The way I was raised is everybody is one, we don't have different colors. That's the way I've always felt.

“I don't want my kids to keep going through it. Come on guys, let's just make it better for our kids and move on. Peace and love, that's what we need more of out in the world.”

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Protests Not An Issue On An Unusual Derby Day

“I don’t see no riot here, so why are you in riot gear?”

That was the chant that the social justice group Until Freedom chanted at the Louisville police force as they marched outside of Churchill Downs on Saturday, but despite the presence of opposing groups brandishing weapons and carrying American flags and Trump 2020 signs, as they said, there was no riot here.

The clashes many feared would materialize on Derby Day failed to do so. With opposing groups lining up on opposing sides of the track with police in riot gear lining up behind a fence opposite each group, there was little opportunity for interaction.

Just before the race, protesters chanted and waved noisemakers and chanted Breonna Taylor’s name, according to the Louisville radio station WFPL, which broadcast updates throughout the day.

The police were out early and in force outside of Churchill Downs, concentrating their resources on the area despite wider-spread protesters in town earlier in the day. Minor confrontations between groups on either side of the issue began early, according to WLKY, Louisville’s CBS affiliate, which reported that first to arrive downtown was a group calling themselves “patriots” of a right-wing militia led by a man calling himself Angry Viking and chanting pro-police slogans. USA Today reported that a group of “predominantly white men, women and children” clad in helmets and face masks carrying firearms marched through downtown. While police separated the groups, the situation didn’t escalate beyond that.

By 4:30, according to WLKY, Until Freedom-a social justice group with the goal of addressing systemic and racial injustice–was holding a peaceful rally at South Central Park before marching to Churchill Downs. Police kept the pro-Trump groups far away.

Louisville has been one of the focal spots for the Black Lives Matter protests which ensued after the death of George Floyd, and protestors had hoped to benefit from the national focus on the Derby to promote their message of racial injustice. Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed in Minneapolis May 25 after police office Derek Chauvin held his knee on Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes while Floyd begged for his life and said he couldn’t breathe.

The protests over Floyd’s killing inspired similar ones in Louisville, where Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman and Louisville EMT, was killed in March when three policemen burst into her apartment in the middle of the night and opened fire, shooting her eight times. Because there was no police body camera footage of the incident, it went largely unnoticed by the national press or the racial justice movement until activists got hold of the story. While one officer was fired, the two others remain on the force while calls for their arrests continue to mount, and incidences of violence in the city have increased.

Taylor was killed just six miles from Churchill Downs, and many organizers of the protests had wanted the Derby to be suspended this year, including Louisville pastor Tim Findley. “Absolutely not,” Findley told NBC News on Saturday when asked if he felt the Derby should have been held Saturday. “The eyes of the world are on Louisville this weekend. The Derby is the perfect event to let the world know the community is not okay. People will look back and say there was a collection of people–an entire city really–that stood up and said we cannot go on with business as usual.”

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Taking Stock: Being Inclusive in an Exclusive Game

Is it even possible to be inclusive in an exclusive game?

Kudos to Sue Finley and this publication for its series on diversity and inclusion, featuring several notable individuals who’ve made poignant cases for the benefits of opening racing’s upper-echelon doors to Black people, people of color, women and other marginalized groups. However, the ways in which racing has been drifting are going to make this difficult.

Money is power, and if you take away the participation of wealthy foreign stakeholders–South Americans, Europeans, and Middle Easterners–racing in this country is controlled by rich white men (and a smattering of women), most of them well over 50. This is President Trump’s GOP demographic, a group that’s likely to disapprove of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement that’s exploded across the country since the killing of George Floyd and is the reason we’re even discussing race, diversity and inclusion in racing in these pages now.

It’s well known historically that Black people were integral to the development of racing in this country. Black jockeys dominated the first 28 years of the Kentucky Derby, winning 15 times since the race’s inception in 1875. In 1902, Jimmy Winkfield was the last of them to win the race and he later fled the country to ride abroad as Jim Crow laws and the institutionalized racism and segregation of the era proliferated. This was a period during which neo-Confederate statues were frequently erected purely as symbols of white power.

Almost a decade after the last Black jockey won the Derby, the third-place finisher in the 1911 Preakness S. was a stakes winner by the name of The Nigger, a black gelding by the celebrated racehorse and sire Hamburg from the mare Black Venus. Imagine racing’s legacy if he’d won the race, wasn’t a gelding, and became a foundation stallion? Black Servant, a son of the influential sire Black Toney, did become an important sire, but he narrowly lost the 1921 Kentucky Derby to a stablemate named…wait for it… Behave Yourself. This was also the year of the Tulsa race massacre on “Black Wall Street.”

One hundred years later, a lot has changed, but some sentiments remain the same. Though racial and social progress was made throughout the turbulent mid-century civil rights era, Black participation in racing has unfortunately diminished to a paltry level since the days of Winkfield. These days, it’s a Latinx population that primarily services racing as caretakers on farms and tracks as Blacks once did, and Latin jockeys are among the best in the game. Many of them have experienced discrimination along the way, as Angel Cordero, Jr. noted recently in his comments in TDN. They stand to benefit from the BLM movement, which in a manner and scale not seen since the civil rights movement, is pointing out widespread and systemic societal and institutional racism. It’s significant that about 20 jocks took a knee in the paddock at Belmont Park a month ago in a show of solidarity with BLM and the Floyd protestors.

BLM is effecting change, and you’ve seen many examples of this over the last month. NASCAR has banned the Confederate flag and made a notable and unexpected stand supporting Black Lives Matter. Other sports, companies, well-known individuals, and universities have taken a stand as well or made policy changes resulting from the movement’s activism. Mississippi recently retired its Confederate-influenced state flag and the University of Florida did away with its popular “Gator bait!” chant, a local term that has an historical but little-known connection to alligator hunters who used young Black children as bait. Yes, this is true, and I’ve read newspaper clippings from the early 1900s on this.

BLM isn’t a radical or terrorist group, as some “Law and Order” Trump supporters have portrayed it. It’s a movement advocating for equality. Racing should embrace this in a combined statement from its various industry groups and tracks. So far, a smattering of tracks, a few organizations, and some individuals have responded with statements against racism and advocated for diversity and inclusion, but none that I can recall has mentioned Black Lives Matter by name.

I believe that The Nigger’s toxic name (along with his pedigree) has been deliberately purged from The Jockey Club’s online Equineline database. I say it’s “deliberate” because the pedigree of his dam, Black Venus, a foal of 1896, is still in the database, and there are two British-bred horses from the 1950s named Nigger in there as well, but they’re not American-registered and not the responsibility of TJC.

I don’t know when The Nigger was deleted–or maybe he wasn’t ever included online – but that he’s not included is acknowledgment that TJC was embarrassed by a part of its history as the registrar of the breed. Should he have been deleted or not included? I don’t think so. This isn’t the same as dismantling Confederate statues built well past the Civil War era in the early 1900s or the 1950s solely as white power symbols. Those structures were erected to intimidate. The Nigger, on the other hand, exists in American racing history as a stakes-winning foal of 1908. Taking him out of the database obscures the historical fact that someone gave him a name that was acceptable for the time and that’s worth remembering as we ponder commentary on race and diversity, even if hearing of this makes us uncomfortable today.

One hundred years wasn’t that long ago.

Exclusive Game

TJC, which is comprised mainly of rich white men, has taken a leading role over the last decade in addressing issues, including breakdowns and drug usage, that have plagued the image of the game, and it has actively participated through its America’s Best Racing (ABR) initiative to craft new imagery aimed at a younger demographic that takes the focus away from the “degenerates” in the grandstand to the slickness of the clubhouse. The organization and its allies have adopted a “Law and Order” approach to the former by advocating for the federally mandated Horseracing Integrity Act that would address medication issues through a stern central authority, and a “frat-boy bro” approach to the latter through imagery that celebrates the swanky, white, and young fedora-wearing crowd enjoying a day at the races at major tracks.

If this sounds as if racing is getting more exclusive and less inclusive these days, it is. In fact, today there are smaller groups of people controlling larger pieces of the pie and economics plays a big role in this. This type of consolidation is evident in racehorse ownership (partnerships), conditioning (super-trainers), track management (Stronach Group), and the bloodstock industry (big books for elite stallions).

Against this backdrop of a smaller club of more powerful folks, it’s going to be harder for racing to be diverse and inclusive, especially because racing’s leaders and their acolytes, who across the board tend to be younger versions of their bosses, dictate policies meant mostly to preserve or enhance their interests. But sometimes they assume that what’s best for them is what’s in the best interests of everyone in the sport, which isn’t true and has led to some fissures between groups.

Even when racing thinks it’s being edgy and different, it’s frequently not, and it sometimes perpetuates behaviors that aren’t amenable to diversity and inclusion. For example, it seems every major track has had at one time or another some association with Barstool Sports, an irreverent group that appeals to frat-boy culture and unabashedly spouts misogynist and racially insensitive commentary for cheap laughs. This shouldn’t be acceptable, and a Black person or woman executive might have explained this in the boardroom.

Diversity and inclusion can only help racing navigate the future.

Keeneland walked the talk Thursday afternoon. Keeneland’s Trustees, many of whom are TJC members, announced that for the first time in its history a woman, Shannon Bishop Arvin, would be named its CEO at the end of the year to replace the retiring Bill Thomason.

Perhaps there’s hope yet.

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

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