This Side Up: Tapping At The Door Of History

So, what's next? The plague of locusts? The only surprise is that the smoke filling the air at Belmont Park has drifted across the continent from Canadian forests, and didn't actually emerge from a widening fissure in the crust, crumbling daily, that appears to divide horsemen and their horses from the inferno.

Hopefully a reprieve of the GI Belmont S. might yet be extended to some other elements in what has become too relentlessly apocalyptic a narrative. In terms of what has been definitively established, our sport's macabre run of misfortune in recent weeks may owe as much to sulphurs exhaled from hell as to the difference between dirt and synthetic surfaces.

As a community, we obviously have a major challenge on our hands. But that's precisely why we need to avoid panicked, impulsive solutions in favor of calmly diligent, far-sighted leadership. Just because social media has empowered some pretty deranged minorities, we can't allow their disproportionate reach to pervert whole societal agendas.

It would seem pretty unarguable that American racing can benefit from a greater role for synthetics but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Horsemen and handicappers alike have a legitimate stake in dirt racing–and, to be clear, that stake is not just financial but a matter of cultural identity–and there its long history can surely be extended by discovering and addressing any practices that undermine its sustainability. I suspect there's probably quite a crossover between those who are resisting HISA and those who can't abide synthetics–and these are the guys who really need to smell the coffee. If you want to keep dirt racing, then call your dogs off HISA.

Tapit | Sarah Andrew

You couldn't ask for a better context to ponder these issues than the 155th running of a race designed to showcase precisely those genetic assets that equip the Thoroughbred to deal safely with tasks set before an increasingly (and, for the most part, properly) vigilant audience. And that's not just because it asks for the robustness to carry speed for a distance that is nearly freakish, in the American theatre, but also because historically many runners would already have contested two demanding races in the preceding five weeks.

Though it is the trainers who are driving corrosion of the Triple Crown, they implicitly transfer the culpability to the breeders. Hopefully our collective endeavors to identify and resolve vulnerabilities in the Thoroughbred will include analysis of the relative incidence of breakdowns (and not just catastrophic ones) in the stock of different stallions. If so, we might learn whether there's any scientific substance to our nervousness about horses today being “too fast to last.”  For now, however, we can only follow our instincts and conscience. But it's certainly striking that Germany should have achieved such a sensational impact with its bloodlines–far outrunning its troubles as a racing economy–by paternalist strictures in favor of soundness and competitive longevity. And even the most stubborn commercial breeders in Europe and America must acknowledge that Japan isn't doing too badly, either, in prizing the same assets.

Happily, the 50th anniversary of Secretariat's Belmont has drawn a perfectly presentable field in both quality and intrigue. With four other Kentucky Derby graduates meanwhile siphoned to the GIII Matt Winn S., it's clear that the Classic taking all the punishment from trainers right now is the Preakness. But how edifying that the Belmont–such an outlier, in the numbly repeating wheelhouse of most American trainers–should retain sufficient prestige to tempt a juvenile champion who'd be well within his rights to find a more obviously congenial way of regrouping from his recent vexations.

Quite a leap of imagination is required to picture a speed brand like Violence siring a Belmont winner, but his grandsire El Prado (Ire) sits comfortingly opposite Arch (behind damsire Blame) in the pedigree of Forte. So you never know, and clearly the runner-up has meanwhile upgraded his white-knuckle GI Florida Derby.

But his second dam was fast (stakes winner at 6f) and will need to have smuggled through some stamina from her own mother. That's by no means impossible, as she was by Seattle Slew and her half-sister by a speedier agency (Storm Cat) unites the pedigrees of 12-furlong Classic winners Contrail (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn}) and Essential Quality (Tapit), as third and second dam respectively.

Essential Quality, of course, was his sire's fourth Belmont winner, a unique distinction in the modern era. The only precedent, Lexington, had emerged from a forgotten era of four-mile heats and matches to prove an ideal influence for what was then a newfangled type of sprinting in a single, congested dash. The dial has since turned so far that the Belmont stands out as a curio, a positive marathon. Breeders of the 21st Century must count themselves blessed, then, to retain access to such a wholesome influence in the evening of his career.

Forte | Coady Photography

Astoundingly, this time Tapit himself accounts for two of the nine runners, while no fewer than FOUR others are out of his daughters.

The Gainesway patriarch's Belmont record, including in a couple of desperate finishes, is all about the ability to carry speed under duress. That is supposed to be a dirt hallmark, though it was exported to revolutionary effect by Northern Dancer's sons in Europe, where the dynasty's principal heir Frankel (GB)-having himself always run just like a dirt horse-is now siring stock that similarly just keep going.

Actually, there's a case for saying that Tapit is a far more effective turf sire than his stats might imply, given that only his most disappointing foals would even try the weeds. He's certainly been disgracefully untested in Europe. Of just nine Tapits started by British trainers over the last decade, seven are winners and three stakes performers. But whatever the future may hold, in terms of racing surfaces, it looks as though he will just have to settle for being the richest sire in the history of the American sport.

Into Mischief is almost certainly going to run him down, in time, but Tapit started Belmont weekend on a statistical brink–$198 million in progeny earnings, from 999 winners and 99 graded stakes winners–that surely beckons him towards another date with Belmont destiny. And if he's going to make history, then he's also the type of horse that can give us a future.

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Vron Couldn’t Have Chosen A Better Barn

As a junior he wound up in the same fraternity as a guy named Bob Baffert, who was already riding winners, already conspicuous. Eric Kruljac, for his part, had transferred to University of Arizona from Arizona State, where he had been on a football scholarship only to blow a knee. Then, when Baffert proceeded to stardom at the racetrack, Kruljac literally went undercover. He worked for a buddy as a private investigator until, having learned the ropes, starting an agency of his own. For several years you'd find him tailing suspects, switching over every few miles with colleagues in different cars.

On Monday, nearly half a century after the pair first crossed paths, Kruljac saddled one of the handful of horses in his care to finish third behind Baffert's latest Grade I winner at Santa Anita. That was a gratifying sequel to what had happened the previous day, when the star of Kruljac's small team confirmed himself a winning machine that would stand out even in the Baffert barn—whether by talent or charisma or, above all, sheer consistency. Because with The Chosen Vron (Vronsky), it's not just every Cal-bred that needs to be checking its rearview mirror.

The Chosen Vron has now won his last seven straight, all stakes, taking him to 12-for-16 overall and $792,678 in earnings. On Sunday, he finally had a showdown with another Californian fan favorite, Brickyard Ride (Clubhouse Ride), in the Thor's Echo S. His rival, who last month retained the GIII Kona Gold S., may not have shown his best as he faded into third of four; but the fact is that very few state-breds of recent times could have matched The Chosen Vron in his current vein.

“I think it was his best race ever,” Kruljac says. “They went fast, and he was four or five lengths behind, stalking. Then the rider just threw the reins at him couple of times, and he just swallowed them. It was awesome. Just, wow.”

The 5-year-old won by five and a half lengths, and it feels like time to return to open company. He won a couple of graded stakes as a sophomore, beating Monday's big winner Defunded (Dialed In) in one and Laurel River (Into Mischief) in the other. When the latter went on to win the GII Pat O'Brien S. at Del Mar last summer, The Chosen Vron finished only fifth. But that race probably came too soon after what had been his first start in nine months—in which, incidentally, he had only been beaten in a three-way photo over an extended mile of turf. (Sunday's race was over six furlongs of dirt: this is one versatile horse.) And he's unbeaten since.

“He developed a few problems [at three] and we had to turn him out and do a little surgery,” Kruljac explains of the gelding, co-owned with Sondereker Racing, Robert S. Fetkin and Richard Thornburgh. “But he's come back gangbusters. I learned, I think, that if I give him six weeks or more, he seems to relish the extra couple weeks. So, we've changed strategy a little bit, to give him more time between races, and will probably keep him on that line as we go forward. He seems to have come out of the race in fabulous shape and we might have to jump in with open company next time.”

Kruljac bought The Chosen Vron's dam, Tiz Molly (Tiz Wonderful), as a yearling for just $25,000 at the Keeneland September Sale of 2011 and also raced her in partnership.

“She showed lots of ability, won her first two races impressively,” he recalls. “We turned down a pretty sizeable sum for her. Then she hurt herself, and it was a career-ending injury. Three of us four partners stayed in and decided to use her as a broodmare, and it's been a good decision.”

So, too, was her retention (at just $1,200!) when offered for sale after The Chosen Vron was weaned. The mare is now at Legacy Ranch where she has recently delivered a second consecutive filly by Clubhouse Ride.

Vronsky himself died two years ago, and The Chosen Vron is unfortunately not equipped to continue the line having been castrated soon after entering training.

“He would go off behind intermittently,” explains Kruljac. “And we found out that he had a testicle hanging over a ligament in there, and causing him discomfort. Once we took that out, he traveled like a Bentley. Until we figured out what was going on, he would show his stuff, work really great—and then the next time, you might be a little disappointed. Gelding changed him more than any horse I've ever trained. Though I wish we'd left one in there! Anyway, he's been fabulous ever since. Just a great horse to be around in the barn. My boys have done a wonderful job with him.”

Kruljac traces his flair for horses to maternal grandfather Walter Markham, who raised pedigree cattle and Thoroughbreds on his ranch in Carmel Valley—along with nine grandchildren. Markham's trainer was Buster Millerick, who reached the Hall of Fame via the long career of Native Diver.

The Chosen Vron | Benoit Photo

“Buster loved my grandfather because he was an animal man,” Kruljac says. “My grandfather was a purebred Hereford stock breeder. They spoke the same language. Buster was a legend, but he'd run off all his clients, he was so mean. He had this little dog and when the owners came in the shedrow, he'd stick that dog on them!”

Kruljac himself was breeding his first horses by his early 20s.

“I had a little farm in Phoenix, Arizona,” he recalls. “I was just starting to train a few, and had a client who had an Alydar son that didn't make the races. Then I bought a couple of my own mares, and bred them to him. That didn't turn out so well! But I pretty much stayed with it. That's how I entered the game, breeding, which is crazy.”

But we do meanwhile need to ask about that left-field parallel career, as private detective. Kruljac says it wasn't as colorful as it sounds, his principal focus being compensation fraud. But he accepts with a chuckle that he must have been one of the few who ever came to the racetrack and found himself dealing with somewhat straighter people than previously.

“It takes all kinds, I'll tell you,” he acknowledges. “I ran my agency for about eight years. It's all pretty boring, until everything opens up. Mostly we were investigating people that the claims adjusters thought were faking injuries. We'd go out early in the morning and sit a quarter of a mile down the road, and then follow them and gather evidence that showed that they were malingerers.”

There was one memorable liability claim, concerning a couple and their three young boys.

“They'd already had two accidents where they'd be going up the ramp onto the freeway, and slam their brakes on until they get someone to run into them,” Kruljac recalls. “Anyway, we film them going into the doctor's office, all five with neck collars. Out they come, still with neck collars. And they drive off. All of a sudden, they pull into a grammar school. There's a jungle gym, swings and all this stuff, and these kids come running out of the car, one of them throws his neck brace up in the air, and they're jumping eight feet off this thing. We got this all on film.”

All the time, however, Kruljac was maintaining an interest in horses: a little breeding, a little trading, a few in training with a brother. When the latter quit, Kruljac shut down his agency and started training them himself, going full time at Turf Paradise at the age of 38. He has meanwhile accumulated as many as 1,240 winners, including seven individual graded stakes scorers.

These were memorably crowned by Leave Me Alone (Bold Badgett), who shipped over to win the GI Test S. by just under eight lengths in 2005. After she won a valuable sprint at Calder under Kent Desormeaux, his agent rang and implored Kruljac to look at her numbers and think about Saratoga.

Trainer J. Eric Kruljac (right) celebrates with jockey Hector Berrios | Benoit

“And she was training just incredibly, so we decided to take a shot,” Kruljac recalls. “I don't think I saw a filly run that fast until Gamine (Into Mischief) 20 years later. It was really incredible.”

Kruljac had bought her for just $35,000 as a yearling. “I saw her at an auction at an equestrian center outside of Del Mar,” he recalls. “Other than being totally crazy, while they were showing her, she was just incredibly athletic.”

He was originally intending to buy her for himself and bring in a couple of partners, but in the event secured her for a new client at the time, Steven Mitchell.

“And that worked out to be a great experience,” Kruljac says. “We flew in his jet to Saratoga, stayed in this house right across from the entrance. There were eight or nine of us, including his kids. So, the night before the race we tried to get dinner at [a noted Saratoga restaurant]. We went in there, and the guy says, 'Absolutely not. Sorry. We're totally booked.' Even though Mr. Mitchell tried to give him $500! Next day, after the race, we went back to the same place. The owner's boy was holding the saddle towel. This time the guy said, 'Sure, Mr. Mitchell. We'll make room for you.' Then as we're walking to the table, he says, 'And Mr. Mitchell, I will take that $500.'”

As it happens, The Chosen Vron reminds their trainer of Leave Me Alone: another tall and angular chestnut, with a great shoulder. That year, however, she was one of 86 winners from 383 starters for the barn. For Del Mar this summer, in contrast, Kruljac expects to have eight head; with four or five 2-year-olds to come through.

To be fair, the emphasis has meanwhile tilted towards the barn of his son Ian—whom he famously launched, when still his assistant, with a City Zip yearling he'd found for a client at $85,000. This turned out to be none other than Finest City, who won the GI Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Sprint before selling to Katsumi Yoshida for $1.5 million.

“I'm more interested in helping Ian out these days,” Kruljac concedes. “He's up there in Arcadia along with the people that have worked for me over 30 years. At 70, I'm slowing down a notch. I've pretty much made Del Mar my residence, so I've been commuting a lot for the last three or four months.”

Though still enchanted by his working environment, Kruljac recognizes the ongoing difficulties of the industry in his home state.

“And I'm still very concerned, because we've got a long way to go to get it anywhere close to what it was,” he reflects. “With these incredibly beautiful tracks, we've been spoiled. Now, with all the restrictions, the media, the finger-pointing, it's made it tough, for sure. The simulcast money is the only thing keeping our purses at the level that they are. But it appeared to be a really good weekend, as far as attendance and families coming out again, so that was encouraging. For me, anyway, it's heaven on earth.”

Kiss Today Goodbye | Benoit Photo

In the era of the super trainer, then, here is a barn that maintains the old lifeblood of the sport: a multi-generation horseman at the helm, with loyal and experienced help, all patiently devoted to the horses that could hardly warrant the same attention and perseverance in more industrial operations. It has been a labor of love, for instance, to coax Kiss Today Goodbye (Cairo Prince) back to form at the age of six for that third place in the GI Hollywood Gold Cup on Monday.

“Very difficult horse to train,” Kruljac admits. “My crew has done a fabulous job with him. It's taken us a long time to take his negative energy and make him a happy horse. It was worth the five or six months, though, so let's hope he keeps going forward now.”

And whisper it, but with a Breeders' Cup in his backyard this fall, perhaps we might even see the horse test the water this summer.

“We'll play it by ear,” Kruljac says. “See how he's training at that time. If he's as on fire as for the last few races, we might try the [GI] Bing Crosby, which would tell us whether he's good enough to think about that.

“It's been a long time since I've had a really good horse. But I've been blessed for the money I've been able to muster. Even for a couple of Vron's losses, there were things that went wrong in the race; and like I said, maybe I was running him back a little too quickly. But once we gave him the time, worked with him, brought him back slow, just handled him with kid gloves… I feel he's better than ever.

“To have this horse, at this point, I feel so fortunate and privileged. I'm fired up because of Vron, he gives you a little more energy to get up and get at it. So we're just living large right now, and thanking our lucky stars. Hopefully we can just keep this horse running for another year or two, keep him going onward and upward.”

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This Side Up: Why The Long Face?

As and when he finally quits riding the kids to sleep, at least John Velazquez doesn't have to worry about a next career. Because what he did in Baltimore last week showed him to have everything it takes to lead a cortege. Not just the restrained tempo, but also the way he reliably maintained all dignity and decorum while Irad Ortiz Jr. came lurching out of the procession in his usual unruly fashion.

True, Velazquez wouldn't last the first week if he were to lead a funeral at the same kind of lick as he did the GI Kentucky Derby field on Reincarnate (Good Magic), quite a contrast to the way he has previously hypnotized his pursuers in that race. But Johnny V. amply redressed that aberration with a masterly ride in the GI Preakness S. to confirm himself, for our community, as apt a companion as might be found for a horse bearing a name like National Treasure (Quality Road).

But we won't dwell on the cortege analogy, which will be far too morbid for some tastes in the prevailing atmosphere. This I must admit to viewing with some ambivalence. Because however troubled our relationship with Main Street, unrelieved “sackcloth and ashes” may yet cause us additionally to fail in the more straightforward priority of retaining our existing audience.

(Click the arrow below to hear this column as a podcast.)

 

Alongside a wholesome determination to keep improving, I do feel that we should stand up for the many glories of our sport with rather more pride than we seem able to find in our hearts just now. (It's like the old joke. Horse walks into a bar. Barman says, “Why the long face?”) We have so much to celebrate, so many stories to discourage mainstream complicity in the kind of extremist agenda that will tolerate zero risk; that would candidly prefer no horses at all, rather than expose them even to the most conscionable and scrupulously-managed risk. That position is invulnerable to the reminder that Thoroughbreds don't make terribly good house pets, so really, we need to concentrate on the far larger numbers who might share the aspiration of giving these noble creatures not just life but the best life possible.

John Velazquez wins the GI Preakness S. | Horsephotos

As Californian horsemen, veterinarians and administrators will confirm, that can raise the bar to challenging levels. But their collective efforts have produced such spectacular dividends, turning round an existential crisis virtually overnight, that I feel that the wider community has been inadequately grateful. Major investors in the industry have abandoned the Californian circuit to a pretty vicious circle: small fields, which diminish handle, which restricts purses, which reduces fields. Yet still it keeps coming up with champions, developed by some of the most accomplished horsemen of our time-regardless of where you happen to stand on the one who has just consolidated an incredible resumé with yet another Preakness.

Views of Bob Baffert, in fact, are a good example of all this wringing of hands. It sometimes feels as though you're only allowed to say one of two things: either he exemplifies everything that's wrong, or he's a maligned genius. And whichever camp you find yourself in, get ready for the invective.

All genius is flawed, because all genius is human. We certainly saw a human being last Saturday, but only in circumstances that maintained the bitter polemics. So much of our discourse, above all regarding HISA, is infected with venom; much of it is conveyed, at calamitous expense, by lawyers. But who wants to be invited to a civil war, instead of a garden party?

I do understand that parts of our community will only stir from their complacency if adequately alarmed by the costs of inaction. And yes, too much naïve enthusiasm might blind us to real dangers. It's even arguable that the way the geographical heart of the industry is thriving, in Kentucky, may insulate too much opinion against societal fissures that feel a world away.

Certainly, professional horsemen have their share of culpability in the loss of public traction. As I suggested last week, we're either breeding horses that aren't up to the task; or hiring trainers who won't properly explore the genetic attributes we may wish to replicate. In either scenario, a solution is absolutely within our hands.

But one other thing also needs to be understood by horsemen. You can't have it both ways: you can't refuse synthetic tracks, which are demonstrably safer, and also refuse more exacting regulation. If you won't accept the kind of strictures that redeemed dirt racing in California, then you'll just have to make do with synthetics.

And actually, that whole area is yet another that only tends to disclose division and misunderstanding. One of the main reasons for the perceived failure of the initial synthetics experiment was a prescriptive view of bloodlines, as adapted only to one type of surface. So, whatever our grievances with Churchill Downs, especially regarding Arlington, I'm glad to see them putting their shoulder to the Turfway wheel. Having loaded Turfway with starting points, they were rewarded with a trial winner who ran a brilliant second in the Derby. In the process, remember, Two Phil's precisely emulated his sire Hard Spun. Are we any more likely to take heed, this time round?

National Treasure at Pimlico | Jim McCue

While we're on the subject, I'm intrigued that the sire of the Preakness winner has lately surfaced among those extraneous speed influences sampled by Coolmore for their plethora of staying mares by Galileo (Ire). Quality Road's own track career was all about carrying speed on dirt. But his dam was by Strawberry Road (Aus), out of a half-sister to the dam of Bahri (Riverman); and of course, his sire Elusive Quality adapted very well to the European theater. Quality Road has had a couple of Royal Ascot winners, while his daughter Bleecker Street last year emerged as one of the elite grass talents in America. So, it's unsurprising that he should be looking like a promising experiment for Coolmore, not least through his son Cairo (Ire) who runs in a Classic at the Curragh on Saturday.

Actually, National Treasure himself has plenty of chlorophyll in his maternal family, while his first two dams are respectively by sons of El Prado (Ire) and Blushing Groom (Fr). But he's presumably never going to risk grass, when he's not getting anything like enough respect as it is.

The world outside is understandably aghast at our horrible run of breakdowns. But even those turning their gaze inwards just want to tell us what a terrible Preakness it was, and how we're clinging to the wreckage of an antediluvian Triple Crown. It evidently wasn't a “terrible” enough race for the Derby winner to swat aside horses that finished third and fourth in the crop championship at the Breeders' Cup. Sure, that was largely the work of Johnny V.–and emphatically nothing to do with a two-week turnaround-but if these races are so soft, please feel free to go and win one.

So, let's offer due congratulations to this very game animal; to the people who bred and raised him; and to those who found him, and have now brought out his potential. It was a difficult day, for sure, but life is full of ups and downs and horseracing is no different. In fact, that's exactly why its stories are so compelling; and why we must share not just our grief and guilt, but also our joy and pride.

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This Side Up: How To Make The Crown Fit Again

Nostalgia, they say, isn't quite what it used to be. In times past, it was not so much a wistful state of mind as an outright medical condition. The Union Army in the first two years of the Civil War reported precisely 2,588 cases, no fewer than 13 of which proved fatal. And I must admit to some concern that this may in fact be the version to which I am destined to succumb, nailed into the same coffin as the five-week Triple Crown.

The whole premise of nostalgia is irretrievability: the yearning for a time or place that can't be revisited. (Very often, perhaps, because it never existed in the first place.) This morbidity is suggested in the Greek stems of the word: nostos, homecoming, and algos, pain or distress. Unfortunately, while the first of these is doomed to remain notional, the second can even be national. It spills over into the here and now, corroding the happiness not just of individuals but whole societies. All round the world, we see populists promising to renew some golden age by restoring lapsed imperial or demographic boundaries.

But that observation obliges me to ask myself whether I'm doing anything so very different, in stubbornly resisting the groundswell towards Triple Crown reform?

With a solitary Kentucky Derby runner deigning to line up for the second leg of the series, for the first time since the current schedule was adopted in 1969, many whose opinions I respect appear to be accepting that there is no longer any point trying to turn back the side. They look at the seven runners in the GI Preakness S. on Saturday, and say the time has come to yield principle to pragmatism.

Well, they may be right. But first, I have a couple of questions. One is exactly where we can find this putative engagement with a disaffected wider public? Is it from having more competitive Triple Crown races, or is it from the romance of the quest itself?

Mage, Pimlico Race Course | Horsephotos

For a long time, during the drought between Affirmed and American Pharoah, we were told (despite several extremely close misses) that the assignment lay beyond the modern Thoroughbred and that we were duly squandering our best chance of engaging fan attention. On that basis, however, the defection of so many rivals clearly only enhances the prospects of Mage (Good Magic) heading to Belmont with a Triple Crown within reach. If that is supposed the grail of publicity, pricelessly combining heritage and accessibility, then does anyone imagine that casual viewers will tune out because the Preakness field lacked triple-figure Beyers?

But maybe the whole premise is wrong anyhow. If the Triple Crown is the best way of stemming our sport's drift from mainstream affections, then how do we assess the impact of the two we have saluted as recently as 2015 and 2018? While unanswerably demonstrating that the current schedule remains perfectly within the competence of the 21st Century Thoroughbred, American Pharoah and Justify hardly reversed the slide. As should be painfully obvious by now, we must address far more serious and challenging deficiencies in the way we present ourselves to a changing world.

Not that we can afford complacency in the audience we already have: the people, that is, who know enough about our arcane world to be dismayed by the lack of both quality and quantity in the field awaiting Mage at Pimlico. When so many indices are spiraling down, retention must be a still bigger priority than expansion. But a Triple Crown extended into July–which, in itself, might well stretch the fickle attention of a casual sports fan–could prove disastrous for other cherished races of high summer, especially now that horses are supposed to need a break before regrouping for a Breeders' Cup prep.

It is, as we know, the trainers who are driving this whole agenda. They have either seen or for some reason decided that horses today cannot soak up the kind of campaign that once allowed breeders a reliable measure of the kind of genetic resources they could aspire to replicate. The incidental benefit of this approach, of course, was precisely the fan engagement we have forfeited in protecting horses not only from competition but also from visibility.

The trainers have given the industry a choice. Either we concede that commercial breeding must be producing a Thoroughbred lacking the physical resources of its predecessors; or we candidly take issue with the trainers, and employ people who will explore the capacity of their charges more thoroughly. In both cases, however, the solution is in our own hands. What we are seeing in the Triple Crown series is a symptom of the problem, not the cause.

If it's about the physical caliber of the horses we are producing, then that obviously ties into another and far more serious challenge. If modern horses can't race twice under the same moon, or even stand up to federal regulation, then surely, we need to address the crazy situation where breeding for the sales ring has somehow become different from breeding a runner.

If it's simply the trainers that are wrong, however, then there are also things we can do about it. And that's not just because D. Wayne Lukas is still doing his thing at 87. I've regularly cited the example of another old master, Jim Bolger, just a couple of years ago running Poetic Flare (Ire) (Dawn Approach {Ire}) in three Classics in 22 days, before winning at Royal Ascot barely three weeks later; and, as often, deplored how only the Japanese could find a place for this horse at stud. But Bolger was also the mentor of Aidan O'Brien, who has himself frequently taken a similar approach. (One of my favorite instances was Peeping Fawn (Danehill). She was placed in a Classic 11 days after breaking her maiden at the fourth attempt; and then ran second in another, over an extra half-mile, five days after that. That experience so damaged her that she proceeded to four Group 1 wins inside eight weeks.)

Good Magic | Sarah Andrew

To me, it looks as though Bolger and O'Brien both believe that a thriving horse has a window of opportunity. And, on that basis, it may actually prove harder to maintain a Derby winner at the same peak for a Belmont in July than with the present calendar.

Most American trainers today evidently disagree. And look, I accept that times change. Mage himself, a horse we hadn't heard of 10 minutes ago, is a Derby winner for our times. He has a different scenario to tackle this time, and shouldn't give a start to one working as briskly as National Treasure (Quality Road). Even in this small field there are some pretty legitimate horses, and it's certainly an incredible achievement for Good Magic's first crop to yield three of seven starters in a Classic.

According to the behavior of trainers, it should be nearly inevitable that a raw colt like Mage regresses from his effort two weeks ago. If he happened to do that, however, it's a fair bet that whichever “mediocre” horse (not my view, I stress) took advantage could still be rewarded with 200 mares at stud next spring. Suffice to say that we have a lot of other stuff to sort out before we start scapegoating an anachronistic Triple Crown.

Good luck to Mage. He has a ton of talent. Who knows? Maybe he will prove the last Triple Crown winner over five weeks–and the last, therefore, who can validly claim parity with the previous 13. And then, when these elusive young fans become as old and grumpy as me, he may even be the stuff of nostalgia.

 

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