Chris McGrath column | Horse Racing Free Tips

This Side Up: Missing The Point

They used to say that all roads lead to Rome. Now they all seem to lead to Louisville, whether you're starting from the desert or up the road in Florence, Kentucky. Some of us, even so, still miss the forgotten turnpike long favored by horsemen of the old school. In fact, there are times when I fear that we might actually have found ourselves on the road that is notoriously paved with good intentions.

Saturday opens the third cycle of rehearsals offering starting points for the GI Kentucky Derby. The first offered some marginal reward for precocity, with no more than 20 points (10 to the winner) for the vast majority of juvenile and what might be termed “short juvenile” (Jerome/Sham-style) qualifiers. Conspicuously, even these preclude sprint speed. The next phase, offering between 40 and 100 points, virtually guarantees the bigger scorers a start on the first Saturday in May; and now we enter this closing series of trials, three of which immediately give even placed horses every prospect of prying open a gate with their share of a whopping 200 points.

Not everyone will agree that all three merit quite that kind of help, and cynics will doubtless perceive some political considerations at play. The Jeff Ruby is only a Grade III race, run on synthetics, but it is staged at a track owned by Churchill Downs. And then there's the UAE Derby, a Group 2 staged halfway round the world.

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It's not hard to see why a flying carpet should be provided direct from Meydan to Louisville, when the most lavish benefactor in the sport's history was for a long time so animated by the idea of winning the Kentucky Derby from his own homeland. For one reason or another, however, his stable lately seems to be leaving this particular path pretty clear.

Last year both the first two, respectively trained in Japan and locally, took their chips to the counter for a trip to Kentucky and actually had a decisive impact on the day, tearing off at such reckless speed that they set up something that has become extremely rare since the sprinters were banished from the Derby: a success from way off the pace.

Rich Strike (Keen Ice) himself, of course, had only made the bench because of 20 points banked when third in the Jeff Ruby, though what ultimately got him into the race was the solitary point he had previously earned for running fourth in the John Battaglia. That's another race on the synthetic at Turfway, by the way, and one this year upgraded to 40 points (from 17).

Rich Strike wins the 148th Kentucky Derby | Coady Photography

Yet I think it's only fair to acknowledge an inherent and evolving legitimacy to the kind of competition stimulated both by the UAE Derby, and the “back road” to Churchill along Interstate 71.

Rich Strike at least made it necessary to be open-minded about what sometimes happens when a horse transitions out of the synthetic trials-something to remember when it comes to the revelatory performance of Raise Cain (Violence) in the GIII Gotham S. That said, I still cling fiercely to the conviction that fewer horses than we tend to assume have that kind of emphatic specialism. Indeed, switching the race we now know as the Jeff Ruby to a synthetic surface very soon produced a couple of poster boys, in that respect, in Hard Spun and Animal Kingdom.

The Meydan race, meanwhile, has over the last decade been won by several elite talents. One was later beaten a nose in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic; another won two G1 Dubai World Cups; another ran second in the GI Travers that summer; while 2021 winner Rebel's Romance (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}) returns to this card for the GI Longines Dubai Sheema Classic as a Breeders' Cup champion.

The international landscape continues to shift under our feet, so that even Dubai must now adapt to the intrusion of an even richer program in Riyadh-albeit hardly facing the kind of identity crisis its own emergence created for storied races like the GI Santa Anita Handicap. But one particular trend just continues to consolidate, with the Japanese in Riyadh having continued to hammer their flag into the top of the global pyramid.

They have got here, at least in part, by embracing aspects of the Thoroughbred that the American and European industries have disparaged as uncommercial. The Japanese have prized stamina and soundness, and they have resisted narrow, prescriptive thinking about what kind of blood works on what kind of surface.

Meydan Racecourse, Dubai | Horsephotos

Apart from anything else, that should discourage any resentment of the way the synthetic route to the Derby is being promoted at Turfway. Far more profoundly, however, the Japanese example should prompt Americans and Europeans alike to retrieve the faith their predecessors showed in the transferability of genetic prowess, when they sent likes of Nasrullah (Ire) and various sons of Northern Dancer on reverse journeys over the ocean.

As I've said before, the final straw came in 2021 when no European or American farm was prepared to match Japan's interest in Poetic Flare (Ire) (Dawn Approach {Ire}) after he contested Classics in three different countries in 22 days (won the first, and was beaten a short head on heavy ground in the third having run in France six days earlier) before taking his form to a new level in the G1 St. James's Palace S. the following month.

In stupefying contrast, the most accomplished horse in the GI Twinspires.com Louisiana Derby has been given two months to soak up his success in the GIII Lecomte S. So, while this race, historically, would seem a far more congenial environment for the distribution of 200 starting points than Meydan or Turfway, arguably the points system is facilitating a deplorable contrast to the way Jim Bolger promoted the genetic wares of Poetic Flare.

I can't presume to say whether it's the trainers themselves, or the breeders who provide their raw materials, that bear most responsibility for the idea that a Derby colt should be deliberately confined to one start in January and another in March. (To be clear, this is a general complaint-we're not singling out this particular horse's trainer here. The juvenile champion has been handled in very similar fashion.) At least the Fair Grounds trials have all been extended in distance, giving these horses a little more conditioning on the rare occasions we get to see them, with striking recent dividends. But having often lamented how the exclusion of sprinters has diluted the Kentucky Derby, as the ultimate showcase for the ability to carry speed, I now fear that it is watering down the breed in other respects, too.

If they're going to stick with the points system-and clearly they are-then maybe it's time to consider some kind of weighting in favor of those who make the road to the Derby a more diverse and interesting place; and the Derby itself a more instructive test. Bonus points or tiebreak advantage, perhaps, to the horse that shows merit over a spectrum of distances and/or surfaces, or even just for each start made.

Crazy ideas, no doubt, in a world where people are more interested in making a fast buck than breeding a fast horse. So crazy, in fact, that they might even be quite sensible.

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Sadler Staying On Flight Path

As noted by colleague Bill Finley earlier in the week, we've just passed the 50^th anniversary of Secretariat's sophomore debut. Yet even two years ago hardly anyone had heard of an unraced son of Tapit, meanwhile acclaimed by many as the best American Thoroughbred since.

Okay, so he had been a seven-figure yearling; and everyone who had participated in his education knew that he was something special. In fact, John Sadler was so aware of the impending responsibility that he was saying nothing. For one thing, if people had any inkling of the talent he was about to detonate, the races wouldn't have filled. But also because this, like all secrets, was a burden as well as a privilege.

Looking back, Sadler accepts that doing justice to Flightline felt like so intense a duty that it could not come without some personal cost.

“I kind of devoted my time to him to a point where I probably shut some people out,” he admits. “The odd dinner at night, that kind of thing. I really drilled down, I said to myself, 'I'm going to walk this walk with this horse.' I wanted to be right alongside him, every step, because I knew it was going to be so special. So here I am today, light mood, happy as heck, because I always said my time to celebrate would be when it was over. Very early on, I said to myself: 'I'd like to pitch a perfect game.' That's a career goal. And we did.”

But so much of life is about the pursuit, rather than the actual moment of fulfilment. Sadler, tall and bronzed, looks in great shape at 66. But now that he has consummated a generational dream, can he still maintain the same motivation?

“We've been pondering that a lot,” he acknowledges. “But like B. Wayne Hughes of Spendthrift Farm used to say, 'My health insurance is that group of yearlings over there.'”

So, while he knows that he can hardly expect another Flightline, Sadler also feels that the true horseman's appetite, happily enough, can never be finally sated.

“I'm pretty confident I'll have a lot of good horses come my way, because I still want to do it,” he says. “If there's a time to not do it, I'll know when that is. Somebody said I'd retire right after Flightline. But rushing into a decision like that, with horses, is always rash. Time will see where we're at. I've got some really good young people in my operation. They've invigorated me the last several years and really make me excited about the future. My assistant Juan Leyva is just going to be a phenom, and I've a couple of other guys like that. So I'm really not feeling a lot of pressure.”

And, actually, that's just why it's appropriate to catch up with Sadler now, when the dust has settled and Flightline is embarking on a new career at Lane's End. Because the horse himself was such a meteor, burning with almost agonizing brightness as it became clear how fleeting his passage was likely to be, that he almost became a communal possession. As such, we rather lost sight of his more intimate context: of the decades of groundwork that prepared Sadler for the task that would define his career.

That long accretion of experience didn't just make him eligible, but also duly appreciative. Yes, he could feel vindicated–not least after the notorious torments he endured, for much of his career, at the Breeders' Cup–but the true gratification was personal, not public. Because for the great horsemen, it's about the process, the daily and seasonal cycles of engagement. If that ultimately produces a champion, then it all makes sense. And, that being so, then of course you continue with the immersion.

“Totally, a lifestyle,” he replies, when asked how he views his vocation now. “It's the journey that I've always loved: horses coming in, and seeing where they go. You don't want to be like a claiming trainer, slashing around here and there, but to develop horses. I think that's where my strong suit is. And for this to hit at this time, in the latter part of my career, is so special. When I started out, I wanted to be known as a good professional. I know I achieved that. But then to get these great horses is gravy on my career.”

Because don't forget that Sadler started out right at the other end of the scale. With no background in the game, he learned under tough, old-school horsemen, and laid the foundations of his own career with tough, fast Cal-breds.

“I've had to battle stereotypes my whole career,” he muses. “When you're a young trainer, you get locally-bred horses and those happen to be sprinters. And we did well with them. So, as I started getting better horses over the years, and won important races over a distance of ground, that's fun. But every year they'd write how Sadler can't win at the Breeders' Cup. And you'd be beaten a head. Or find yourself running against Miesque. I think I did that three years, and I ran against Goldikova a couple of times, too. And when you do that, it doesn't matter if you have the best turf horse in California.”

Flightline | Breeders' Cup Eclipse Sportswire

But if Sadler had a long wait for the best materials, in one respect he could not have been more blessed.

“Oh, absolutely!” he exclaims. “I came under a brilliant class of horsemen. They may not have all been perfect human beings. In that era, they might have smoked or drank too much. But they were self-made guys and really knew what they were doing.”

He absorbed priceless insights assisting racetrack vet Dr. Jack Robbins, observing the day-to-day methods of clients like Ron McAnally and Gary Jones.

“It was great practice,” he says. “I loved that we were going in all these different barns: you could take something from every one of them and then build your own program. And Dr. Robbins himself was so smart. A tremendous veterinarian, obviously, but also a successful horse owner, one of the charter members of the Oak Tree Racing Association. Tough guy, opinionated guy, smoker, drinker, but just a great man.”

Robbins could see that his protégé was unusually attentive. Sadler might say, “Oh, Doctor, I went over to such-and-such a barn and suggested a vitamin shot for that horse.” And Robbins would reply, “Oh John, no, that was a terrible idea!” And then he'd wink.

Sadler also learned a great deal as assistant to Dave Hofmans, though his big break came in 1979 when Eddie Gregson had taken on a big client and was looking for someone, he could trust to take four or five to Golden Gate Fields. There were things going on–a pari-mutuel strike, people shipping out–and Sadler quickly learned not to turn down horses. By the end of spring, he was up to 30 or 40.

Gregson's heartbreaking end, by his own hand, still grieves all who knew him. “He was really a bright guy, very sensitive, he knew food and wine and was very cultured,” Sadler recalls. “It caught everybody off guard, nobody saw that coming. But you never know what goes on with people. A great guy and a great trainer also.”

Besides these mentors, Sadler cherishes no less affection for the horses who also assisted his education. He'll never forget the $100,000 match, at Santa Anita in 1991, where his Cal-bred speedball Valiant Pete (The Irish Lord) beat Quarter Horse champion Griswold in a world record dash. And then there was the $50,000 claim Olympic Prospect (Northern Jove).

“He didn't run very well the day we claimed him,” Sadler recalls. “But he became really an important horse for me, early on. You couldn't train him very hard, but he ended up winning every sprint stake in the state. One day Patrick Valenzuela got on him, I can't remember what happened to the usual jock, in a race called the Potrero Grande [now the GIII Kona Gold S.]. He just let him roll, and they went that first half-mile in 42-and-change. And won! I mean, he was tiring at the end. But I've never seen that, before or since.”

With that kind of background, it meant a great deal to Sadler gradually to disclose a mastery with two-turn horses. Whatever pinnacle it might also represent in the story of the breed, let's not forget that Flightline last summer–by a bewildering 19¼ lengths–was his barn's fourth different GI Pacific Classic winner in five years, all owned (part-owned, in this case) by Sadler's cherished patrons at Hronis Racing.

That streak was started by the slow-burning Accelerate (Lookin At Lucky), whose campaign at five would have made him a lock for Horse of the Year but for landing in the same ballot as an unbeaten Triple Crown winner. He remains Sadler's richest runner at $6.7 million. “I just love him to death,” Sadler says. “His foals are going to be like him, they'll be later types, but I've two or three [of his first crop] that I really like and I'm expecting a lot of them to come forward as the year goes on.”

But Flightline was a freak from the outset. “He never hid his talent,” Sadler says. “April Mayberry called me from the farm and said, 'John, this horse gives me goosebumps.' She's been doing it a long time, and the only other to give her that feeling had been Zenyatta. So, we were expecting a lot when he came in. And even after the first, short piece of work, we were all just going, 'Wow.'

John Sadler with Flavien Prat | Benoit

“I mean, usually, I have to train them up. This horse, it was just a straight line. He's already there. He was so willing, from day one he just wanted to do it. Most of the early training was about getting him to relax and carry his speed. Even when he broke a little slow, he was very keen to charge out there between horses and push them aside. So, it was just about calming him down a little.”

While it was bittersweet only to race Flightline six times, Sadler absolutely understood his retirement. It would have been virtually impossible to find domestic opposition, unless or until a sophomore champion proved willing to take him on, while the insurance of fresh challenges overseas would have been eye-watering.

Whatever life after Flightline may comprise, it's been an incredible odyssey for the stockbroker's son who gazed across a paddock fence one summer vacation and fell in love with the horses grazing there. It should plainly end in the Hall of Fame, for which Sadler has a belated nomination this year. In some ways, perhaps he doesn't stand out from the production line of his profession merely in terms of his craggy six feet and four inches. And he does admit that there have been times when he has sensed a little resistance, notably in East Coast perceptions.

“You get that a little bit,” Sadler concedes with a shrug. “But you know what, when you've been training a long time, I don't really let those things bother me. I love training a stable of horses. I like where I train. I'm very comfortable doing what I'm doing. And, when you've been doing it a long time, you tend to end up with clients that are people you really like. So, I feel I'm in a good place. Like I said, I've hit most of the marks I want to. You can't worry about that kind of stuff. I mean, anything can happen with horses–and that's what's fun.”

That willingness to fight your corner, feisty and independent, was something he always loved about the California circuit.

“I was always trying to model after the guys that might not have had the best horses, but were always very hard to beat,” he remembers. “Even back then, they went out and won everywhere. I loved Tommy Doyle going over to win the Belmont [in 1975, with Avatar]. When California ships out, the results have always been amazing–and continue to be, to this day.

“We don't have gaming or casinos but we have the most beautiful tracks in the world and we always hold our own. Yes, when there's 15 protestors, versus 40,000 on opening day, and I'm signing autographs with Flavien Prat for an hour and a half, it's the 15 protestors that get all the noise. But California's led the way in all sorts of reforms. It's an adjustment, but you either embrace it or get stuck in the past.”

Sure enough, California has now given us one of the all-time greats soon after producing the only Triple Crown winners of modern times; not to mention a mare that arguably reached a wider public than any of them. Zenyatta's trainer, incidentally, is also deservedly nominated for the Hall of Fame–and would certainly join Sadler in stressing their shared debt to David Ingordo, now purchaser of three GI Breeders' Cup Classic winners.

“I was a friend of David's father so I've known him since he was in short pants,” Sadler says with a chuckle. “Actually, I do have a picture of him in short pants! He calls me Uncle John sometimes. So, it's been fun for me, and a source of great pride, to see how his business has developed. He's a tremendous, tireless worker, and obviously brilliant at it.”

Whether on behalf of his closest circle, then, or the entire Turf community, Sadler says he's profoundly grateful for the benediction he shared over the past couple of years.

“Many of the horses Flightline beat were really never the same afterwards,” he remarks. “He was a very dominant colt. At the Breeders' Cup one morning, Juan was coming off the track just as Epicenter was going up and Juan said he could feel Flightline rise up under him, literally making himself bigger like a rooster, as that horse came by.”

And something else happened that week. One morning Sadler's phone rang and there was Ron McAnally, 90 years old and still rooting for that lofty young man who used to follow Dr. Robbins round the barn.

“John,” McAnally said. “Don't let those photographers bother Flightline. I had that once with a horse, they were pestering him every five minutes, and he didn't run any good.” Sadler hardly needed telling, but was still blown away. “Okay, Ronnie, I really appreciate that.”

Ron McAnally | Benoit

McAnally, of course, had bred Rock Your World (Candy Ride {Arg}), who won the GI Santa Anita Derby for Sadler a couple of years ago. That connection had given him an extra buzz, and now it was adding something memorable to the Flightline adventure, too.

“That was a special call for me,” Sadler says. “He's one of the good guys and it was great that he wanted to pass that on to me, that he was still thinking of me. Like I said, as a young trainer I relied on the older guys a lot. I had great mentors. You'd sit around in the cafeteria, and these guys were so colorful, some of them in that era were doubtless politically incorrect–but they knew their stuff.”

By the same token, nothing pleases Sadler more today than when a young trainer seeks his counsel. Evidently that doesn't happen as often as a generation ago.

“That's a shame because horsemen are really very generous with their knowledge,” Sadler says. “I think to be a good horseman is intuition based on experience. And I do have the background: I walked hots, I groomed, I came up from the bottom of the stable. I didn't come in at the management level. So, I put in the years. And it's been a great journey. None of this happened overnight. It's like the guy that did 50 movies before he won the Academy Award. It's a lifetime of work.”

The post Sadler Staying On Flight Path appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Value Sires For 2023 – Part II: First Foals Due

The group we consider today for now retains a convenient gloss, still in the happy position of offering “all talk, no action.” But they will actually have got as far as delivering their first flesh-and-bone foals into the straw by the time they start receiving their second book of mares. And many of the people who exploited their novelty value last year will automatically have moved on to the next intake of rookies, rather than expose themselves to the peril that the market won't like a debut crop. Foals conceived by these stallions in 2023 will go to yearling sales at a time when their first juveniles have begun to dip a toe into the racetrack water, and the “wait-and-see” bubble in a stallion's career nowadays comes earlier than ever.

We know that far too many foals are brought into the world to do no more than stand gleaming on a dais for two minutes. Farms have duly had to devise all manner of incentive schemes to keep their young guns in the game long enough to show what their maturing stock can actually do on a racetrack. Whether through loyalty incentives or the support of a home herd, then, the biggest debut books of 2022 will typically be followed by the biggest second books of 2023.

Independence Hall, Rock Your World, Charlatan and Yaupon respectively covered 202, 219, 222 and a staggering 242 mares this spring, Yaupon busier than any sire in the land bar Gun Runner himself. Everyone who used these stallions will understand that there will be no shortage of competition in the 2023 weanling and 2024 yearling catalogues. But they will be comforted that Mendelssohn and Justify, launched with 252 mares apiece in 2019, both obliged with the necessary commercial performance when their first yearlings reached the ring.

The fact is that ringside investors tend to do much as they are told, in the sense that yearling averages for new sires tend to mirror the sequence of their fees pretty slavishly. When you have such huge samples, admittedly, those averages will inevitably embrace a wide spectrum of triumph and disaster. But that's simply the nature of horse business. I reckon that if you're in for a cent, you might as well stay in for a dollar. If you bred to a new stallion last year because you actually believe in his inherent merit, and not just in the robotic reliability of new sires at the sales ring… then stick with the program!

On which basis, there are limited grounds for altering the medals we awarded to freshmen last year. Certainly you know to back away with a polite smile if ever somebody starts bragging about covering sire averages, which are almost wholly incidental to the quality of those mares randomly offered for sale. Fees, too, almost invariably remain stable at this point. But there is one new factor in play, and that's the traction or otherwise implied by opening books. And that has caused some revision in our pecking order.

Bubbling Under

Honestly, the horse to stop, once those babies start sending purse money into the freshman's table, probably has to be CHARLATAN. A handsome and brilliant animal with a great shape to his pedigree, he will have matched all that quantity with plenty of quality in his first book–and that is just what you want to hear at $50,000. But we'll try to find him some competition at somewhat lesser cost.

While the size of Yaupon's first book will doubtless divide opinion, you have to respect what the sheer demand says about him, not least as a physical specimen. But if you have to settle for a cheaper son of Uncle Mo, how about one whose debut book of 142 also promises perfectly healthy racetrack opportunity? Because MODERNIST channels a lot of pedigree for $10,000 at Darby Dan. Anything out of a Bernardini mare gives you hope: a Bernardini half-sister to Breeders' Cup winners Sweet Catomine (Storm Cat) and Life Is Sweet (Strom Cat) might give you something nearer confidence. Modernist was obviously a tier below the best of his generation but showed enough to suggest these genes had due functionality, and he has a physique of real charisma.

At the same fee, KNOWN AGENDA was made pick of this intake last year and I do retain every faith in his eligibility. Hopefully others will do the same, because he does require a little imagination: he showed his true caliber only fairly briefly, when transformed by blinkers coming into the GI Florida Derby; and he also has an unfamiliar European family to contend with, though in its detail this should actually be viewed as a major asset by any who actually want to breed a runner.

Known Agenda did muster 166 mares at Spendthrift, albeit that is hardly exceptional at a farm with a portcullis that descends quite slowly! I remain confident that he will produce plenty of winners from what should, in a sane world, be considered lavish numbers. Pending the commercial cycles he must negotiate in the meantime, however, for now he narrowly yields his place on the podium after a couple of rivals, based at farms known for their relative restraint, rather surprisingly shadowed or even exceeded his opening book.

BRONZE:
BEAU LIAM (Liam's Map–Belle of Perintown by Dehere)
$6,000 Airdrie

By the standards of his farm, which prizes old-school virtues, this guy looked a candid commercial play: a bright but brief meteor across the speed-figures firmament. And, lo, they have been knocked over in the rush! So much so, that he was permitted as many as 162 mares, an extravagance that made him the busiest gentleman on their roster.

And, to be fair, at this kind of price he's a bet to virtually nothing for breeders who have seen Maclean's Music build so impressively on a foundation as narrow as a single, clock-melting start. Beau Liam, in comparison, was a grizzled veteran! He twice corroborated his blazing speed after becoming the fastest 6f maiden winner (by seven and a half lengths) recorded at no less a venue than Churchill Downs, by then posting Beyers of 106 and 107 in sprints at Saratoga.

He was then turned over at odds-on for his graded stakes debut and disappeared for good, but there's obviously going to be a sequel judged from the way breeders responded to the rest of the package–which is actually backed up by a highly plausible pedigree.

His dam is an eight-length GII Silverbulletday S. winner by Dehere, who has somewhat emulated his own sire's distaff influence (notably as damsire of City Of Light); and she has additionally produced three stakes and/or graded stakes performers and/or producers. And her own granddam was Grade I winner/Kentucky Oaks runner-up Jeanne Jones (Nijinsky), a half-sister to Avenue Of Flags (Seattle Slew).

With those genes and now those numbers behind him–not just the speed figures, but a book absolutely bursting at the seams–Beau Liam could well have an impact on the freshman table way above his opening fee. Those who get involved now, then, may very well find themselves ahead of the game.

SILVER:
TACITUS (Tapit–Close Hatches by First Defence)
$10,000 Taylor Made

Good things afoot at this farm, with Not This Time leading the way but a well-bred newcomer joining the roster in Idol plus two of the most promising of the previous intake in Knicks Go and Tacitus.

Knicks Go was obviously the more accomplished racehorse of that pair but while a very realistic fee made full allowance for his less glamorous pedigree, it was the royally-bred Tacitus who proved in greater demand when pitched at no less tempting a level. Tacitus covered no fewer than 188 mares, 37 more than Knicks Go, making it clear that breeders were willing to set aside the contrasting curves in their respective racetrack careers.

Tacitus actually won only one of his final dozen starts, when outclassing overmatched rivals in the GII Suburban S., but that did scant justice to the raw ability that had launched him into the GI Kentucky Derby via the GII Tampa Bay Derby (stakes record) and GII Wood Memorial. He had a wide trip in both Triple Crown starts, third (promoted) at Churchill and second at Belmont, but it's not as though he accumulated only excuses thereafter–as a final bank of nearly $3.8 million will attest.

But the key is that his palpable eligibility for the best company, regardless of occasional flaws in execution, was founded in one of the best pedigrees in the book. Curated through its last three generations by Juddmonte, who sent champion Close Hatches to Tapit for her first cover, it traces to the matriarch Best In Show (Traffic Judge) as fifth dam.

An adjacent branch has produced recent Irish Classic winner Siskin, who shares a sire with Close Hatches and is now at stud in Japan. That fortifies the depth we like to see in the third and fourth generations, here saturated with celebrated mares whose genetic potency is corroborated beyond this particular pedigree.

Breeders were invited to roll the dice at this fee and their response gives Tacitus every chance of demonstrating his competence as a conduit for these priceless genes. Grade I ability, Grade I pedigree, at barely a Grade III price.

GOLD:
SILVER STATE (Hard Spun–Supreme by Empire Maker)
$20,000 Claiborne

Woah, what's going on here? A rookie stallion entertaining 171 mares at Claiborne?

We trust that this startling number doesn't mean that the commercial tide is beginning to encroach even this farm, whose clients have long been blessed by that precarious blend: a fair opening fee, without swamping the marketplace. It's always good to have a spectrum of different models to help breeders make their decisions. At the same time, we all trade in a tough environment and everyone must be indulged a degree of pragmatism. After all, we have just elevated a similar outlier, Beau Liam, to this podium for another farm known for its restraint.

Regardless, the one thing we can safely take from this debut–by way of comparison, the previous year War Of Will had been as heavily subscribed as any Claiborne newcomer with a full book of 143–is that there must have been pretty ferocious demand for Silver State. Nor is his book just about quantity. Of 153 mares in foal, Claiborne report 24 to be stakes winners and 30 dams of stakes winners.

And it's not hard to see why this should be. Silver State matured into a very good racehorse, crowning a six-race streak with success in that luminous stallion signpost, the GI Met Mile, but is entitled to do better yet in his second career. That's because his pedigree combines Darby Dan royalty top and bottom, tied together by Roberto as sire of Hard Spun's third dam, a half-sister to Little Current; and also of Silver State's fourth dam, who was out of a half-sister to the dam of Dynaformer. Closer up, Silver State's graded stakes-placed dam is out of a sister to Monarchos.

So there's a ton of wholesome seeding behind this horse, quite apart from his outstanding appeal as a short cut to the attenuating influence of Danzig, who of course stood here himself. Hard Spun, a nugget of value in his own right, is the youngest custodian of his sire's legacy in North America, the line having meanwhile become a breed-changing power in Europe and indeed Australia.

All the Classic branding in Silver State's pedigree, moreover, boiled down into plenty of commercial speed–this is the author of five triple-digit Beyers, remember, who launched his big spree with a seven-length romp in a sprint–and he is a thing of beauty. As a $450,000 yearling, he was the fourth most expensive Hard Spun of his crop but has since matured into his big frame as a real prince. He's 16.3 but so buoyant and smooth that you would barely know it.

The silver medal was too obvious a magnet for a horse bearing this name last year, but in the circumstances it feels imperative to move him up a step. If his first book has a surprisingly modern size, the horse himself is a throwback–from his pedigree, to that invincible sequence wrought from resilience as well as class–and he feels a beautiful fit at his grandsire's home farm.

Here, in short, is a silver mine where breeders can strike gold.

The Value Podium: First Foals Due

Gold: SILVER STATE $20,000 Claiborne
Old-school merit has caused a stampede at his grandsire's farm

Silver: TACITUS $10,000 TaylorMade
Due reward after regal genes were offered at tempting fee

Bronze: BEAU LIAM $6,000 Airdrie
Speedball has been very quick to snowball

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The Bare Bones: a Primer with Dr. Bramlage

He hasn't got all day; nor, doubtless, do you. So let's cut to the chase. We won't dwell on the journey that has made Dr. Larry Bramlage a doyen of orthopedic science, in its daily application to the racehorse: not the alphabet soup of honors and distinctions, nor the long experience that has honed the sharpest diagnostic eye in the business through 23 years with Rood and Riddle. We have simply dropped into the clinic, on a recent visit to Lexington, to direct a brief sunbeam of his knowledge and insight into the practices of those who depend for a living on the miraculous but fragile equilibrium of the bones that support a Thoroughbred.

“Racehorses are so good because they produce their skeleton based upon what they do,” Bramlage begins. “They're not born with it. Their skeleton is the minimum weight that they can produce and still carry them around the racetrack. So they have a big engine, but their undercarriage is no heavier than it needs to be. And that's why they're fast.”

That's true, in some evolutionary measure, of all horses–and other animals, too, people included.

“The skeleton is different than hearts and lungs and muscles,” Bramlage explains. “Those train to a volume of work that you're doing. Skeleton trains to the level of work that you do.”

He recalls a series of experiments conducted on turkeys some years ago, where one wing was restricted and the fowls learned to flap the other to get food. The idea was to establish how many cycles of this activity were required to stimulate bone.

“Well, it's interesting,” Bramlage says. “Because when you reach 36 cycles in a day, that's the maximum the bone will respond to. You can go to 2,000 and it won't get any stronger than in those 36. And that's what makes a trainer's job tough. Because they have to push the horses hard enough, that they get strong enough to carry themselves around the racetrack. But if you do too much, then those extra cycles begin to be destructive.”

Those 36 cycles, for our purposes, apparently equate to about a furlong. Which, Bramlage explains, means that your fastest eighth will be the level for which your horse produces bone. Obviously that doesn't happen overnight, albeit bone is far more dynamic than most laymen assume.

“But the stimulus is there that it'll try to reach that next level before the exercise does,” Bramlage explains. “And then you repeat that over and over, and eventually the skeleton gets appropriate enough that you don't acquire any damage during those 36 cycles. So while there's some always ongoing wear-and-tear, the most important part of making a racehorse is usually up to four or five races. Once they get there, their skeleton is virtually made.”

The living nature of bone, however, does mean that the “made” skeleton can regress once taken out of training. But Bramlage is keen to address a misapprehension, which took root maybe a decade ago, that persistently galloping a young horse creates the foundation for a strong skeleton.

“Galloping a horse a lot helps the heart and lungs–but once you go past those 36 cycles in a day, the rest of them are just wear-and-tear,” he explains. “A lot of horses were actually harmed by excess galloping.”

Previously there had also been the attempt to extrapolate the principles of interval training, in human athletes. “I knew a couple of people who, as runners themselves, were going to interval train and beat everybody,” he recalls. “And they ended up with 4-year-old maidens with splints on their hind legs. Because the skeleton just can't take that that many fast intervals. In people, the limiting system is the heart and lungs, not the skeleton. Horses have such great heart and lungs that, unless they're bleeders, they virtually never limit. The horse's heart and lungs can respond to anything you throw at them. But the skeleton has to do it in little stair steps. And that's how, in young horses especially, the heart and lungs often get ahead of the skeleton.”

Though the tibia also registers trouble here–it absorbs a lot of force, in locking the reciprocal motion of stifle and hock–the most familiar symptom is shin trouble.

“You go too fast, the wear-and-tear begins to exceed the response and you get bucked shins,” Bramlage continues. “Shins have to triple in size. The front cortex of a cannon bone in a 'made' racehorse is three times thicker than in the yearling that started training.”

So how does this translate, ideally, into building up a young horse towards a race? Bramlage suggests a pretty familiar scenario: one or two furlongs at a rather higher level than the rest of the exercise, in effect showing the skeleton where it's going to be asked to go in three days' time. The real skill, in training, is monitoring attitude.

“People ask, what makes a good trainer?” he says. “For me, it's an easy question. It's being able to understand when the horse is happy and when he's not. When horses are adapting well, they're happy to train. When a horse starts not wanting to go to the track in the morning, not wanting to load in the gate, those are the kind of things you need to look out for. It's a real art for trainers to understand when to push a horse and when to back off.”

Obviously you would hope that trial and error, over the generations, should have brought horsemen's intuitions pretty close to where they might land through learned science.

“If you go back to when Aiken, South Carolina, was the winter training center–because that's how far the railroad went south–they would have the Aiken trials and those 2-year-olds, early on, would be breezing an eighth,” Bramlage says. “Those short breezes were actually very useful to the horses. Especially when you're making the horse, it's a matter of trying to train heart and lungs–because you have to do that–without overtraining the skeleton.”

When a horse is past that stage, but has to be laid off training, the skeleton will not lose much strength through the first month but the situation will change pretty rapidly after two months. And a more significant spell, say four months, notoriously invites humeral or tibial stress fractures in a small number of horses: again, because heart and lungs train back so much faster than the skeleton.

Needless to say, by the time a horse is sent into the clinic, they have typically signaled a loss of form.

“If a horse has swelling in a knee or ankle, those guys at the racetrack pick it up,” Bramlage says. “These horses [sent into the clinic] don't have any obvious pain, heat or swelling, but their form has gone down. And a lot of times they have either bilateral lameness–two fronts or two hinds, sometimes all four–or they're just early wear-and-tear injuries. I think most of the really successful trainers today understand better than they did 10 years ago that the horse is subject to that wear-and-tear; and that whenever a horse is not giving you what it can, then you need to start looking.”

Parallel advances have been made in imaging technology. It is barely 30 years since radiographs were still processed on celluloid. Digital radiographs have themselves improved dramatically, and now scanning in three dimensions via CAT and MRI and ultimately PET is available.

“Nuclear imaging was a huge tool because those scans allowed us to look for stress fractures that didn't have any outward clinical signs,” Bramlage says. “But whenever regulators think in terms of needing a PET scan to monitor horses at the racetrack, that's not really true. You need to look at them and identify the horse that needs to be looked at, not scan them all. Most of those can be unraveled using all the tools we currently have. It's just a matter of knowing when you need to look. And so more than we need more equipment, we just need to look more often.”

The role of regulatory veterinarian is a contentious and evolving one. The process is being aided, however, by a growing injury database to succeed anecdotal assumption. Already Bramlage can see where this might take the profession.

“It may not hit during my lifetime, but I think the next really exciting revolution, which is going to totally change our care of racehorses, is digital timing,” he says. “It just makes sense that it will eventually move away from clockers and all be done passively, automatically, by the equipment. Well, when you have that data, it's not a real hard step to write an algorithm that identifies [problems that may be brewing].

“You could look at a horse's exercise fingerprint because stride length and stride cycle is pretty stable for individual horses. When the length begins to shorten, he's protecting something. And so each horse will have his own digital fingerprint, and this will be automatically recorded every time a horse works, every time they race. And all of a sudden you can say, 'This horse is getting into trouble.'”

Some early research has detected patterns that might anticipate injury as many as three races ahead. Bramlage can see a future where every horse will transmit data to central monitoring for red flags. For now, until the necessary technology is available, it falls to people like Bramlage to determine the level of risk that warrants its prohibitive cost.

“But I think that in the next generation beyond me, that will become automated,” he predicts. “And that will revolutionize the prevention of injuries. It'll be the best thing that ever happened.”

And that's one of the things that maintains such youthful enthusiasm in a septuagenarian who has already witnessed such transformation in the tools of his trade: the curve is only going to steepen.

Aside from digital radiography, the biggest leaps forward have been internal screws and plates; plus arthroscopy and its adaptation from diagnosis to treatment. For internal fixation, the initial debt was apparently to a Swiss cost-benefit analysis of chronic disagreement between tibias and ski-boots. Of arthroscopy, meanwhile, Bramlage muses: “Surgery never used to happen until there wasn't anything else you could do. Then with the arthroscope it became easier, quicker, better. And so now that is the first line of defense. The horse gets a chip fracture, they take it out right away. The joint doesn't degenerate, they go back to normal.”

Horsemen nowadays have gained faith that condylar fractures can be routinely secured. One of Bramlage's most celebrated patients, Personal Ensign, went a long way to changing perceptions. Nowadays you'll find many a Breeders' Cup winner with a screw lurking somewhere in its skeleton. It's a very different world from when Bramlage started out, and yet he feels we have barely started.

“Yeah, we were dipping X-rays in chemical solutions when I was a student,” he reflects. “But the young veterinarians right now will probably see the same explosion. Probably in the biologic areas: the understanding of cell biology, and cell communication, is doing the same ramp up. The ability to treat is going to be much more pointed and effective than now.”

Bramlage is acutely aware of our industry's exposure to an ever more urban society that professes ever fiercer vigilance on behalf of animals with which it typically has little interaction, certainly compared with generations past. In that respect, veterinary regulation manifestly has a front-line role. He's excited, then, that a digital fingerprint might give mute animals a new way of telling doctor what's wrong.

Even with the advent of such tools, however, Bramlage believes that the essential mystique of the Thoroughbred will endure. We might be able to explain how everything fits together, and learn how to put things back together, but the key to performance will remain elusive.

“And actually I hope we never do get to that point where we understand everything about a horse,” he admits. “Because I think that's what's intriguing to people. You can improve your odds by improving your breeding. You can keep the horse healthy, you can have a trainer that's capable to that level. You can do all those things, but you still can't just go buy a Derby winner.

“Every horse is a product of a dip out of the gene pool. It's not a one-to-one combination of the mare and the stallion. There are all sorts of units. Like you've got four genes that cause eye color in people. There are all those different combinations of things. So to combine whatever comes out of that gene pool with the mental capacity, to train hard enough and compete hard enough, you never know which horse is going to have it.”

He chuckles, and asks whether you ever heard of a racing mule named Black Ruby?

“Well, she was on the California fair circuit for about 10 years and there was only one other mule could occasionally beat her,” he explains. “But they cloned her several times, and none of them could beat me. They had the exact same genetic makeup, but none of them would run like that. So that elusive factor, I think, is what keeps people intrigued. And I hope we never identify that.”

Even his exceptionally intimate professional relationship with horses, ranging from Personal Ensign to claimers at Ellis Park, has only marginally clarified the enigma.

“I don't know that there's any one thing,” he says with a shrug. “Good horses are always physically attractive, well balanced. They're almost always smart, they're very intelligent, very adaptable.”

Does that make better horses better patients, too?

“Absolutely,” he replies. “But racehorses are the best patients anyway, in my opinion. The worst patient is the 4H horse that's never felt anything but a rub rag, because when they have to deal with pain, you never know how they're going to handle it. But racehorses are just like people who train hard: you're stiff and sore next day and then it goes away and you feel better than you did before you started. They have better survival instinct.”

And while recruitment to equine practice is becoming harder, given the reduced social exposure nowadays between young people and horses, Bramlage guarantees endless fascination to the next generation. The measure of your work, he says, is so much more gratifying than in small animal practice.

“I think equine practitioners tend to practice a lot longer because there's another level of assessment,” he says. “Your horses have to go back and run. They have to win barrel races. They have to win ribbons, if they're a backyard horse they have to trail-ride. There's a couple of books I read, discussing why do armies fight? It's mostly not for abstract ideals. They fight for the people next to them, the people they trained with, the things they know and the fear of failure. And I think this level of assessment, with the possibility that you'll fail, but the rewards when you succeed, it's higher in horses.”

And there are literally hundreds of horsemen in the Bluegrass who will be relieved to hear him say that. “I could easily be retired,” he says. “At some point, physically it's not going to be possible to continue. But I think that's why people stick around. I mean, when the success barometer is the dog being able to get up on the sofa? That's not quite as intriguing!”

The post The Bare Bones: a Primer with Dr. Bramlage appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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