Chris McGrath | Horse Racing Free Tips

This Side Up: The Court of King James

Even as the British Turf grieves a revered sovereign and, in the same person, its most cherished and indispensable servant, I hope you'll forgive me for instead reflecting on the loss, only the day before, of someone she would have loved to be typical of all her subjects: a horseman, and true countryman, who divided his time between the international bloodstock circuit and an old rectory in rural Yorkshire.

Whereas we knew that her great age was finally catching up with the monarch, James Delahooke's abrupt departure for a grouse moor in the sky has come as a ghastly shock. Returning to Lexington for the September Sale suddenly feels a dismally different prospect. Who, now, will tell us like it really is? Who else will entertain and educate us with that unerring, twin-edged blade of knowledge and mischief–both honed by a deep seasoning in the ups and downs of life, in general, and life with horses in particular.

His career as a bloodstock agent made James as familiar as any with those twin impostors, triumph and disaster. And the man who had come out the other side was not just a brilliant judge of horseflesh, but a no less acute observer of human nature.

James knew his mind, and how to speak his mind. And while he could be hilariously acerbic, in the end his sagacity was based–as it always must be–in a humility and compassion that he found wanting, on typically candid reflection, in his younger self.

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He deplored the phonies and smooth talkers, many of whom thrived in the years of his unjust neglect. Being himself unfettered by any posture or pretense, however, he became a fount of insight and enthusiasm to refresh any who deserved to share them, whatever their age or station in life.

He was a fine raconteur albeit, as a compatriot who has accompanied him through airports, I'm not sure immigration officers were always so appreciative of this talent. But in a walk of life where too many say only what they imagine a rich person might want to hear, it became an instructive badge of merit to see those who did remain loyally in his camp; or, better yet, those who joined it when he was out of fashion.

Certainly it's unsurprising that James should have forged such a lasting bond with Arthur Hancock, another who knew both the solitariness and satisfactions of genius that has been separated, not without pain, from the heart of the Establishment.

James's judgement, ever priceless if sometimes inadequately prized, was reliably independent of the market herd. And he could, indeed, be memorably withering about the craven, venal or simply fatuous ways in which he saw others wasting their patrons' money.

In someday trying to replace the irreplaceable, we can trust those who have lost not just a friend but an inspired professional advisor to rely on the same instincts that served them so well, in first seeking James's services. You can almost hear his caustic bark of laughter at those “tyre-kickers”, as he called them, who may now amplify their unworthiness by crassly volunteering to fill his shoes. I remember him once discussing a couple of agents then enjoying conspicuous patronage. One, he declared, was a very nice person but “buying meatballs–and terribly expensive meatballs”; while the other, almost universally disparaged as an opportunist and adventurer, actually had an extremely good eye.

Both pronouncements were typical of James. The pity was that neither of these people could be truly described as rivals or peers. They were not strictly his rivals, because Bobby Flay was just about the only person smart enough to be giving James adequate resources to compete for the same stock. And they weren't peers because–well, because that was a distinction available to very few of his generation.

Danehill | Arrowfield

What an honor it was, to sit in his study and be shown his catalogue notes on Hip 154 at Saratoga in 1982. A single caveat: “Toes out slightly”. And two numbers scrawled: 1.6 and 350. The first was what he told Prince Khalid Abdullah he should expect to pay, because someone would surely have a million and a half for a daughter of His Majesty out of a Buckpasser half-sister to Northern Dancer. And the second was for the $350,000 actually required to buy the filly who became the dam of Danehill.

James had met the Prince three or four years previously, after dining with Guy Harwood in Deauville. When they asked for the bill, the waiter said it had been taken care of–indicating an elegant Arabian gentleman across the restaurant. This turned out to be the man who had relegated them to underbidders for a yearling earlier that day. Invited soon afterwards to sow the seeds of what has become one of the great programs in Turf history, within five years James had bought both the sire and dam of two Epsom Derby winners. He leaves an indelible legacy in the Juddmonte empire; in the breed itself; and, above all, in the knowledge and memories of so many friends.

James would not want misplaced sentiment in our bereavement, any more than a true horsewoman like Queen Elizabeth II would desire the final Classic of the British season to be postponed (as “a mark of respect”) when the trainers involved have fine-tuned their charges to the minute. Those of us who lament James's absence in Lexington this week know perfectly well that he would far rather we just raised a glass to his memory–and then, very shortly afterwards, another glass–before sharing a few of the stories that will long preserve the vivacity and sheer authenticity of his character.

Meanwhile I'm pretty sure he would hope that Arklow can grab the weekend headlines, as an 8-year-old son of Arch running 12 furlongs on grass. That way, perhaps, it won't just be his own example that encourages us to keep seeking the right stuff in the Thoroughbred.

I am grateful to know a few others of comparable stamp, from whom an approving email or text steels your resolve against any orthodoxy; while even a mild hint of dissent, equally, prompts you urgently to revisit the premises of your argument. But there's no denying that neither our business nor our community can easily absorb the sudden loss of a man like James.

Okay, perhaps so unconstrained a personality might not have made a monarch quite as successful as the one whose reign spanned almost his whole life. But I will certainly not be alone in missing the wit and wisdom guaranteed, from Yorkshire to Lexington, whenever King James was holding court.

The post This Side Up: The Court of King James appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Flay’s Recipe for Turf Success

“You know, some of the people I go up against in the auction ring, they own countries,” says Bobby Flay with a chuckle. “And I work at a stove.”

It's an instructive remark. For one thing, it indicates the humor and modesty that redeem the restauranteur and television chef from the kind of airs that might burden others, accustomed to turning heads in Main Street, on entering this arcane hinterland of ours. Flay so reliably checks the fame and glamor at the barn door, indeed, that you suspect he actually relishes the way Thoroughbreds operate as such undiscriminating vehicles of humility.

But the most important thing about this wry observation is that it's perfectly true. And what has truly assimilated Flay, in the esteem of lifelong horsemen, is a program that brilliantly reconciles its boutique scale with competition at a level where others, as he vividly implies, are wholly immune to the bottom line.

That has required Flay to discover strengths very different from those that made his name. But that process has also allowed horsemen to embrace him, not as some interloper from a mystifying, glitzy world, but as one of their own.

“The difference for me, in the horse business, is that in the rest of my life I'm impulsive, don't like waiting around very long,” he concedes. “But somehow the horses have taught me patience.”

Sure, there are aspects of his professional career that dovetail with the things that draw us all to the racetrack, to horses, jockeys and trainers: the competitive flair that turns rehearsal into performance, routine into theater. By instead concentrating his investment in breeding, however, Flay has deliberately opted for the long game.

While his program never comprises more than a dozen mares, each a highwire dash ahead of sheikhs and plutocrats, time and again he has been able to keep things sustainable at the yearling sales. Only last month, indeed, a $2-million daughter of Curlin sold as the top filly at Saratoga; and five others of his current crop have made Book I of the imminent September Sale.

So while the adrenaline will doubtless flow at Keeneland, overall his horses offer a completely different satisfaction. It's like the slow, low oven that achieves tenderness and succulence, as opposed to the instant flash-and-sizzle sought by those hunting a Kentucky Derby colt.

“Those guys are playing the lottery,” he says. “I'm trying to keep my intrinsic value from day one. Now, I do know that if I pay $1 million for a well-pedigreed filly, and she doesn't run, her value–depending on her pedigree and physique–might be somewhere between a third to a half. But it's not zero, which you'd get with a colt with the exact same pedigree if he can't run.”

Having embarked on a road tapering to a far horizon, Flay has learned to moderate his stride. “Because in the horse business you have no choice,” he says. “This has been a 15-year plan. I bought my first good piece of bloodstock in 2007: a stakes-placed 2-year-old, hailing from the Best in Show line. She RNA'd for $1.4 million, and I ended up buying her for $1.2 million–easily the most money I'd ever spent, on anything. And I remember the consignor saying, 'Just think of this like you're buying a building.' And he was right. It's a long process. But what I always say is that good blood is going to show up. You don't know exactly when. But if you're patient, at some point it's going to show.”

Sure enough, this first big investment produced a filly named America from the final crop of A.P. Indy. Herself a graded stakes winner (and twice Grade I-placed), America in turn produced a first foal by Curlin that made $1.5 million as a yearling. And his endeavors, as First Captain, contributed to the even bigger sum banked by his younger sister at Saratoga the other day.

It was a similar, slow-burn story with a Galileo (Ire) filly acquired for 1,250,000gns at Tattersalls in 2014. Her dam had already produced Derby winner Pour Moi (Ire) (Montjeu {Ire}), and Flay named her White Hot (Ire).

“I don't know what it would be on today's exchange rate, but at the time she cost the equivalent of $2.1 million,” Flay recalls. “She was the most expensive yearling filly of the hemisphere [from that crop]. But she didn't have the heart to run. I remember John Gosden calling and saying, 'Look, I can run this filly, but I just want you to understand that she's never going to show on the racetrack what's on her page. If she were mine, I would just move on and think about breeding her.' So I did.”

He sent White Hot to Fastnet Rock (Aus) and retained the resulting filly, Pizza Bianca, to win the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf last year.

Flay homebred Pizza Bianca won the 2021 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf | Breeders' Cup/Eclipse Sportswire

“That's a story where people could say, 'You got lucky,'” Flay says. “And yes, absolutely, I guess there was some luck involved. But at the same time, it was a plan. There were a lot of lean years, holding onto this very expensive piece of bloodstock. But she's beautiful, she's by Galileo, she has that incredible female family. And I just relied on that belief, that at some point the blood's going to come through.”

White Hot's colt by Uncle Mo goes under the hammer at Keeneland as Hip 115. That's a mating characteristic of this program, and too few others. Flay has done his homework and knows how priceless to the breed, historically, has been cross-pollination between the European and American gene pools. After years of short-sighted retrenchment, on both sides of the water, it's heartening to find such a smart investor mingling lines that most commercial breeders would keep dogmatically apart, as exclusively dirt or turf.

Two of his Book I fillies, for instance, share Butterfly Cove (Storm Cat) as third dam. She was not only a half-sister to Aidan O'Brien's champion juvenile Fasliyev (Nureyev), but also delivered a Coolmore linchpin in Grade I winner and producer Misty For Me (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}). Flay bought Misty For Me's daughter Cover Song (Fastnet Rock {Aus}) for $1.6 million as an auction wild card after she had won the GIII Autumn Miss S. for Spendthrift. He remembers seeing B. Wayne Hughes on his way out of the pavilion and asking: “Why did you sell this filly?” Hughes gave a long pause, looked at Flay and shrugged, saying: “I have no idea.” Now Cover Song's third foal, by Quality Road, heads to Keeneland (Hip 191) with her first, Contemporary Art (Dubawi {Ire}), meanwhile targeting the same Santa Anita graded stakes once won by their dam.

Another long play has been Amagansett, an $875,000 yearling by Tapit out of Misty For Me's stakes-winning sister Twirl (Ire). She never made the track, but again Flay is banking on residual value telling in her first foal, a filly by Uncle Mo (Hip 131).

“This mare was another example of what I was talking about,” Flay remarks. “I paid a lot of money for her as a yearling, but she had an ankle problem and obviously as things stand she's an expensive project. But she's got a lot of quality and class, and we'll see what happens: this is her first foal to the ring and she's very, very nice.”

So while the other Book I pair are both bred on the same commercially live cross as Tiz the Law, as respectively a colt (Hip 320) and filly (Hip 88) by Constitution out of a Tiznow mare, the fact is that Flay is presenting three beautiful yearlings in the sale's premier book on a bolder formula: each by an elite Kentucky stallion, out of a mare from an aristocratic European family.

“I'm not going to say I'm the only one doing it, because I'm definitely not,” Flay says. “But it does seem to be rare to bring over European blood and tie it to American sires, or vice versa. Yet this kind of thing was done for decades by some of the world's best breeders, people like Coolmore and Juddmonte, or Bull Hancock before them. We get so conditioned to say that this horse, with this pedigree, will only run on grass; and that horse, only on dirt. Yet we've been proved wrong so often, I just want to keep an open mind.

“I do wonder how people feel, when they see pedigrees like these. Are they turned off? Are they excited? Probably it'll be a bit of both. But the bottom line is that I know that it works.”

Flay acknowledges the argument that equivalent regeneration is no less urgent in Europe. When Australian friends congratulated him on an inspired mating between White Hot and Fastnet Rock, he demurred: Europe's top stallions were so genetically clustered, in the same neighborhood as the mare, he had felt as though he hadn't a great deal of choice. But he's palpably animated by the idea of reviving the speed-carrying impact of Northern Dancer and his sons on European turf. Someone, I suggest, needs to try once again to win an Epsom Classic with a horse by a perceived dirt stallion. “I'd like to be that person!” he exclaims.

Flay's long-term strategy is seeing dividends | Breeders' Cup/Eclipse Sportswire

That's an ambition a world apart from the New York kid who cut high school to bet at the track, or indeed the guy who made his first piecemeal investments in horseflesh like “throwing darts at a board”. And Flay gives huge credit, for that transformation, to the seasoned counsellors who have helped him navigate his Turf adventure.

The first to illuminate the mysteries of pedigree was his old friend Barry Weisbord, founder of TDN, who channelled Flay's raw enthusiasm into a proper strategy. Then there was James Delahooke, proven as one of the great judges after helping to assemble Juddmonte's foundation mares. It had been too long since the English agent had been deployed by someone equipped to make the most of his exceptional eye, and Flay's subsequent record only confirms what others had meanwhile been missing.

“I've loved working with James for the last 15 years,” Flay says. “You know, he's 'out of the movie' as The Bloodstock Agent because he looks the part, he sounds the part, and he knows the part. I've learned so much just talking to him, every single sale we go to, every dinner that we have together. And James has a very simple project, which is: 'Find me the best-looking physicals among all the fillies in the sale. Don't worry about the pedigrees, we can put those together later. Find me a beautiful horse that's going to make a broodmare one day.'”

But there has also been a third vital dimension: entrusting the care of his mares and foals to a horseman of genius in Arthur Hancock.

“One of the best things I have ever done is employ Stone Farm,” Flay says. “They're a lovely family, first and foremost, and it has been such a pleasure getting to know them. But I remember when James told me to go take a look at their land. That's not something you hear a lot of people say in the commercial horse world, but he believes in a correlation between success and the amount of land each horse is given. So I took a drive out to Paris, Ky., got to the top of this hill and saw their property. And I was like, 'I'm home. This is where I want my horses to live.' So that's the whole formula, right there. It's not overcomplicated. One person that takes care of the physicals, another that takes care of the pedigrees. And of course they live in Shangri-La.”

But Flay does all the matings himself, seeking the same kind of elusive balance as any other breeder–and inviting, in the process, an obvious analogy: don't throw too much chili into the pan, but don't let things get too bland, either. In keeping with his far-sighted dissent on surfaces, he also resists the standard commercial refuge in unproven sires. Apart from anything else, of course, matings have to be commensurate with the value of the mare, which in this program tends to be high.

“I've seen plenty of mares with world-class pedigrees get ruined by sire decisions that are just guesses,” Flay observes. “So I don't use unproven sires. I would rather pay more for the sire later.”

As we've already seen, he's confident that Constitution has made the grade, and expects better again as his upgraded books kick in. (One of his Constitution yearlings in this sale is out of a mare purchased, uncharacteristically, at 13 and already responsible for Grade I winner Come Dancing {Malibu Moon}–and that was precisely because she was carrying this foal by the breakout WinStar sire.) And Flay also loves the injection of speed that qualifies Not This Time to fill an impending void, with Classic sires like Curlin, Tapit and Medaglia d'Oro entering the evening of their careers. (Sure enough, White Hot has a weanling colt by Not This Time.)

All the while, however, his aspirations must be tempered by the reality with which we started: that some of these other guys have reserves as deep as their oil wells.

“Their ammunition and mine is very different,” Flay reflects. “I have to save my powder. I have to be very strategic. There are many sales, including premium sales, where I can't identify a single thing I want to buy–because the pedigree just isn't good enough. That doesn't mean a filly won't come out of that sale and win the Kentucky Oaks. But if a horse can't run, gets hurt, whatever, I need something to lean on.”

By the same token, he would rather double down on a pedigree than undersell.

“That's maybe my more impulsive side,” he says. “But like last year, literally a week before the Keeneland sale, Cover Song's Quality Road colt got an abscess in his foot. I said, 'Okay, we'll race him.' If I have seven foals this year, I know there's a good chance seven aren't going to make the auction ring. That's okay with me. And if nobody wants to pay me what I think a horse is worth, I'm okay taking it back home. Because not only do I know the horse is going to be taken care of, which is incredibly important to me, but it will also be given every opportunity to succeed. So we're all working toward bettering these pages, and strengthening my roster.”

Flay greets Pizza Bianca and rider Jose Ortiz on the way back to the winner's circle | Horsephotos

Having built something so impressive through the first 15 years, Flay can now start to consolidate for the next 15. Among his small band of mares, he has “pillars” that look eligible to start a dynasty: the likes of America, Cover Song, White Hot and Dame Dorothy (Bernardini), a $390,000 yearling who won a Grade I and whose first foal by Curlin, Spice Is Nice, brought seven figures when taking her own turn at the September Sale, before becoming a graded stakes winner last year.

“I mean, these are mares that are already producing beautiful progeny,” Flay reasons. “They're selling at the sales, they're running on the racetrack. So I would love just to continue growing these families. My daughter is 26, she's interested, and I say to her: 'I don't want you to make this your life, but I do need you to keep up with what's going on–because at some point you're going to have to know what to do with a lot of valuable bloodstock.' I want to grow my horses' family trees so that my own family tree can enjoy it, too, decades later.”

Rather closer to hand, meanwhile, is a momentous staging post in the annual cycle.

“We wouldn't have put any of these in Book I unless we thought them really 'primo',” Flay emphasizes. “We feel like we've had some really good luck, from a physical standpoint. I love Saratoga so we took America's filly up there and she was an absolute queen. But just from an international standpoint, we like going to Keeneland with pedigrees like these.”

And he could offer no higher praise than this: if he didn't own the fillies already, they would be the ones he'd be looking at. When Delahooke gives him a shortlist, he always asks: “Is there anything better than what I have in the sale?” Because if the answer is no, it can be hard to let them go.

“But that's the whole thing,” Flay reasons. “I've been able to put together this very small, boutique broodmare band, and it's all very good stuff, the top of the pedigree chain. And when I put something in the ring, there are people out there with the same feeling that I have. People that when they turn the page and see these pedigrees, and then see what these horses look like, will raise their hand with fervor. Because they know how hard it is, to get into these families, and here they have an opportunity to get it ready-made.”

It's a long time now since Flay was fired up with a new passion, watching old races and poring over pedigrees deep into the night.

“And I still have a lot to learn,” he stresses. “It's like the wine business: you can know a lot but you can never know it all. I know it's not a perfect science. Sometimes these families get hot, sometimes they lose a little steam. But that's what's so wonderful, everything continues to evolve. If you want to play at the highest level, you really have to pay close attention. But I absolutely love it. It's become a very important part of my life, and I love it dearly.”

The post Flay’s Recipe for Turf Success appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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This Side Up: The Vital Quest for New Joy

Polite but perfunctory. That was pretty much the tone in which people tended to praise Kitten's Joy while he was with us, and I guess it should be no different now that he's gone. Even so, it strikes me that his loss has been inadequately lamented. Not just in his own right, as an avowed turf stallion who freakishly contrived two general sires' championships in North America; but also, virtually unremarked, as a final straw in what has over the past nine months become an outright catastrophe for the enlightened minority persevering with grass breeding in Kentucky.

Last November, the sustained challenge of English Channel to the primacy in this sphere of Kitten's Joy was unraveled by a sudden illness at 19. In March, Crestwood lost Get Stormy out of the blue at 16. And now we must bid farewell to the elder statesman himself, at 21.

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Given the grim commercial odds to be overcome by anyone attempting to launch a turf sire in Kentucky, this trio's departure represents a colossal test of the way many Americans talk a good game about populating an expanding turf program. Because when it comes to walking the walk, they have tended to head straight to the exit the moment a yearling with chlorophyll in its pedigree is led into a sale ring.

One breeder's existential challenge, admittedly, can be another's game-changing opportunity. There are some promising young stallions around with the potential to fill these intimidating vacancies. Karakontie (Jpn) has been getting black-type action at an auspicious percentage, and should kick on again once over a numerical bump in the road with his current sophomores. In fact, he has just had three stakes winners in three days, one becoming his first millionaire. Oscar Performance, meanwhile, has been launched with real panache by a farm making a welcome return to the stallion game, and is already making a mark with his early runners.Even as it was, however, we're already well accustomed to the American turf program being farmed by European imports, whether as horses in training or, increasingly, from the elite yearling sales. Both the Grade I prizes contested on grass over the past two weekends were harvested by Chad Brown with one of each model, Adhamo (Ire) (Intello {Ger}) being acquired as a French Group winner last fall and In Italian (GB) (Dubawi {Ire}) as a Book I yearling at Tattersalls.

But this kind of lopsided trade stores up trouble on both sides of the water. While a lucrative export market offers a crucial avenue to viability for European horsemen contesting inadequate prizemoney, it may ultimately contain the seeds of its own demise through the ongoing dilution of standards. And while purse money is plainly superior in the U.S., it surely can't supplant commercial breeding as the driver to sustainable investment. It's great that these imports can earn big on the racetrack, but they won't ever offer that home run in the breeding shed unless or until the Bluegrass changes its commercial perspective on turf blood.

Because right now you wouldn't give even a new Nasrullah (Ire) much of a prayer. We obviously wouldn't have had Bold Ruler or Nashua, and everything they have since entailed, if Kentucky breeders in the 1950s had been as insular in their outlook as their successors today.

The same farm that imported Nasrullah had, of course, already demonstrated the transferability of European turf blood through the likes of Blenheim (GB) and Princequillo (Ire). But if they could now bring even Frankel (GB) over the water, I wonder how low his fee would have to go before commercial breeders thought he would represent a feasible play.

I have regularly cited the same program's Flintshire (GB) as an especially flagrant example of the way things are today. Supplanted as Juddmonte's highest earner only by a member of the same family in Enable (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire}), he was nonetheless reduced to a final Kentucky book of eight mares before finally returning to Europe in despair. If Kitten's Joy and English Channel couldn't earn the indulgence of the market, with its inflexible prejudices on physique, then what chance did Flintshire ever have—even at a farm as far-sighted as Hill n' Dale?

It was John Sikura, of course, who gave Kitten's Joy a fresh Kentucky platform when his owners had become so incensed by commercial indifference that they very nearly put pen to paper to stand him in Europe instead. In the parallel world where that deal was done, however, it would have been instructive to see what kind of reception Kitten's Joy would have had over there. Even after finding a European champion in Book I of the 2016 September Sale for $160,000—and the tragedy of Roaring Lion only raises the stakes for Oscar Performance and others, in terms of their sire's legacy—David Redvers was still able to return to the same auction two years later and buy a G1 2,000 Guineas winner for barely half that price. European investors, it seemed, had learned little more respect for the horse than the local market.

Little wonder, then, if they remain still more unimaginative when it comes to the kind of dirt blood that has, historically, stimulated cyclical regeneration in the European gene pool. For another constant complaint of mine is that this has to be a two-way street, and this mutual schism will ultimately prove equally damaging to the Europeans.

As things stand, we must simply hope that the plucky few who remain more interested in fast horses than fast bucks—and, on any sustainable model, that must also mean horses competent to run hard and long—can respond to the crisis with exactly the kind of flair that already sets them apart. Those who did keep the faith with Kitten's Joy, English Channel and Get Stormy must now stick to their guns, and seek out their replacements.

They know where to look, after all. The farm that grieved Get Stormy, for instance, perseveres stubbornly with the same brand: teak-tough runners and/or aristocratic pedigrees. Nor must we neglect the potential contribution of stallions that might, in this perverse environment, have their commercial credibility damaged if unduly promoted as equally effective influences on turf, such as American Pharoah, Not This Time, Twirling Candy or Blame.

But on the weekend when Zandon attempts to renew the fleeting impression he made on the home turn in the Derby, in a compelling race for the GII Jim Dandy S., it would be remiss not to finish with a nod to the farm that may have marked its 50^th anniversary with the emergence of a new Indian Charlie or Harlan's Holiday in his sire Upstart.

Because Airdrie's fidelity to the kind of genetic resources most urgently required by the modern Thoroughbred gives breeders of sufficient vision a chance to roll the dice on a son of Kitten's Joy receiving precious little oxygen even in this suffocated division. Divisidero won graded stakes across five consecutive seasons, accumulating 13 triple-digit Beyers, and was denied his third Grade I in the Breeders' Cup Mile by barely half a length. Critically, moreover, the four mares in his dam's third generation are (drum roll, please): Miesque, Lassie Dear, Height Of Fashion (Fr) and a daughter of Cosmah. Not too many Thoroughbreds could better that, anywhere in the world.

True, his studmate Preservationist comes extremely close, with Natalma, Weekend Surprise and Too Chic. Down the shedrow, meanwhile, Cairo Prince is proving quite a flexible influence, in terms of surface, while Airdrie is also showcasing a son of War Front—the one patriarch of our time to have maintained elite stature at the sales despite an aptitude for turf.

Obviously War Front now has a luminous new dirt prospect starting out elsewhere, in Omaha Beach, but attractive channels for his versatility include not just Summer Front at Airdrie, but War of Will alongside his sire at Claiborne—who, promisingly, were pushed to their absolute limit in his debut book.

War Front's own traffic is naturally being managed more conservatively than ever, as he enters the evening of his career. He has long been beyond the reach of most breeders anyway, but remember that he only owes his credibility in Europe to opportunity (thanks largely to John Magnier). And that's the one thing—opportunity—breeders need to be brave enough to give some of these young turf stallions now.

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This Side Up: Iron Legacy Will Never Rust

He's a rebel with a Causeway. But he is a rebel, all the same; or a maverick, at least; an outlier. Certainly we can't expect everyone to train horses like Kenny McPeek, nor indeed to buy them the same way. Apart from anything else, most people simply wouldn't be good enough.

McPeek's 10 millionaires to date have been sired by the likes of Cuvee, Louis Quatorze, Daredevil, Hit It a Bomb and Tejano–and he signed for most of them himself. As one who marches to his own drum, his style obviously wouldn't work for everyone. Think outside the box, and you'll have to manage without the many investors who feel nervous straying beyond the comforting confines of convention. They will seek sanctuary in the kind of strike rates available with trainers who start horses about as often as Halley does his Comet. Nonetheless, there are some pretty universal lessons to be drawn from the success of Classic Causeway (Giant's Causeway) in the big race at Belmont last weekend, just two weeks after his barn debut.

Because if McPeek is too much of a one-off to be categorized simply as “old school”, there's no doubting the throwback element in Classic Causeway himself, famously one of just three foals from the final crop of the Iron Horse. And if McPeek is to some degree a victim of his own success, in that you tend not to be sent too many yards of silk if you can contrive such fine purses of a relative sow's ear, let's not forget that one of the world's most lavishly resourced stables is supervised by another who believes that Thoroughbreds actually thrive on competition.

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Very few elite trainers in Europe, nevermind America, would have drawn out the reserves of Giant's Causeway as boldly as Aidan O'Brien. Already a Group 1 winner at two, Giant's Causeway started his sophomore campaign by fending off a battle-hardened, race-fit 6-year-old in April. Between May 6 and Sept. 23, he then finished first or second in eight Group 1 races, constantly switching distance. After that, as nobody will need reminding, he shipped to run the dirt monster Tiznow to a neck in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic.

The 'Iron Horse,' Giant's Causeway | Coolmore

We're talking about an exceptional specimen here, clearly, but O'Brien has always operated on the basis that his patrons at Coolmore require reliable exposure of genes they might wish to replicate. And like his mentor Jim Bolger, who last year ran 2,000 Guineas winner Poetic Flare (Ire) (Dawn Approach {Ire}) in two other Classics over the next three weeks, he additionally believes that maturing horses flourish for racetrack experience. Peeping Fawn (Danehill) had an aristocratic pedigree, nothing to prove there, but O'Brien still worked her like a stevedore. She had already been beaten three times in April when breaking her maiden on May 16. Eleven days later she ran third in a Classic over a mile. FIVE days later she was beaten half a length in the G1 Oaks at Epsom, over a mile and a half. Did she recoil from this dazing sequence of examinations? She did not. Instead, going up and down in distance every time, she won four Group 1 prizes in 54 days.

As it happens, Peeping Fawn has proved a fairly disappointing producer, albeit unlucky that her best daughter derailed. Giant's Causeway, however, has emulated his sire Storm Cat as a hugely important crossover influence. That's unsurprising, after his own slick transfer to the American racing environment, and he stands as a withering rebuke to the prescriptive approach we see, both sides of the water, to racing surfaces. He came up with a worthy heir in Europe at the first attempt in Shamardal, whose maternal pedigree was shaded very green, but has book-ended his career with an outstanding young Kentucky sire in Not This Time, whose own family obviously contains no less resonant dirt names.

Interestingly, Classic Causeway is out of a mare by Thunder Gulch, whose breeder Peter Brant has always been so far-sighted in this regard. Thunder Gulch himself, of course, combined a sire who had won benchmark races for the recycling of dirt speed–the GI Hopeful S., the GI Met Mile H. twice, the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint–with a turf mare whose dam had finished second in the G1 Gold Cup at Ascot over two and a half miles.

Most horses are more versatile than we will ever know. We should always start with the animal in front of us, and how it all fits together, rather than meekly obey herd presumptions. Sure enough, having only recently taken Classic Causeway into his care (after Brian Lynch laid some excellent foundations), McPeek urged a switch to turf because “the horse has a foot like a pancake”.

But often it's simply a question of opportunity. It was only the search for outcross blood at Coolmore, for instance, that allowed War Front and Scat Daddy to penetrate European myopia as coveted “turf” influences. And while John Magnier and his partners seem to be doing pretty well without my advice, I will just dust off my plea that they might indulge European mare owners by allowing American Pharoah at least one spring in Co Tipperary. (Especially as I keep reading that the home farm may apparently be a little short of fresh blood just now.)

Bleecker Street | Sarah Andrew

After last week's glimpse of how a more wholesome future might look, we revert to business as usual in the first Grade I of the Saratoga meet, with Chad Brown having to generate his own competition on grass. In fact, just one other American trainer has mustered a runner in the Diana S. It's striking, however, that most exciting member of the field is also the only one bred in America.

Bleecker Street was hardly a blatant turf prospect the day Brant purchased her as a yearling, down the road at Fasig-Tipton, but her sire Quality Road has a very flexible genetic background. (Just his first two dams will tell you that, as daughters of Strawberry Road and Alydar–and there's plenty more when you get down in the wheat.) Even Chad Brown has been prepared to start Bleecker Street in four graded stakes already this year, so presumably McPeek or O'Brien would by this stage have sent her to the moon and back.

Just as surface aptitude tends to be self-fulfilling, so you have to wonder to what extent pessimism about the constitution of the modern racehorse would stand up to horsemen actually going out there and testing it properly. But if we won't train them like McPeek, then the least we can do is breed them like Classic Causeway. As it was, no farm in Europe or Kentucky offered Bolger enough for Poetic Flare. And that's why, when so much of our commercial glister washes out the moment a horse has to break sweat, it will be the Japanese who end up with the horses of iron.

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