Chris McGrath | Horse Racing Free Tips

This Side Up: No Points for Freshness

There was a time when you would load as much experience and conditioning as possible into a Kentucky Derby horse, as a mere adolescent required to jostle with 19 others through 10 furlongs. Nowadays, however, trainers are trying to reach Churchill Downs across a highwire stretched to a thread by two diametrically opposed imperatives. One is their conviction, whether through perception or presumption, that the typical, commercial-bred Thoroughbred of today can only stand up to a much lighter schedule. The other is to secure enough gate points in the trials.

In trying to reconcile this paradox, many horses reach this stage of the game with zero margin for error. For these the next two Saturdays, with six races carrying 170 starting points apiece, will be make-or-break. If you land a wide draw, or a rough trip, or an off track–well, tough. In some cases, to be fair, setbacks along the way will have left trainers no choice. But others have painted themselves into a corner by a witting trade-off between the benefits they perceive in conserving the gas, and the risk of the strategy backfiring.

What sets Bob Baffert apart, as the master of the modern Derby preparation, is his ability to fast-track even a horse as late onto the scene as Justify (Scat Daddy). It doesn't seem to matter that a lot of those Californian trials are too mildly contested to yield much in the way of useful experience. Somehow, whether by accident or design, his methods have proved ideally tailored to the changing demands of the race. Okay, so maybe even he could only hit with a winner as goofy as Authentic (Into Mischief) was in the GIII Sham S. because the Derby, that year, was delayed until September. Time after time, however, Baffert manages to drill raw horses to all the professionalism required to take control on the first Saturday in May.

(To listen to this story as a podcast, click the arrow below.)

Now I realize that his regime is a demanding one. But if you don't like those Quarter Horse works, hard and fast, then how else do you propose getting a horse ready for the Louisville street fight after barely five minutes of competition? (Some or even most of which, moreover, will have been confined to maiden company.)

As I'm always complaining, carrying your speed in the Derby is nothing like as exacting, now that the sprinters have been excluded by the starting points system. This has surely assisted Baffert, whose horses so often just run the finish out of their pursuers. But it's not as though the race is now some kind of picnic.

The trials have always been a means to an end. They were dress rehearsals, a way of ensuring that the actors knew their lines blindfolded and had their timing tight. But the contradictory aspirations of many trainers today are muddling those ends and means. Their actors rehearse lying in the bath, mumbling to themselves from a soggy script. Trainers used to build up physical and mental fitness until their horses were ready to break down the door. Now they try to wedge it open just enough for horses to slip through with minimal effort.

Needless to say, there are a lot of outstanding horsemen out there applying themselves to the conundrum. It looks no coincidence, for instance, that the GII Louisiana Derby proved the deepest trial last year, having been extended to a mile and 3/16ths. That has created a useful compromise: the timing serves the conservatism of trainers, with 14 extra days of freshening relative to those running at Aqueduct, Keeneland and Santa Anita next week; while the distance, at the same time, gives the horses something valid to recover from.

Certainly those supervising Epicenter (Not This Time) have actually used his preps as just that: as preparation. They haven't viewed them merely as a way of securing a big day out, but as a tool for maximizing his chance of actually getting that blanket of roses. Admittedly they have hardly explored his versatility, in terms of surface, albeit he broke his maiden on the one that stages the Derby. But he has been learning about his vocation all winter, notably from a speed ambush in the GIII Lecomte S., and was able to make a slick adjustment to a different running style last Saturday.

This year, of course, the Baffert horses have themselves been left without wriggle-room in terms of starting points, having been ineligible to bank any before their recent move to other barns. As a former assistant who shared his transition from Quarter Horses, however, Tim Yakteen has worked his new recruits in seamless fashion, sending Doppelganger (Into Mischief) into the GI Arkansas Derby with five furlongs in a minute flat, to follow six furlongs in 1:10.8 the previous week.

Lukas alongside his latest star filly this week | Coady

As it happens, the ultimate pioneer from the Quarter Horse world also has this single shot to get to the Kentucky Derby, though again the circumstances are highly unusual. As we've remarked before, a bold experiment with the filly Secret Oath (Arrogate) could yet redeem our whole community, single-handed, from an apparently endless streak of hideous headlines. If she can proceed to the Derby as one of the favorites, it will scarcely matter whether or not she can actually win, so long as D. Wayne Lukas gets a platform to intrigue, win round and ultimately inspire outsiders in the days before the race. But if she can excel, then perhaps the old master may have some timely lessons for his timid juniors within the business, as well.

The principal purpose of these proving grounds, remember, is to ensure that the next generation of breeders can work with properly tested genes. Charismatic (Summer Squall)–the fourth but perhaps not the last of Lukas's Derby winners–learned on the job to the extent that he took six attempts to break his maiden at two, and his Derby trail then comprised starts on Dec. 27, Jan. 16, Jan. 31, Feb. 11, Feb. 19, Mar. 6, Apr. 3 and Apr. 18. This was 1999, not 1949, and how blessed we all are that the Coach is still here to show the kids how it can be done.

We all marveled at Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow)'s latest reiteration of his toughness and courage in Dubai last weekend. Nobody could call his sire a commercial hit. But who was it that showed us that Oxbow, one of the few good horses he has been sent in recent years, could soak up 13 starts inside 12 months? Who was it who reminded everyone that you're still allowed to run in all three legs of the Triple Crown, and run 6-1-2, even if you don't win the first?

Good luck to you, then, Mr. Lukas–because with this filly, your luck is everybody's luck.

The post This Side Up: No Points for Freshness appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

This Side Up: Horses, Not Humans, Back At The Epicenter

First things first: let's give their chance to the guys off the bench.

Okay, so there are going to be plenty of eyeballs rolled now that three of Bob Baffert's four Derby migrants are joining a former assistant, on the same circuit, with a total of 38 starters to his name this year—especially as it was the handling of another Baffert medication violation that reportedly caused the scuffle between this same gentleman and a fellow trainer at Clocker's Corner one morning last April. (Both were fined $500.)

The wiseguys will doubtless be finding a mischievous prompt in the name of one of these horses, Doppelganger (Into Mischief). But let's remember that Tim Yakteen learned the ropes not from one Hall of Famer, but two; and that the racing gods owe him, big time, after the harrowing loss of his breakout horse, Points Offthebench (Benchmark), in his final work before the Breeders' Cup. What might have been can be judged from that horse's posthumous Eclipse Award, while Yakteen has more recently reiterated what he can do, from modest resources, with Cal-bred Horse of the Year Mucho Unusual (Mucho Macho Man).

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

The horsemanship of Rodolphe Brisset, meanwhile, has already made a significant contribution to Baffert's Classic resumé, in laying the foundations for the Triple Crown campaign of Justify (Scat Daddy).

So while these four horses are hardly following Life Is Good (Into Mischief) to a big rival on the East Coast, we should respect whatever combination of principle and pragmatism has governed their departure from Baffert's barn. You (and he) can argue about the level of his culpability, in piling so many storm clouds over his community, but Baffert deserves its gratitude in at least stating that his own interests—even where coinciding with precepts as critical to the functioning of our society as fairness in the workplace and the courtroom—are transcended by those of the sport, his investors and their horses.

In claiming personal credit as the impetus for their transfer, then, Baffert definitely gets some here. After all, we've repeatedly urged that the real test of decency in this situation was faced by Baffert himself—and not the friends and patrons who found their good fortune, in having a Derby horse, haplessly turned into some kind of public examination of character or fidelity. All parties had to remember that these horses are only passing through their stewardship, and that many, many others have had a stake in breeding and raising them.

To that extent, in fact, one hopes that the grooms who have been tending these horses have been given the opportunity of sharing their loan to other trainers. But it's edifying, regardless, that their boss and his patrons have in effect acknowledged that the Derby is bigger even than Bob Baffert; and not persevered in a stance that implied things to be the other way round.

First and foremost, no doubt, that represents sound business. Certainly it feels way too much to hope that a similar breadth of perspective might now also prompt Baffert just to accept that it would be far better for everybody—perhaps even for his own sanity—to call off his lawyers, without having to cede an inch in terms of his grievances; to take his sanctions on the chin; and to reset.
As it is, he has already lost the services (and permanently, one imagines) of the G1 Dubai World Cup favorite; and must instead rely on a less theatrical but splendidly stubborn animal to draw the sting of Life Is Good.

Country Grammer (Tonalist) will be carrying the same silks as poor Medina Spirit (Protonico), who has posthumous representation in this field through two of his principal crop antagonists. For if it's the “Black Gold” beneath the surface that has effectively summoned Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow) and Midnight Bourbon (Tiznow) to the desert, then you might say they are on pretty familiar ground. True, in helping to make the GII Louisiana Derby the strongest trial last year, they left undisturbed the status of the champion bearing that name, whose remains are interred in the Fair Grounds infield, as one of only two horses to win both that race and the Run for the Roses. Because Mandaloun (Into Mischief) gave no indication, that day at least, that he would be the one to benefit when Medina Spirit was effaced from the record.

The picturesque tale of Black Gold, named for the discovery of oil in Oklahoma, is much cherished among those who took local pride in the revival last year of the New Orleans road to Churchill. How poignant, then, is the loss this very week of the only other horse to do the double, Grindstone (Unbridled), just days after acceding (from Go For Gin) as the oldest living Derby winner.
That distinction has now passed to the 28-year-old Silver Charm (Silver Buck), as it happens in the same week that he was joined at Old Friends by his old rival Swain (Nashwan). Those two sure have a few memories to mull over together, notably the gray's photo-finish success in the 1998 Dubai World Cup.

In carving his name below that of Grindstone in the Derby roll of honor, Silver Charm represented something of a baton switch between Wayne Lukas and Baffert, albeit the senior of the two came back a couple of years later with his fourth winner in Charismatic (Summer Squall)—and could yet redeem this whole mess if Secret Oath (Arrogate) can become his fifth.

Incidentally, both Charismatic and Grindstone were out of mares by Drone, who as a son of Secretariat's sibling Sir Gaylord, duly magnified the Somethingroyal distaff brand. Somethingroyal's replication (twice) in the famous family of Summer Squall made Charismatic's failure at stud a dismal disappointment, though he was typical of the old-school priorities driving the Japanese investment that has ultimately produced 22 starters on the World Cup card.

There are never any guarantees with these animals, as we know. Black Gold's one and only foal was killed by lightning. On the other hand, the Derby trail is this spring celebrating the dynasty founded by Storm Cat, himself of course out of a Secretariat mare, through one of the final foals of Giant's Causeway and at least a couple of colts by Not This Time, including Louisiana Derby favorite Epicenter.

One of my more wearily familiar complaints is that the starting points system has stripped the sprint speed out of the first Saturday in May, and Epicenter certainly looks eligible to emulate Medina Spirit and several others to have lately controlled, pretty much at their leisure, what was previously just about the most extreme test of all for a maturing Thoroughbred. As we've discussed before, Epicenter has some copper-bottomed European stayers seeding his bottom line and somebody, somehow, is going to have to press him hard and long if he is to be softened up sufficiently for Call Me Midnight (Midnight Lute) to pounce late again.

Funnily enough, Call Me Midnight himself represents a very similar blend of American dirt speed and European grass stamina, his third dam Slightly Dangerous having produced an Epsom Derby winner among several other Classic protagonists. Someday, perhaps, people will notice how often this kind of formula, once standard but now sadly neglected, still pays off when given a chance.
In the meantime let's hope that the Louisiana Derby, in tribute to the passing of Grindstone, consolidates a revival also underlined by the return to the card, in an excellent race for the GII New Orleans Classic, of last year's fourth Proxy (Tapit).

Proxy! Now there's a word that nobody should be misusing over the coming weeks, as the Baffert exiles make a belated bid to get on the Derby trail. Why shouldn't Baffert and his supporters give an opportunity to people who are on his side, people he respects and wants to do well? It will be much easier to root for these horses, this way; and they know they will never win the cynics round anyway.

If not everybody is going to love the solution, that's tough. At least the Baffert team has resolved the impasse and, if only in one regard, finally started to move things on a little. And that deserves reciprocation. So let's give Yakteen and Brisset due respect. And—quaint, crazy notion—let's restore our attention, and that of the fans, from the flaws inevitable with any and all human judgement, our own included, and back onto these beautiful horses.

The post This Side Up: Horses, Not Humans, Back At The Epicenter appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

This Side Up: A Model Flagship For Stormy Seas

There is always something especially shocking about the death of a stallion in his prime. Nature contains no more vivid an incarnation of vitality than this most literal of life forces, daily renewing the gift of existence. For a candle as bright as Get Stormy to be extinguished so abruptly, then, will leave a grievous void at Crestwood Farm.

Having spent five years in training, even at 16, Get Stormy's second career was only just entering its key phase. For not until the next year or two will his best stock start reaching the track, his books having soared in both quality and quantity after an early stakes barrage led, from his second crop, by triple Grade I winner Got Stormy. No less than her name implies, she was inlaid with the watertight genetic teak of her sire, matching his own record of graded stakes success through four consecutive campaigns.

It's all there in the McLean family slogan, “We raise runners.” In a business where so many horses are raised to do no more than stand and stroll, with breeders heading for the hills the moment the gavel comes down, that fairly rudimentary aspiration has an almost quixotic quality. But a trademark combination of blood and guts governs nearly the whole Crestwood roster: Jack Milton (War Front), for instance, won a Grade I at five and, much like Get Stormy himself with Moccasin (Nantallah), brings into play a Claiborne matriarch in Bourtai (Stimulus); while Heart To Heart (English Channel) won graded stakes annually from three to seven.

Get Stormy's nickname on the farm was Clyde, because he had so much brawn and timber that he evoked a Clydesdale. I've always had a mad theory (actually supported by the stats) that his reputation as a turf sire is self-fulfilling, and that his physical stamp, toughness, and speed-carrying style were ideally tailored for dirt. Be that as it may, despite nudging an initial fee of $5,000 no farther than $7,500, Get Stormy already leaves us half a dozen graded stakes winners. (That's as many as Maclean's Music, for instance, from the same intake.) And his two millionaires to date were respectively out of a $4,500 Malabar Gold mare, and a daughter of Brahms unsold at $18,000 on her only visit to the ring.

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

Two days after Get Stormy's loss, on just the other side of Georgetown Road, the venerable heart of Go For Gin also gave out at the Kentucky Horse Park, his home since retiring from stud in 2011. At 31, he had been the oldest surviving Derby winner—and long enjoyed precisely the kind of dignified, pampered retirement everyone was someday anticipating, a few years down the line, for Get Stormy.

But while life's disasters seldom arrive with any rhyme or reason, perhaps we can glimpse some timely succor for Crestwood. Because any clients with mares booked to Get Stormy should certainly consider another stallion on the roster, also from the Storm Cat line, who only last weekend reiterated the striking promise he has shown from minimal opportunity to date.

Firing Line has mustered no more than 39 starters from his first couple of crops but 24 of them have already won and, having burdened him this winter with a place on a TDN “Value Podium”, I was delighted to see Venti Valentine confirm her candidature for the GI Kentucky Oaks with a seven-length romp in the Busher S. last Saturday. Other credits to Firing Line include Nakatomi's success in the Bowman's Mill S. at Keeneland last fall, after placing in the GII Saratoga Special S.; plus the recent Fair Grounds romp of his $210,000 2-year-old Oscarette.

Besides beating all bar a Triple Crown winner in the Derby, don't forget that Firing Line was only denied a juvenile Grade I by a head and broke the track record in winning the GIII Sunland Park Derby by 14 lengths. True to Crestwood principles, moreover, his talent was rooted in a mile-deep pedigree: his dam is a Grade I-placed sibling to the mothers of two Grade I-winning milers, their line extending to matriarchs Kamar (Key to the Mint) and Square Angel (Quadrangle).

Whether or not Firing Line can fill the breach, Get Stormy will undoubtedly be making posthumous additions to his legacy. After all, Giant's Causeway himself—perhaps the greatest conduit of all, for this sire-line—is not quite done yet, even though he bequeathed just three foals from a handful of final coverings before his death in the spring of 2018. Incredibly, two of them now line up together for the GII Langholm South Tampa Bay Derby with a total of 85 gate points on the line for the first Saturday in May.

Curiously, both were born on 22 February 2019. Classic Causeway is being brought along beautifully at Palm Meadows by Brian Lynch, with a foundation of longer breezes for his comeback before dialing up the speed since; while Giant Game has himself been working the house down after some running repairs on a displaced palate.

Still more remarkably, it was only last week that the final Giant's Causeway of all—born eight days after the other pair—made a winning debut for Shadwell in Dubai, charging clear by four and a half lengths. So the hope that the Iron Horse might “rust in peace”, which may sound irreverent but intends a wholly affectionate tribute to his ferrous qualities, is proving happily misplaced. This is not the dull shimmer of iron, but a last glint of genetic gold.

Perhaps Giant's Causeway is looking down in vexation after his son Protonico just had a Derby winner effaced from the record. Depending how things go at Tampa Bay, however, maybe this time he won't have merely a vicarious presence at Churchill, admirably though he is being represented by Not This Time.

Mind you, even giant steps must always be made one at a time. The card also features the resumption, at long last, of the colt who looked like the pick of his crop this time last year. Let's hope the patience of everyone involved with Greatest Honour (Tapit) finds due reward in his maturity.

Ironically, his own sire's frustrating sophomore career gave a quite misleading impression about the toughness he has tended to impart to his stock; and someday, no doubt, Greatest Honour will validly recycle one of the best pedigrees you will ever see.

Certainly he won't be one of those stallions, so corrosive to the breed, that teeter to market on a wafer-thin page and a whizzbang speedfigure or two. The Thoroughbred's vocation is not for the flimsy of limb, nor the faint of heart. So while Crestwood may have lost their flagship, they have not lost their bearings. They are navigating by the stars, by the fixed points of soundness and pedigree, and we would all do well to follow in their wake.

The post This Side Up: A Model Flagship For Stormy Seas appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

This Side Up: An Oath to Share the Secret of Eternal Youth

It stands to reason, I guess, that the fountain of youth–the quest for which supposedly brought the first conquistadores to the shores of Florida–should instead turn out to be in Hot Springs. Certainly it seems as though there must indeed be something in those celebrated Arkansas waters, judging from the eternal vigor of an 86-year-old trainer based at Oaklawn this winter.

For a moment last Saturday, D. Wayne Lukas was going to sweep both Classic trials, Ethereal Road (Quality Road) just losing focus in the final strides of the GII Rebel S. after barnmate Secret Oath (Arrogate) had settled the GIII Honeybee S. with that exhilarating dart round the final corner. And if those of us marvelling from afar wished that we, too, might sample the rejuvenating properties of the thermal springs, then the good news is that we don't have to fly all the way there and book into Bathhouse Row.

Because it now falls within the compass of a single, extraordinary man to share among his whole community the dynamism he already appears to have imparted to Secret Oath. And he won't need a bottling plant. In the spine-tingling moment when his filly broke free of her inferiors last weekend, announcing herself at this point the most flamboyant talent of the crop, a sudden sunbeam broke across our benighted industry. Have we, in our hour of need, out of nowhere found a path to redemption?

Obviously, Lukas is too seasoned to be committing prematurely to the Derby. But don't tell me that one of the towering figures of the American Turf, seeing this filly maintain her current giddy trajectory, will turn his back on a challenge that so neatly dovetails the gilding of his own legacy with the overall interests of the sport.

It was a filly, of course, who in 1988 gave Lukas his first Derby. His three subsequent winners were all clustered in a five-year streak from 1995, interrupted only by the first pair saddled by another colorful arrival from the Quarter Horse world. That gentleman has long supplanted Lukas as the go-to trainer for the superpower investors, the transfer of the baton being aptly condensed (not least in their names) by two horses owned by Bob and Beverly Lewis: Silver Charm (Silver Buck), the first Derby winner saddled by Bob Baffert; and Charismatic (Summer Squall), the last saddled by Lukas.

Secret Oath's Honeybee romp | Coady

Or maybe not the last. But you know what, it scarcely matters whether or not Secret Oath can actually beat the boys in the Derby. Even to try would itself represent a huge win for a sport otherwise staring down the barrel of yet another public relations calamity, thanks to the very man whose silver charms have so faded over the past year.

We're not going to reprise the stagnant topic of whether Baffert's sense of personal injustice–whatever its merits–warrants the asphyxiation of his sport at the one time it receives the oxygen of publicity, in the first days of May. Because all of a sudden, over the horizon here comes a venerable knight riding to the rescue on his gray charger. All of sudden, All of sudden, the casting of Baffert as the specter at the Derby feast could become a relative sideshow.

As an outstanding visionary among modern American horsemen, with a born educator's sensitivity to the broader human fulfilments available in our trivial obsession, Lukas will surely be governed by the bigger picture in what may well prove the final benediction of a game-changing career.

At this stage of his life, would the old teacher and coach decline this priceless, paternal service to a beleaguered industry simply because Secret Oath would start at shorter odds in the GI Kentucky Oaks? At the very least, he can leave both options open by giving her a chance to earn the requisite gate points in the GI Arkansas Derby. And if she were to tackle that assignment in a fashion that extends the current dilemma, then it won't be a dilemma at all.

I mean, this is the man who even since last weekend has made us all feel humbled–if not downright ashamed, in some cases–by our failure to keep up with the indefatigable standards he still maintains in terms of evangelizing our way of life. Hardly anyone who heard or read his words (editor's note: Lukas Challenges Everyone “To Make a Difference” Every Day is located at the bottom of the story) to a Hot Springs conference can have remotely approached his eligibility to put his feet up, after so many decades of endeavor and achievement, and leave the future viability of the game in younger hands. Well, we may have younger hands. But we have none more vital and inspiring.

Just imagine having this guy front and center in Derby week! Not just intriguing, and winning over, the world outside; but energizing our base, challenging us all to be more deserving of the noble animal that ostensibly unites us all.

True, before coming up with the third filly to win the Derby, Lukas had also ended the fairytale of the second, Genuine Risk (Exclusive Native), with Codex (Arts and Letters) making a highly masculine swing to the fences on the final turn in the Preakness. Overall, however, the evidence suggests that Lukas trusts a filly to look after herself. Think Serena's Song (Rahy) in the GI Haskell; think Lady's Secret (Secretariat) in the GI Whitney; above all think Althea (Alydar) setting a track record that not even Secret Oath could hope to get near in the Arkansas Derby.

Okay, so Althea's performance at Churchill reminds us not to get too far ahead of ourselves. But in these dark days, when our parochial problems so plainly don't amount to the proverbial “hill of beans”, we must cling with all possible faith to such hope as we can find.

John Shirreffs | Horsephotos

Because every now then, we are blessed by the confluence of a great man and a great opportunity. Cometh the hour, and all that. It happened before, when Zenyatta (Street Cry {Ire}) won us so many new friends largely because she happened to find her way into the care of a man not only touched by the genius necessary for her fulfilment, but every bit as uncommon in the more fundamental human register of integrity and intelligence.

That's why this feels like a week of rare promise for our embattled sport: because it has also been the week in which John Shirreffs finally secured an overdue nomination to the Hall of Fame. If it could end with the redress of another unconscionably prolonged anomaly, and a first success for Shirreffs in the GI Santa Anita H., then I really will begin to think that somebody up there might be looking out for our sport, after all.

We all know that this is no longer the race it was, thanks to the booty nowadays seducing horses to faraway deserts. But we also know we can rely on the trainer of Express Train (Union Rags) to cherish the undiminished luster of its heritage. For here is a man who truly understands and respects that everything we are privileged to do with horses, today, is built on foundations laid by so many generations who preceded us.

And who knows? So long as we have exemplars like Shirreffs and Lukas to illuminate the way–men burning with a passionate, perennial sense of our responsibilities to the Thoroughbred–perhaps we might yet find the magic springs to renew and revive our weary, limping old sport.

The post This Side Up: An Oath to Share the Secret of Eternal Youth appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post