Chris McGrath | Horse Racing Free Tips

This Side Up: The Heart of the Matter

You would think the heart has enough on its plate. It literally never gets a break, not for one second, never mind a vacation. Never a morning's fishing, a bourbon after dinner. Yet somehow we have ended up charging this most vital of our organs with a second burden, figurative but scarcely less momentous, as the vessel of love.

So when the tireless engine of life finally fails, in one we cherish, we speak of our own hearts as being “broken.” And there were many such, in Lexington on Friday, when mourners bade farewell to the distinguished veterinarian Dr. Thomas Swerczek.

We reserve to their private grief the tribute that Dr. Swerczek was evidently no less exceptional in his dedication, as a family man, than in his professional accomplishments through decades of service at the local university. For those of us outside the reach of his own heart, however, the professor's name will always evoke the epic proportions of another.

For it was Dr. Swerczek who famously conducted the necropsy, in 1989, on perhaps the greatest Thoroughbred in the story of the breed. He estimated Secretariat's heart to be twice the average size, maybe over 20 pounds. This discovery conformed so obligingly with the horse's overall prowess, with his physical magnificence and almost supernatural running power, that it nourished some pretty excitable extrapolations.

Secretariat's heart is literally the stuff of legend. It places him in the same register as warrior heroes of Norse mythology, with their limbs like cedar trees. But legend is not even history, never mind science. And the perennial quest for an edge, in our business, has allowed a whole ancillary industry of theory and analysis to be energized by the freakish heart of a freak among racehorses.

On some level, no doubt, this can only have been encouraged by the very cultural duality we just noted in the human heart. In a racehorse, of course, the metaphorical dimension is not love, but courage. But it's obviously tempting, if only subliminally, to conflate the “heart” we celebrate in a horse that gives everything in a finish with the sheer physical proportions of the organ housed in its chest. We literally describe such animals as “big-hearted”.

After all, the same intangibility unites “heart,” in the sense of competitive ardor under the whip, and the physical organ that we can only ever see for ourselves at a post-mortem. Sure, nowadays we have technology that allows external estimation of cardiac capacity. But as is axiomatic in a less decorous context, there's a limit to the satisfactions available in size alone.

Another man of science recently mourned in Kentucky, Dr. David Richardson, once cautioned me that data available across the horse population does not permit pronouncement on the specimen in front of you. And cardiac physiology, being so complex, was his chosen example.

“They talk about heart size,” he said. “But the real question is: how does it squeeze? (What's called the ejection fraction.) How fast can it pump blood? How efficiently, in terms of oxygen use? So it's not just heart, but lungs. So people try to assess that, too, on a treadmill. But that's still not like running a race at distance. But even if you could get the cardiovascular bit right, then how about the legs? And the mind? You can gauge some of those things, sometimes–but it's very hard to say how the whole package will stand up to raceday pressures.”

As it happens, Dr. Swerczek also performed the necropsy on Bold Ruler. Though he would have been one of the greatest stallions in history even without Secretariat, apparently he did not have a large heart. But you know who did? The second largest one Dr. Swerczek ever saw, at 19 pounds, belonged to none other than Secretariat's hapless punchbag, Sham.

What an amazing coincidence. But what an obvious coincidence, too. Because Dr. Swerczek performed the same procedure thousands of times, including elite athletes from many different crops. And none of them, he said, ever came close to that pair.

So instead of this inadvertent legacy, in all the controversies and occult dogmas stimulated by Secretariat's heart, let's instead celebrate the many years of unsung contribution made by Dr. Swerczek to the welfare of the animal he loved. He made vital advances in several horrible diseases that afflict the Thoroughbred and was always in the frontline trenches in the trauma of Mare Reproductive Loss Syndrome.

He understood how many different factors, notably in environment and nutrition, can erode or assist the fulfilment of a racehorse. He knew that the system of flesh and blood maintained by those miraculous pumps is always too complex to permit glib answers.

Dostoyevsky identified two types of unhappy fool: the one with a heart and no sense, and the one with sense and no heart. By all means, go ahead and find out all you can about the heart. Maybe you can discern something instructive even in those of immature Thoroughbreds. But do keep your sense, all the same, along with their hearts.

Maybe ventricular capacity can indeed tell us something about stamina, caliber even, and heritability. To me, however, anything that remotely smacks of a “system,” any formula that claims to cut right through the mysteries of our vocation, deserves its place somewhere on the spectrum that starts, at one end, with snake-oil.

Science, with its scrupulous standards of evidence, will doubtless keep inching its way forwards through this whole maze. But in a business where the fast buck is never quite fast enough, some people will never want to hang around and wait.

Needless to say, we all know of highly professional horsemen exploring some of these potential edges. The responsible ones, invariably, will stress that the insights they seek can only address a single facet of what will always remain a very jagged diamond. And, actually, even the people who make it all sound very simple tend to be little more than credulous; fanatical, rather than fraudulent. But while it's a free country, and up to you how to spend your money in this very expensive game, I know what I'd suggest if anybody comes to you with a key to the single, secret lock on Thoroughbred potential. Give them your iciest smile, and wish them good day.

Apart from anything else, in claiming to be able to remove the guesswork, such people are inimical to precisely that element of inspiration which feels, to some of us anyway, most essential to the whole romance of what we do. Yes, some will be supported by wonderful gadgets; all, nowadays, by persuasive software. But give me the unadorned instinct of a seasoned horsemen, every time, and we'll see you out on that proving ground. First to the wooden stick.

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This Side Up: Two Very Different Lives, One Passion

No matter what privileges or disadvantages we take into the starting gate, and no matter how many circuits we get to run, all of us ultimately pull up at the same finishing line. But it is not just that humbling reckoning, reached within days of each other, that united Billy Turner and Josephine Abercrombie. Their lives, though wildly contrasting, were animated by the same bond of vitality that sustains many who grieve them.

“Mrs. A.”, as she was known to those blessed by her friendship or patronage, embraced the extraordinary opportunities to which she was born with so commensurate an appetite that one might ask how anyone could have compressed so much into a mere 95 years. Besides her careers as horsewoman and breeder, she threw herself with equal gusto into walks of life as diverse as boxing, skiing, dancing and Broadway.

Nor did Mrs. A. measure her benedictions only in material terms, having so prolonged the fulfilment she found in Pin Oak that the stable was only dispersed a matter of weeks before her loss. That said, the fact is that she was never going to require a GoFundMe page to sustain her final days, as was poignantly the case for the 81-year-old trainer of Seattle Slew.

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Affectionate tributes to the skill and charm of Billy Turner did not tiptoe around the corrosion of his prime by a struggle with alcoholism. But he would be very comfortable with that, given his own, hugely commendable candor in reflecting, in later years, on the demons that had accompanied him to one of the summits of Turf history. Turner was only 37 when a $17,500 Bold Reasoning colt came his way, and it's right that people understand why he appeared to receive such scant reward.

Before the Derby, many considered Seattle Slew insufficiently seasoned after just three sophomore starts. The habits of trainers today, however regrettable, make Turner appear to have been ahead of his time. But his true legacy was securing the male line of Bold Ruler, with all its old school virtues.

Like so many of our finest horsemen, Turner learned the ropes in steeplechasing. But in trying to keep his weight down, even as his height soared (by six inches in his 19^th year alone), he yielded to temptations natural in a fraternity that rode so hard—and drank so much harder. Then, in soaking up the pressures of a Triple Crown campaign, he found the press equally willing to normalize excess at the bar. (Which charge I, for one, am certainly not going to refute). Those pressures, by the way, can be judged from Turner's pronouncement to a reporter while Slew was still a juvenile. “If he doesn't win the Triple Crown,” he said, “I haven't done my job.”

Turner and exercise rider Mike Kennedy on the way to the track with Seattle Slew in 1977

Doubtless the succor he found in drink contributed to Turner's notorious sacking by the owners of Seattle Slew; certainly it dragged him into desperate times thereafter. Much to his credit, however, he regrouped. If the home stretch brought fresh difficulties, in healthcare and its costs, it's edifying to know that Turner had overcome a still greater challenge, in his own life, than the one he met with Seattle Slew. By any measure, this was a man of accomplishment.

True, while renewing his personal stability, he could not fully reverse the professional odds that had steepened in the meantime. Even so, a Hall of Fame nomination should surely have been revived for Turner by the time he retired in 2016. Fully two decades after the glory days of Slew and Czaravich (Nijinsky), after all, he had supervised a 21-for-55 near-millionaire in Punch Line (Two Punch) plus a third Grade I winner in Gaviola.

The latter was by Cozzene, who also happened to sire the horse that first brought Mrs. A. to the attention of many of us Englishmen.

As in selecting her long-serving farm manager, Clifford Barry, Mrs. A. showed unerring judgement in entrusting Hasten To Add to Newmarket's peerless Victorian throwback, Sir Mark Prescott.

In 1993, Hasten To Add became subject of one of the great gambles in the long history of the Cesarewitch H.

“How far is this race?” asked Mrs. A., when Prescott introduced her to the project.

“Two and a quarter miles.”

“Gee, and how often do they pass the stands?”

“They don't,” Prescott replied. “It's a dogleg course, starting in Cambridgeshire and ending in Suffolk. And it's a handicap. The topweight concedes 28 lbs to some of the others.”

Prescott recalls a moment of silent incredulity at the other end of the phone.

“Really? And how many runners are there?”

“Thirty-six.”

“This I gotta see.”

On the day, when the cavalry emerged from the drizzle and mist, Hasten To Add was just in front. While apparently engaged in a desperate duel to the line, however, he was overhauled by two others on the other side of the track. But Mrs. A. avowed that for all the world she would not have missed an experience she condensed as “all those Dukes ['Dooks'] and Duchesses, standing in the rain looking at nothing…”

Mrs. A.'s immersion in the world of boxing confirmed her to be equal to any social milieu. On the Turf, of course, we take pride in the fact that nowhere else does High Life meet quite so comfortably with Low Life. To the young man I was then, that lent an exotic glamor to this Houston heiress, with her five husbands—and five divorces! But I'm not sure I quite understood, at the time, that Low Life fundamentally comprises a ruinous succession of low days; or that it can do, at least, with the kind of problems that had meanwhile withdrawn Billy Turner from the limelight filled so joyously by Mrs. A.

There's always been a seductive glamor to the Runyonesque margins of our sport, and I've seen good people succumb to it: smart, talented people deceived that flirting with addiction, whether to alcohol or betting or umpteen other temptations, would redeem them from the dread charge of dullness.

People who think this way are also tempted to suspect that the greatness of Seattle Slew, for instance, could only be drawn out by parallel flair. Either a double-edged sword, they say, or none at all.

Well, that's a pretty dangerous formula for living. Doug Peterson was just 26 when the owners transferred Seattle Slew to his barn from Turner. Though he secured the champ his Eclipse Award, as an older horse, Peterson would disappear from the racetrack barely a couple of years later, lost in a spiral of drugs and drink. Like Turner, he showed the resilience and character to embrace rehab; he edged his way back to the track, after stints as an entry clerk and in the gate crew, and in 1999 he saddled 40 winners from just 175 starters. But he was only 53 when he died, from an accidental overdose, in 2004.

All these different lives, rotating with the twists of fate like a kaleidoscope against the shining light of the racehorse. All these different legacies, too. From intimate, domestic ones we cannot know; to the kind of public benefaction that prompted Mrs. A. to found her school in Lexington. But if so many of our comforts prove shallow, or even downright perilous, then how wonderful that we can all share the immortality available through the medium of a Seattle Slew or Sky Classic.

With his famously eccentric libido, Seattle Slew's genetic bequest was a fragile one. Its rescue is one of many debts, by no means confined to such lessons in horsemanship, our community owes to John Williams. Lest we forget, we are blessed to have in our midst the most exemplary people. And little wonder, when they share devotion to the horse: this paragon of constancy, courage and beauty, so innocent of our avarice and addictions.

We may envy the worldly fortune of Mrs. A., and the wealth of experience it supported; but her loyalty is within the compass of the poorest among us. She brought Barry to the farm in 1984. Donnie Von Hemel trained for Pin Oak for 30 years, Graham Motion nearly as long, with Mike Stidham a novice at around 15 years. Before the dispersal, Barry told TDN: “She's about as competitive a person as you could come across, but there'd never be a finger pointed. It was always just, 'We got outrun today and we'll do better tomorrow.'”

That's a motto that would serve us all well—whether seeking the next Seattle Slew, or patching up some old claimer; whether drilling oilwells, or just seeking an oasis in a world full of dangerous mirages.

The post This Side Up: Two Very Different Lives, One Passion appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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A New Puncher for Violence

The new year could scarcely have opened in more familiar fashion, with Bob Baffert not only winning the GIII Sham S. for an eighth time but replicating what had meanwhile become a bitterly poignant 1-2 in the race last year.

Hopefully the names of Newgrange (Violence) and Rockefeller (Medaglia d'Oro) will not end 2022 quite so explosively freighted as those of Life Is Good (Into Mischief) and Medina Spirit (Protonico), whose respective transfer and tragedy have meanwhile become so expressive of the travails not only of their trainer, but of our entire industry.

But the levels subsequently achieved by both those colts certainly reiterated the caliber of animal Baffert reserves for this race, which was 12 months earlier chosen to launch a Horse of the Year campaign for Authentic (Into Mischief). Newgrange is duly guaranteed much attention in his quest to become the third consecutive GI Kentucky Derby winner (pending resolution of Medina Spirit's status) to graduate from the Sham.

We won't add, here, to the oceans of ink that will continue to flow on the ineligibility of Newgrange, as a resident of a barn banned by Churchill Downs, for the 10 Derby starting points that are supposed to be bestowed on the Sham winner. Instead let's just take a step back and consider what Newgrange's pedigree tells us about his potential; and what his emergence might do for the profile of his sire.

Violence has had an interesting stud career already, not least with his best horses to this point sharing what might seem an unexpected vocation as sprinters–albeit we should know, by this stage, not to make assumptions about the way his own sire, the beautiful Medaglia d'Oro, has channeled the legacy of an avowed turf influence in El Prado (Ire).

Though confined to just four starts, Violence was able to show a versatility of his own in terms of surface. Having started out on dirt in New York, winning on debut at Saratoga and then following up in the GII Nashua S., he shipped out to Hollywood Park to win the GI Futurity S. on synthetics.

Violence as a 2-year-old winning the Nashua | Jessica Hansen

Collared only by the subsequent Derby winner in the GII Fountain of Youth S., he unfortunately emerged out of that first defeat with a sesamoid fracture. Retired to Hill 'n' Dale at $15,000, Violence soon proved the star of the intake. Though he missed the 2017 freshman title by a few cents–the fortunes of champion Overanalyze, long since exported, stand in cautionary contrast–he was top by winners, and was rewarded by no fewer than 214 mares at a new fee of $25,000 the following spring. His maturing stock promptly elevated him to No. 1 second-crop sire across all indices, with eight stakes winners and 19 stakes performers. His third crop of yearlings borrowed that buzz, at an average $133,600, and his fee was hiked anew to $40,000.

But Violence then suffered a little stage fright. In 2019, he mustered just two stakes winners, and his yearling average sagged to $44,649. With his fee restored to $25,000 for 2020, Violence then steadied the ship with a spectacular, game-saving cluster of Grade I wins by colts from three different crops. The sophomore No Parole gave him a breakout success in the Woody Stephens S.; lightly raced 4-year-old Volatile added the Alfred G. Vanderbilt S.; and, though that colt was soon derailed, juvenile Dr. Schivel kept the conveyor turning in the Del Mar Futurity.

Dr. Schivel proved a crucial ally in 2021, too, ensuring that Violence's solitary graded success of the year came at the highest level in the Bing Crosby S., while only missing the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint by a nose. In the meantime, moreover, Violence had retrieved all his commercial energy. His 2020 yearlings rallied to $72,128, obviously in a challenging market; while his latest crop was right up to $116,352, crowned by a $950,000 colt sold to Repole Stables and St. Elias at the September Sale. (Auspiciously, his previous knockout score at auction, at $850,000, had turned out to be Volatile.)

Dr. Schivel (outside) in this year's Bing Crosby | Benoit

That represents superb consolidation by a horse emerging from a tricky crossroads, and reflects twin factors: one, obviously, is the vogue generated by those three Grade I winners; the other is that his 2021 yearlings graduate from that single season at $40,000, when he covered 171 mares presumably deemed worthy of a raised fee.

The overall momentum of Violence is reflected in the way his book, having slipped to 86 after his tepid racetrack campaign in 2019, rallied last spring to 159. So while he does have a small bump in the road ahead, in terms of his likely juvenile footprint for 2023, the overall “pipeline” is looking pretty good: his sophomores for this year represent his biggest book; and his incoming juveniles, his best.

The big question raised by Newgrange is whether Violence can now add a two-turn, Classic dimension to his most accomplished stock. As we've noted, Medaglia d'Oro has long proved an influence for diversity–in terms of discipline as well as surface, with Astern (Aus), Vancouver (Aus) and Warrior's Reward among his leading sprinters. Besides his sire line, another factor could be the duplication of his sixth dam, Greentree matriarch Sunday Evening, behind his granddam, whose sire is out of one of her daughters. Besides recurring in the pedigree of several fast horses, notably Irish champion sprinter Bluebird (Storm Bird), Sunday Evening is also an ancestress of other luminous turf runners in Indian Skimmer (Storm Bird) and Henrythenavigator (Kingmambo).

Storm Bird, responsible for both Bluebird and Indian Skimmer in this family, obviously gave us a huge “crossover” influence in Storm Cat. And it was Storm Cat's serial matings with Hall of Famer Sky Beauty (Blushing Groom {Fr}) that gave us the second dam of Violence. Sky Beauty's Grade I-winning dam Maplejinsky, in turn, was by the venerable turf/stamina influence Nijinsky, while also being a half-sister to the flying Dayjur (Danzig). (Literally flying, in terms of his unforgettable transition to dirt at the Breeders' Cup.) Their dam Gold Beauty, a champion sprinter by Mr. Prospector, whose son Gone West is sire of Violence's dam–admittedly one of the weaker links in this regal maternal line, with a solitary success in a nine-furlong dirt maiden at four.

Bottom line is that there are strands here that would certainly make it feasible for Violence to stretch out his stock: his own sire has obviously given us some real monsters round two turns, unsurprisingly as a grandson of Sadler's Wells; while Maplejinsky also features behind some pretty sturdy operators (third dam of Point of Entry {Dynaformer}, for example). But the propensity of Violence to throw very fast horses, to this point, is equally coherent on both sides of his pedigree. So while he does have a Grade I winner over 10 furlongs in Argentina, it appears instructive that one of his first stars, Talk Veuve To Me, ended up reverting to sprints despite some pretty stout influences in her family.

Hill 'n' Dale's Violence | Sarah Andrew

Of course, a reputation for speed does Violence no commercial harm at all. But what are the prospects of Newgrange, who won his maiden at six and was not pressured at a mile, stretching out on the Derby trail?

Well, it will certainly help if he keeps getting the same obliging treatment accorded to so many Baffert speed horses. Newgrange was only the latest to be so indulged, setting leisurely fractions in the Sham and duly retaining ample gas to assert in the stretch.

One thing we can say for sure is that he was well found as a yearling, for $125,000 by SF/Starlight/Madaket (subsequently joined on the racecard by several other powerful interests) as deep as Hip 2474 in the Brookdale Sales consignment at the September Sale. He was co-bred with Jack Mandato by Black Rock Stables, who had raced Violence and evidently retain a stake in his stud career despite meanwhile dispersing much other stock.

Newgrange is out of the unraced Empire Maker mare Bella Chianti, herself co-bred with Stone Farm from Mandato's extremely useful and tough racemare Bella Chiarra (Phone Trick), winner of nine of 29 starts (chiefly around 8/9f) including the GII Rampart H. at Gulfstream.

All five of Bella Chianti's foals to have raced have won, albeit only Newgrange at a smart level. More auspicious, perhaps, is the fact that her full-sister, though herself a modest performer, is the dam of the tragic Amalfi Sunrise (Constitution), lost to laminitis after winning her only two starts a couple of years ago, including the GII Sorrento S. by six lengths. We'll never know how far Amalfi Sunrise might have stretched out, but she did look extremely brisk on what we saw. That makes it hard to be adamant that her dam's sister will be putting much of their sire's Belmont-winning stamina into the Newgrange equation. (Be that as it may, Empire Maker certainly has an increasing legacy as a broodmare sire, newly enhanced in 2021 by Silver State {Hard Spun}, Mandaloun {Into Mischief} and Rock Your World {Candy Ride (Arg)}.)

Medaglia d'Oro | Darley

Newgrange's third dam is a stakes-sprinting daughter of the obscure Maryland sire Count Brook out of a modest mare by an unraced son of Nearco (Ity) imported from Britain, River War (GB). Nonetheless she produced a couple of other accomplished performers besides Bella Chiarra: a dual graded stakes winner on turf, David Copperfield (Halo), plus the hardy Young At Heart, twice beaten only narrowly in Grade II dirt sprints–despite being by Ferdinand.

You have to go back quite a long way to find where this trio might have dredged any genetic class: to the 1922 foal Primrose, in fact, as a Jerome H.-winning half-sister to a Travers winner. And, even as one who likes to unpick the deeper mesh of pedigrees, I'm not going to suggest that Newgrange must owe an awful lot to his eighth dam!

The real nugget on Newgrange's page is plainly his granddam Bella Chiarra–and her sire Phone Trick, obviously a very quick horse himself, owes his principal broodmare laurels to two horses, Zensational and Dawn Approach (Ire), who were unusually dashing for sons of Unbridled's Song and New Approach (Ire), respectively.

The onus remains on Violence, then, to show that his glossy physical stamp relays not just speed but speed that can be carried at the highest level. Clearly Newgrange couldn't be in better hands, for those purposes. As such, he looks like an important horse in his sire's developing career.

With that pedigree behind him, and that robust physique out front, Violence is not just positioning himself as an affordable alternative to his sire. Arguably the three premier achievers by Medaglia d'Oro are two females, Rachel Alexandra and Songbird, and a gelding, Golden Sixty (Aus). While he's still reliably coming up with class horses, and Rockefeller may yet become another, Medaglia d'Oro has now turned 23 and his principal male heir has yet to be definitively anointed. Violence does face fresh competition, from the likes of Bolt d'Oro and Higher Power, but Newgrange could be the herald of a decisive new phase in his candidature.

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It’s a World of Mischief

As a year of unprecedented achievement draws to a close, the distribution of laurels among our champion stallions must first and foremost celebrate their sheer potency. For while we already know Into Mischief to be a phenomenon, he demands fresh admiration in sealing his third consecutive general sires' championship with a prizemoney haul just shy of $25 million, shattering the $22,507,940 record he set in his second; the work of 260 winners, similarly raising the bar giddily on the 221 who compiled his first. As the revelation of the year, equally, Gun Runner reached uncharted territory in the freshman's table, his tally of $4,209,350 surpassing the record of $3,717,490 set by Uncle Mo in 2015.

For these twin peaks to have been scaled simultaneously, however, also requires us to reflect on what such a historic coincidence might tell us about the changing nature of this business. Whatever else he achieves, Into Mischief is presumably going to end up the most prolific champion sire in the story of the breed, measured by simple volume of paternity. Yet that does not seem to have eroded his efficiency. His ratios, in producing elite stock this year, remain competitive or better with the other leading stallions, and best of all–if only just–in terms of black-type performers at almost precisely 16%.

(All figures, incidentally, are correct on TDN's database through Dec. 29. In any final analysis, minor updates will obviously be required to incorporate the final two days' sport of the year.)

On one level, you couldn't ask for better evidence of the functionality we seek–but rarely find–in every stallion prospect. In the axiom of one of the masters of this trade, John Sikura, the genetic switch is either “on” or “off”. Into Mischief famously overcame the modesty of his first covers, in both quality and quantity, to brandish an unmissable capacity to impart prowess to his stock. Gun Runner, as a Horse of the Year starting at $70,000, had all the advantages Into Mischief lacked at the outset. Nonetheless he appears to have cut straight through the kind of mitigations we would often expect to offer a two-turn stallion who reached his peak in his third campaign.

Gun Runner | Sarah Andrew

If his stock can still abide by original presumptions, and build higher yet on this foundation of unexpected precocity, then Gun Runner will surely join Into Mischief among that premier tier of stallions who sustain the commercial primacy of the “bull” over the “herd”. (Which is a question far more fundamental than their useful promiscuity, relative to the mares necessarily confined to a single progeny every year.)

But if the genetic “switch” has a primal quality, then the scale against which we measure stallions is not so absolute. It will fluctuate with an ever-changing environment. As champion freshman in 1984, Danzig had just 13 starters. These included 11 winners, nine stakes horses and three Grade I winners, including the champion juvenile colt. Two made the Derby podium the following May. Nowadays, in contrast, veterinary vision and commercial myopia together ensure that new sires constantly inundate the gene pool.

When that process discloses a Gun Runner, that's fine. He has had 62 starters from 115 named foals in his debut crop, the result of 171 covers; and we'll detail his success below. But Klimt, who has launched 79 juveniles without finding a stakes winner, has reportedly been exported to Turkey already. And obviously every intake will include Klimts by the dozen for every Gun Runner.

Pending The Jockey Club's attempt to restrict book sizes, however, the industry appears to be widely and wholeheartedly committed to volume. I guess the question is whether the damage done by prolific duds is adequately addressed by those whose switch is “on”. And that's why it's important for Into Mischief and others to demonstrate that the intensity of their impact is not diluted by its expansion.

The great Danzig | Claiborne photo

Who knows, conceivably Danzig's breed-shaping legacy around the world might have been still greater, had he covered mares on the same industrial scale as Into Mischief. Being additionally blessed by fertility and libido, the Spendthrift champion has been able to maintain huge books even as his fee has soared, with a staggering 250 mares at $175,000 in 2019, and 214 even at $225,000 last spring. He commands $250,000 for the coming season, but the fact is that his 2022 sophomores will be his first conceived even at six figures–and, pending the outcome of what has tragically become a posthumous saga about Medina Spirit (Protonico), this incoming Classic crop may well be seeking to give Into Mischief a third consecutive GI Kentucky Derby.

That would sit very nicely with this third general sires' title off the reel, a distinction shared most recently with Tapit (2014-2016) and, before him, Danzig himself (1991-1993). But the overall trajectory of Into Mischief's career is such that perhaps only the unaccountable bounties nowadays available in the desert inhibits sacrilegious speculation about Bold Ruler's streak of seven in the 1960s.

These modern megaprizes, of course, permit a single horse's wild distortion of the overall standings: in 2017, for instance, Unbridled's Song would have finished 44th, not first, but for Arrogate. Down the line, perhaps, we must try to devise a way of levelling out the playing field. Otherwise we will someday end up with a champion sire long since exported to Uruguay, who happens to have left behind a standout who wins the G1 Saudi Cup and G1 Dubai World Cup.

As it is, much the most striking aspect of Into Mischief's record $24,945,619 earnings in 2021 is how widely his best performers have spread their contributions. His premier earner is Mandaloun, with $1,560,000 as things stand, though he may yet get that Derby windfall. That represents just 6.3% of his sire's overall bank for the year, compared with the whopping 45.5% contribution made by Mystic Guide to the $16.2-million haul of runner-up Ghostzapper.

Into Mischief admittedly owed 31.9% of his 2020 total to Authentic, but he would still have been champion even without his Horse of the Year. And the previous year Covfefe banked just 5.5% as the premier contributor to his sire's first title.

That looks the most instructive measure of both the legitimacy and the sustainability of the dominion established by Into Mischief. For while he may have fielded more runners than any other sire, at 444, they include not just that record-breaking number of individual winners but also 71 black-type horses. As noted already, no other sire surpasses that clip–quite.

Curlin | Sarah Andrew

But there are one or two who basically match it, while also exceeding his ratios in other indices. Constitution's third crop has elevated him to 13th in the general sires' table, for instance, and his elite percentages beat Into Mischief in all bar Grade I winners. And, you know what, there's a sire out there who has credible claims to be saluted as stallion of the year, even with Into Mischief again breaking so much new ground. Over at Hill 'n' Dale, certainly, they'll be making a very coherent case for Curlin. While confined to third in the prizemoney standings, he has unequivocally outperformed even the champion when their respective indices with elite stock are compared.

Both have had 13 graded stakes winners in 2021, but Curlin has done so from almost exactly half the number of starters: 224 against the remarkable tally of 444 already noted for Into Mischief. These represent just about 5 and 3% respectively of their starters. And while Into Mischief has 32 graded stakes performers overall, compared with 24 for Curlin, in percentage terms that again favors the less prolific footprint of one (9.3% of starters) over the other (7.2%). As the icing on the cake, Curlin has had five Grade I winners and 9 Grade I podiums, at 1.9% and 3.5% of starters; compared with four and eight for Into Mischief (0.9 and 1.8%). Their overall stakes action, meanwhile, is broadly in step: Into Mischief's 29 black-type winners and 71 performers represent 6.5 and 16% of starters; Curlin's 19 and 41, 7.3 and 15.8%.

That's not to diminish Into Mischief in the slightest. He still has a lot of stock out there conceived at lower fees and we've all seen how seamlessly he has entwined his rising mare quality with his arc of achievement, immediately establishing himself as a Classic influence the moment he covered mares like the dam of Authentic at a bare $45,000. (That same spring was Curlin's first as a six-figure cover.) To be fair, Into Mischief had got a couple of colts from early crops that finished strongly for Derby/Preakness placings, but he has now definitively shown himself capable, with the right partners, of stretching his trademark speed through a second turn.

Nonetheless Curlin merits a special mention for a magnificent year. And his achievements should not be swamped by those disproportionate elements that have exalted two others above him in the table: the lucrative endeavors of Mystic Guide, in one case, and sheer scale in the other.

Tapit | Sarah Andrew

We also need to mention Tapit, for his sheer, metronomic consistency. In adding the later-blooming Flightline to the relentlessly accomplished Essential Quality, notably as his fourth GI Belmont S. winner, Tapit mounted a late charge for fifth place. Heading to the wire, he needed less than $1,500 from one of his last runners of the year to catch Speightstown–and so extend a unique distinction, across the last 12 years, of 11 finishes in the top five. Let's remember that Tapit previously held the prizemoney records both for general sires, meanwhile claimed by Into Mischief, and for freshmen, now in the hands of Gun Runner (following the Uncle Mo interregnum).

All the way through, remember, Tapit's books have been managed with commendable restraint at Gainesway, yet in August he became the highest-earning North American stallion of all time when overtaking Giant's Causeway. He has now passed $178 million, and needs another six graded stakes winners to reach 100 in 2022.

If favored by good health and longevity, perhaps Into Mischief can challenge for that record, too. Even as Tapit reached his milestone this summer, Into Mischief was breaking the $100-million barrier, and he's meanwhile already raced past $109 million. Whatever happens, there's no mistaking him as a champion for our times, and a fitting bequest by the late B. Wayne Hughes. It was as a struggling young stallion by Harlan's Holiday, of course, that Into Mischief famously inspired the kind of incentive scheme by which Spendthrift have meanwhile transformed the entire commercial breeding landscape. We now have the incredible state of affairs in which the three busiest stallions of 2021, with 682 covers between them, were all sons of Into Mischief: Goldencents and Authentic in the same barn, and Practical Joke at Ashford.

The latter must count himself unlucky to have landed in the same intake as Gun Runner, as runner-up in the first-crop sires' championship. As it was, the Three Chimneys freak has almost doubled the tally of his nearest pursuer, with Practical Joke gasping in his wake on $2,339,717. As noted above, Gun Runner has banked $4,209,350. Sometimes the laurels in this category can be divided across different indices, but the son of Candy Ride (Arg) also dominates by individual winners (28 beats 26 for Connect), wins (39) and, inevitably, across-the-board in terms of stakes action.

Admittedly Gun Runner is one of those stallions to have started out with a useful propensity for landing his best punches where they make most impact. Of four graded stakes performers, all four have won at that level, two in Grade Is, from a total of six black-type scorers. Uncle Mo, in accumulating the previous record, had a very similar pattern. He, too, had 28 winners but from more runners (73 against 62); he also included among them two Grade I scorers; he had two more graded stakes performers than Gun Runner, but one fewer such winners.

Uncle Mo's fee was promptly trebled from $25,000 to $75,000, and he stands at $160,000 for 2022. Gun Runner, having been clipped to $50,000 last spring, now smashes into the six-figure club at $125,000. Hats off to Gonçalo Torrealba and his team, to their partner Ron Winchell, and to Steve Asmussen who continues to develop the legacy of the horse he trained so expertly.

Not This Time | Jon Siegel

Champion second-crop sire with $5,458,779 is Not This Time, whose 13 stakes winners represent 10.24% of starters: the best ratio in the general sires' list, an outstanding achievement that consolidates his persisting claims as a precious late conduit for his sire Giant's Causeway.

Runner-up Nyquist ($4,807,628), top freshman last year, sent out as many as nine graded stakes performers, representing 7.4% of his starters, but had to wait until Slow Down Andy's GII Los Alamitos Futurity to get one of them into the winner's circle. From very similar numbers (Nyquist 121 starters, Not This Time 127), Not This Time clocked 68 winners against 50 for his rival at Darley, but the pair were exactly in step in terms of overall stakes action, with 18 black-type performers apiece.

But Not This Time is really on his way, now, given the upgrade in mares he will have earned with his breakout. Best of luck to him in 2022, and to all those hoping to find the next one whose time has come.

The post It’s a World of Mischief appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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