Chris McGrath | Horse Racing Free Tips

Value Sires, Part II: First Foals in ’22

Even last year, when doing so much to fortify breeders through the uncertainties of the pandemic, stallion farms appeared to price their rookies to squeeze the usual juice from the commercial market's greatest addiction.

That was fair enough. Nowadays farm accountants can bank only on the most fleeting of vogues in drawing up a business plan for stallion acquisitions. And nor can we sensibly expect any slack now, pending the arrival of first foals and then a debut at the weanling sales next fall. A stallion has to be in pretty obvious trouble to have his fee significantly trimmed for his second season, as a candid devaluation will be received as a blatant kick by those who were prepared to assist in getting him going.

In principle, then, not a great deal can have changed since we first sieved this group last winter. Certainly I can't imagine anyone pays the remotest attention to “covering sire” averages, which are so transparently incidental to the inherent value of such mares as randomly happen to be offered. The one new ingredient in play, then, tends to be the size of debut books.

For the vast majority, in numerical terms, the only way from here is down. As such, the covering stats do not augur terribly well for some of those we thought best value. And maddeningly, because these cycles are so self-fulfilling, it's hard to turn things round if you do struggle for early traction. A disappointing first book places a tough burden on its graduates to get you over the hump of the intervening couple of crops, which will tend to be smaller yet. So our faith in one or two, while undiminished, may not obviously yield “value” in the shorter term. If fairly priced now, at least measured by your odds of getting a runner, they are probably going to become better value yet during the next year or two.

At the other end of the spectrum, though the most expensive of the intake, Horse of the Year Authentic covered as many as 229 mares–only one fewer than the busiest stallion in the land, Goldencents. (Both, of course, are sons of Into Mischief standing alongside their champion sire at Spendthrift.) A number of other start-ups also welcomed enormous books: Vekoma 222, McKinzie 214, Instagrand 190, Thousand Words 184, Volatile 181, and Global Campaign and Improbable 177 apiece. One way or another, then, some highly eligible prospects are going to have their work cut out to match the kind of freshman headlines some of these rivals are bound to seize through sheer weight of numbers.

So between these high-water marks, and those struggling near the storm drain, where can we still seek a rising tide? Here are one or two thoughts–as subjective as ever, and with due apology to the many promising types overlooked in our more concise new format.

Bubbling under: Hard to know whether a commercial market so childishly nervous of grass influences will do adequate justice to a great opportunity in War of Will (War Front). But it's hugely encouraging that this Grade I winner on both dirt and turf, by a son of one breed-shaper out of the daughter of another, was overrun with 143 partners at $25,000: by the laudably conservative standards of his farm, an outright stampede. War of Will merits close consideration by European breeders, too, with every right to become a valuable international influence.

Vekoma (Candy Ride {Arg}) has been given a trademark Spendthrift launch with a monster book at $20,000. All farms that operate this kind of system obviously offer yearling sellers a double-edged sword, but Vekoma, from the family of Street Sense and Danehill Dancer (Ire) among others, represents a promising sire of sires and can certainly recycle a ton of speed and class. Of those who corralled such big numbers, this guy looks value to make them count–even before a friendly trim to $17,500.

One of the most controversial races in Derby history, in contrast, is struggling for commercial credibility. But you can't have it both ways: if some people have decided to punish the hapless Maximum Security (who gets a fee cut) for allegations against his trainer, then at least they should give Country House (Lookin At Lucky) due respect. As it is, he was unlucky to be denied the opportunity of authenticating his breakthrough; and nor did he then get quite the numbers he deserved when sent to Darby Dan at just $7,500. Someday, perhaps, he will finally get some overdue credit by proxy, and sire a colt to pass the Derby post first. Inbred to the Sam-Son matriarch No Class, that's something he is absolutely entitled to do and, like his sire, he remains excellent value for those of sufficiently independent outlook.

Global Campaign | Sarah Andrew

Bronze: GLOBAL CAMPAIGN (Curlin–Globe Trot, by A.P. Indy)
$12,500 WinStar

I suspect that this guy is going to prove a brisker influence in his new career than might be anticipated. Yes, he was unraced at two (albeit only by a matter of days, scoring on debut Jan. 5); and nor did he try Grade I company until his last two starts at four, when winning the Woodward and outrunning his odds for third in the Breeders' Cup Classic. But if people won't be expecting too much, too soon, from a son of Curlin whose first two dams are by A.P. Indy and Lord At War (Arg)–both, incidentally, stellar distaff influences–this is a family that can inject surprising doses of speed.

That second dam, herself a three-time graded stakes winner, is a half-sister to the dam of Zensational (Unbridled's Song), whose three Grade I sprints qualify him as the fastest son of his sire. The next dam was a half-sister to the dams of one sprinter that broke the five-furlong track record at Churchill, and of another that did the same over six furlongs (turf) at Woodbine. And of course Global Campaign's half-brother Bolt d'Oro was hardly a standard issue Medaglia d'Oro (not that there's any such thing, really) in featuring a 103 Beyer in his champion juvenile campaign. Sure enough, Global Campaign outpaced a smart sprinter in Yorkton (Speightstown) over seven furlongs at Gulfstream on his 4-year-old comeback, and I have a hunch that he didn't quite last home at the Breeders' Cup. Having controlled the tempo when winning over nine furlongs, I wonder how he might have fared given more of a chance at a mile.

Regardless, a debut book of 177 is a major leg-up, and due reward for realistic pricing. I'm not saying that Global Campaign will necessarily have loads of precocious juveniles, but expect him to achieve a viable base and then to consolidate. Factor in his fee, and he rather sets himself apart from those with even bigger books: most are more expensive, and others don't obviously match his eligibility to sire the type of horses we should all be looking for.

Honor A. P. | Amy Lanigan

Silver: HONOR A. P. (Honor Code–Hollywood Story, by Wild Rush)
$15,000 Lane's End

Still fantastic value, still a whole lot of racehorse for this money. And I cling stubbornly to the belief that he was as talented as any of his generation, beating the Horse of the Year on merit the only time they met properly toe-to-toe (undercooked for their first encounter; undone by a shocking trip in their third).

The only reason he doesn't retain the top step is that a book of 110, which should be ample in a sane world, may contain some that emulate their sire in only really announcing themselves round a second turn, and maybe with a little maturity too (bearing in mind that imposing physique). The book of 190 assembled by the precocious Instagrand, for instance, is presumably more likely to produce maiden winners at Keeneland's spring meet. It's possible, then, that the notoriously myopic commercial market might not grant Honor A. P. due attention until the playing field starts to level out.

Once through that crossroads, however, those who do hang in there will definitely have the last laugh. And remember that a horse this beautiful, in the meantime, almost guarantees a home run or two at the sales. Honor A. P. must have been close to the most prodigious physical of the crop, as measured by his $850,000 yearling tag; while his dam won Grade Is at two and five, a comfort in view of the way his own light career restricted wider appreciation of his talent. She has also contributed three other black-type operators to a branch of the Myrtlewood dynasty (Global Campaign, incidentally, represents another) that has been seeded pretty seamlessly by venerable Classic influences.

Honor A. P. absolutely merits fidelity, and will someday make this fee look like a gift.

Complexity | Sarah Andrew

Gold: COMPLEXITY (Maclean's Music–Goldfield, by Yes It's True)
$12,500 Airdrie

How does Complexity elbow his way right through to the top of the podium? Not too complex, really. For one thing, his farewell performance in the GI Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile has obtained a fresh luster: trying to lie up with Knicks Go (Paynter) from a wide draw, through opening splits of 22.15 and 22.39 (producing a faster six furlongs than in the Sprint on the same card), has turned out to be a still tougher ask than it seemed at the time–especially round a second turn, which was probably not Complexity's true metier. This time last year, moreover, Maclean's Music was still available at $25,000. A breakout Grade I exacta this summer has doubled his fee, requiring smaller breeders to ponder his potential as a sire of sires instead. Above all, however, Complexity received no fewer than 158 mares in his debut book: as close to oversubscription as this model farm will allow.

That puts him right in the center of the conversation for the freshmen's championship. Remember he made all for his emphatic GI Champagne S. success, as indeed he had when thrashing future Grade II and stakes winners on debut in Saratoga. Complexity regrouped after a troubled sophomore campaign to be just nailed in the GI Forego S., after again sharing a wild tempo out wide, and all you need to know about his build is that Mike Ryan gave $375,000 to make him the most expensive yearling in his sire's third crop.

You can anticipate voracious pinhooking interest in his yearlings and, while the left-field sires of his first three dams get credit primarily for variegation, they do represent august lines (Bold Ruler, Bold Ruler, Never Bend). As with American Pharoah, for instance, the important thing is that the genetic cocktail is plainly functioning potently. And don't forget that Complexity's dam has also produced a GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies runner-up, and she's out of an 11-time winner who ran second at Grade II level.

This horse couldn't be in better hands and, having gained a good deal while others have more or less had to stand and wait, everything is in place to elevate the value of any investments made in him now.

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This Side Up: Using the Full Genetic Orchestra

Though in most respects I only grow older, and no wiser, I do try nowadays not to get so cross about things. If I think people are breeding to the wrong horses, that's their prerogative. It's a difficult game; a still harder business. The Thoroughbred is reliable only as a vehicle of humility. We're all wrong far more often than we're right. And the beauty is that we have a proving ground out there, with a wooden post at the end. If you really are right, and I'm wrong, that's where we can find out.

True, that isn't quite so effective a consolation when so much breeding is predicated on a different proving ground altogether, in the sales ring. But even that unwholesome separation of priorities–by which the most “commercial” sires tend to be the least “proven”–creates an enhanced opportunity. “Don't get mad, get even.” Because some of our most venerable and valuable races are nowadays less competitive, especially in Europe, because the genetic assets required are somehow considered uncommercial.

Even in that unbelievably febrile market at Tattersalls this week, then, it no longer infuriated or depressed me to see significant investment entrusted to some whose principal professional asset is a practised plausibility. I know I have shared with you before how one of these characters once sneered at my polite inquiry whether his extremely wealthy patron might benefit from the invigorations available in American blood. He replied that he had never darkened the doors of Keeneland, and had no intention of doing so. Any fool knew that “over there they are only interested in speed”.

Well, I think we're safe in assuming that this gentleman won't be tuning in to Aqueduct on Saturday, where adolescent horses testing the water for the greatest theater of the American Turf–which, in healthy contrast with his home marketplace, maintains the two-turn pedigree at the forefront of commercial breeding–will be running nine furlongs through a tiring winter surface before they have even reached their third birthdays.

That being so, I wonder how he might account for the transformation achieved in the European Classic Thoroughbred by the winner of the GII Remsen S. in 1963? Northern Dancer clearly founded his transatlantic dynasty on the definitive attribute of the dirt runner: the ability to carry speed. Yet nowadays commercial breeders in Europe reject bloodlines in which the speed-carrying nature of “stamina” is not properly understood, in favor of sires whose mere precocity is, in turn, mistaken for speed.

On the other hand, it's difficult to refute the charge that the American Thoroughbred operates within too narrow a spectrum. While there are extreme tests, from half-mile maidens to the ultimate outlier of the GI Belmont S., those youngsters contesting the Remsen will typically spend the rest of their careers within a very finite range–a furlong or two less, or a furlong more–either side of this test.

Remsen winner Catholic Boy went on to win Grade Is on both dirt and grass | Sarah Andrew

Aficionados of this storied blue-collar circuit rightly cherish To Honor and Serve (Bernardini), who returned the year after his Remsen to win the GI Cigar Mile on the same card. In theory, lasting nine furlongs as a juvenile and then having the speed to win a single-turn mile as a sophomore suggests an impressive range. The Cigar, like its cousin the GI Met Mile, is an optimal speed-carrying test. A more conventional double, as such, would appear to be the one completed in the Cigar by the likes of Congaree (Arazi) and Kodiak Kowboy (Posse), who also won Aqueduct's other (surviving) Grade I prize in the Carter H. Unfortunately neither of that pair, nor To Honor and Serve, proved successful at stud. But the fact is that all their accomplishments were really in the same register.

During the years when Aqueduct hosted the race, the GI Jockey Club Gold Cup was still staged over two miles. When Buckpasser won the 1966 running, it was only 19 days since he had won the Woodward, over 10 furlongs, and in the meantime Eddie Neloy had kept him ticking over with a win over 15. Yet Buckpasser won his next start, the Malibu, over seven! In his juvenile campaign the previous year, moreover, his Hopeful success at Saratoga followed seven starts already between five and six furlongs.

Nashua | Courtesy Keeneland Library

Another Hopeful winner who went on to win the Jockey Club Gold Cup (twice, at Belmont), Nashua, had won over 4.5 furlongs on debut. Yet nowadays I have to get excited by a horse like Omaha Beach (War Front), because he could win Grade Is in the same campaign at six and nine!

Nashua and Buckpasser, of course, both became vital distaff influences: Buckpasser was among the greatest of them all, while daughters of Nashua gave us contrasting influences in Mr. Prospector and Roberto. To me, we simply won't know where to find that kind of bedrock if we no longer measure the full capacity of our elite performers. That doesn't necessarily mean modern horses don't have the same kind of range, though you are entitled to doubt it. But the modern race program and modern trainers together mean that we can only guess.

Performance is the best way we can identify heritable strengths. If breeders are to mix the right shades to achieve some kind of masterpiece on the genetic canvas, they need to see the full palette.

The Remsen would be a wild proposition for any European juvenile expected to operate at similar distances the following spring. (Their closest equivalent, the G1 Criterium de Saint-Cloud over 10 furlongs of mud, is one for the real sloggers.) Yet whoever wins Saturday will be said to show “versatility” if he someday returns to Aqueduct to add the Cigar or even the Carter.

Breeding a Thoroughbred should be like composing a symphony. You can't just rely on the string section: you need the layers and shades and tones provided by brass, wind, percussion. Yet nowadays we not only compose symphonies without that kind of depth. We don't even use the full string section. Commercial breeders confine themselves to the sharp, vivid speed of the violins. Those trying to win big races with homebreds favor the resonance of the cellos and double bass. But the string section owes its richness and balance to the violas, which link and express the best elements on either side.

Okay, so it's no longer realistic to expect people to use the full range of instrumentation, from the flute to the kettledrum, like Nashua or Buckpasser. But let's not make it too easy for that fabulously obtuse compatriot of mine to justify his prejudices, simply because Group 1 prizes in Europe are contested from five furlongs to 20.

Yes, it's great that Essential Quality (Tapit) could win a maiden over six as well as the Belmont. But we know that the former should be within the compass of any elite prospect against overmatched inferiors; and that the latter is nowadays a unique and exotic assignment, only embraced by the handful to whom it is a sufficiently pressing opportunity, and certainly never to be repeated. The rest of his career took place within a distance span of 300 meters.

Flintshire | Sarah Andrew

It's also gratifying that the 2017 Remsen winner, Catholic Boy (More Than Ready), could go on to win Grade Is on both dirt and grass. But we know that the turf section of the orchestra gets very little use from Bluegrass breeders, whose neglect of a stallion as eligible as Flintshire (GB) (Dansili {GB}) this week saw him returned to Europe for a reboot in France.

In the recently published covering stats, Flintshire was revealed to have covered eight mares last spring. EIGHT! This horse retired as the highest earner in the history of the Juddmonte program, and was supplanted only by another from the same family in Enable (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire}). Having maintained top-class acceleration (carrying his speed, turf fashion) to the age of six, he has so far had a single crop of sophomores. These included one that flew into fifth of 19 in the G1 Prix du Jockey Club, while he had a juvenile graded stakes winner at Del Mar only last weekend. The reliably far-sighted farm that welcomed Flintshire to Kentucky said that it was trying to make the Bluegrass “relevant to all marketplaces” once again. Well, good luck with that.

It's almost enough to make me angry. But I remind myself that I'm not doing that any more. If I feel so offended on Flintshire's behalf, then it's up to me to find a way of sending him a mare in Normandy. But please, please, don't make it so easy for that clown to dismiss the American Thoroughbred as a one-trick pony.

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This Side Up: Another Fine Messier

Red Smith put it well; of course he did. So well, in fact, that he said it all over again. In 1975, writing one of the pieces that won a Pulitzer Prize the following year, Smith declared that Kentucky Derby week was “the only one in 52 when the instrument of Satan known as horse racing becomes a showpiece of the American sports scene.” Four years later, back at the same point in the cycle, he wrote that little old ladies in Wisconsin would this week be glad to learn that Spectacular Bid and Flying Paster are Thoroughbred racehorses–though there were “vast and sinless areas in this country where they and their like are regarded as instruments of Satan for the rest of the year.” In both pieces, he then quoted Johnny Rotz recalling his Illinois boyhood: “The only time the Decatur paper mentioned racing was to tell who won the Derby and how much money Eddie Arcaro had.”

This kind of thing, to be clear, is a precious prerogative of the fourth estate. We generally feel safe in assuming that nobody out there can be paying undue attention to our hasty scribblings. (Most of the time, candidly, we're banking on it.) And maybe Smith, in 1979, was facing one of those deadlines that loom with a disproportionate burden upon the first syllable. If so, he did well then to refine his theme in a characteristically picturesque formula: come Derby week, “sinless newspapers that wouldn't mention a horse any other time unless he kicked the mayor to death are suddenly full of information about steeds that will run and the people they will run for at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday of May.”

On the day we honor one of sport's great chroniclers, in the GII Red Smith S. at Aqueduct, we should perhaps be keeping this yearly pass from Main Street in mind. Because it is now clearly open season, when it comes to inflicting the benefit of our wisdom on the hapless owners of Corniche (Quality Road), along with others in the same barn now embarking on a GI Kentucky Derby trail that remains blocked, at a crossing up ahead, by a stranded locomotive.

For the time being, there's no sign of any engineers to get the thing moving again; just a bunch of lawyers prodding each other in the chest about who's to blame. And actually, unless I've missed something, none of the ongoing litigation concerns Bob Baffert's prohibition from the home of the Derby anyway. So something has to give–just not, please, the single week of the year when we get the indulgence of “sinless” America. Because if we're not careful, we're going to find ourselves shoving 20 “instruments of Satan” into the Derby starting gate.

Bob Baffert | Horsephotos

Now while Baffert may be accustomed to the feeling, for the guys who spent $1.5 million on Corniche this is a once-in-a-lifetime shot at the two-minute Grail that essentially drives the spending of billions on bloodstock every year. Similarly, for the many owners of Messier (Empire Maker), winner of the GIII Bob Hope S. at Del Mar last Sunday. And it is dreadfully unfair to turn their situation into some kind of test of loyalty, or character.

It's certainly no help to urge that there are plenty of other fish in the sea. With all the considerable respect due to its author, the notion that there is the faintest equivalence between this dilemma and Spend a Buck missing the Preakness, because he could earn more elsewhere, is still making my head hurt days after it appeared in these pages.

No two ways about it: if one of the 20,000-odd Thoroughbreds foaled in North America in 2019 combines eligibility and health to claim one of those 20 gates on May 7, 2022, then that's exactly what has to happen. It's atrocious that anyone, typically having spent a fortune enduring countless malicious torments by the racing gods, should finally see that Derby sunbeam break from the clouds, and light on their horse, only to be told that this is just a theatrical device for the measurement of their decency.

In those terms, anyhow, it's a lose-lose scenario. Half the chorus pronounces that a decent person would already have moved his horse from a barn that has, if only by inattention rather than calculation, tainted the reputation of our community among “sinless” Americans. The other half, meanwhile, suggests that a decent fellow would sit out the Derby and stand by their man.

That being so, perhaps the real test of decency faces Baffert himself. He has to fight his corner, naturally. He clearly feels besieged and aggrieved. But however marginal his culpability, he has to accept some responsibility for putting his patrons in such an invidious position. If he truly has the interests of the sport at heart, as he often protests, then there's a way he might win round a lot of sceptics.

He could say: “You know, I really feel that I don't deserve this kind of treatment, relative to the charges against me. You saw how my horses ran at the Breeders' Cup, where I couldn't even break wind in private. But I do understand that I've exasperated a lot of people, especially after telling the world at Keeneland only a year ago that I was henceforth going to run the tightest ship in the game. And I have clearly exhausted the patience of some who are in a position to make that tell.

“As a result, anyhow, I have trapped valued clients and friends in a horrible corner. It simply isn't right for anyone to feel like they should even think about passing on the Derby because they feel sorry for someone who has already won it seven times. Okay, maybe six times. We'll see. But I am going to get these horses on the trail as best I can and, if nothing relieves the stalemate by the time we get to those 100-40-20 trials, then I am going to insist, really insist, that they be transferred to a trainer who can bank those points.

“I know a lot can go wrong with all these horses in the meantime, so I am going to use all my skill to keep them in the game. But then they are going on loan to Todd or whoever. Because that is the only way I can serve the shared interests of these horses; my friends who own them; and the sport I love. Someday I'll be back at Churchill. In the meantime, this is one way I can show that I can see the bigger picture; that I will deserve to be welcomed back.”

Corniche, another 'TDN Rising Star', took the Breeders' Cup Juvenile | Horsephotos

For the guys who own Corniche, after all, it's hardly as though we're talking about Clement L. Hirsch and Warren Stute, whose 48-year relationship we celebrated earlier this week. And nor is this just about the silks that happen to get paired with that blanket of roses. Think, for instance, what it would mean to Sam-Son Farm for Messier to win the Derby for a family cultivated there through five generations.

To a degree, moreover, we all have a stake in what happens next. Hopefully Baffert noticed the latest manoeuvres of those zealots who really do think of us as “instruments of Satan”, now trying to sever slots payments to the New York industry. Meanwhile we, too, manipulate opportunities of political or legal process–against each other. Some people are harnessing ideological lobbies to defend their constitutional right to pump pharmaceuticals into horses. Others, still more barefaced, dare to apply for Illinois wagering rights as reward for a commitment to local horse racing that feels rather elusive in the bulldozing of those beautiful stands at Arlington.

We all have a responsibility toward the future viability of our sport. Remember, we have a lot of enemies out there. Most are vexingly wrong-headed, but that doesn't mean they won't get a hearing in the social media age. So we had better make sure we reach Louisville next spring ready to correct any misapprehensions that might have flourished during the 51 weeks since Medina Spirit (Protonico) gave his contentious sample. Because they would doubtless be gripped, in Decatur, to read that one (or several) of the most talented colts in the crop is barred from the Derby, and why.

In this particular saga, then, we can't afford for both sides simply to keep entrenching their positions, waiting for the lawyers to lean on their spades. Because that's not going to happen any time soon. And a messy situation, meanwhile, could become Messier yet.

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This Side Up: Some Processions and a Funeral

Though yielding to few other Englishmen in stubbornly championing the merits of the speed-carrying dirt horse, I must admit that I have been somewhat less voluble over the past week. After so much anticipation, it felt like there were just too many Breeders' Cup races decided within strides of leaving the gate.

Obviously track surface and configuration can often be a factor, but perhaps the proliferation of methods introduced from Quarter Horse training has also contributed to the times when dirt racing can appear lacking in subtlety. The GI Distaff, admittedly, suggested that attrition from the front end can be overdone–and no doubt that contributed to a disappointing timidity among one or two riders when it came to putting early pressure on Knicks Go (Paynter) as he sized up that 10th furlong in the GI Classic. But there should be more than two dimensions to any horserace. Perhaps it was the psychology of competition, for instance, that unravelled the Distaff pace (21.84; 44.97; 1:09.7) when compared with the one by which Life Is Good (Into Mischief), admittedly at a shorter trip, so serenely burned off overmatched pursuers (21.88; 44.94; 1:08.76).

Purely as a spectacle, the Classic felt an instant anti-climax, the jockeys apparently opting for “a play within the play” to resolve the sophomore championship. In the event, they didn't even manage that to everyone's satisfaction. Regardless of other factors complicating his status, however, Medina Spirit (Protonico) is actually pretty instructive of how dirt racing can become deficient in theatricality. He has been pivotal in reducing both the premier races on American dirt this year to processions. In the GI Kentucky Derby, the protagonists were more or less in their final positions at the clubhouse turn, and Medina Spirit was permitted to control a pace that–as I've remarked before–nowadays suffers from the unavailability of starting points in sprints. At the Breeders' Cup, his contrastingly meek submission to whatever tempo suited Knicks Go felt barely less decisive.

That's why the standout sophomore race of the year was so plainly the GI Belmont S., where Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow) threw down those historic fractions and yet retained enough energy to keep smacking Essential Quality (Tapit) in the face almost all the way down the stretch. That's what dirt racing can give us, at its best: the kind of gradual, operatic crescendo we saw, for instance, in another Classic staged on the Pacific coast not so long ago, when Arrogate (Unbridled's Song) drew the sting from California Chrome (Lucky Pulpit).

Del Mar is a rather more cramped arena, but that didn't stop a series of winners making superior acceleration count in the turf races. Both disciplines have a delicate equilibrium, in terms of pace. It's often too slow in North American grass racing, by European standards, resulting in a crapshoot and unlucky defeat for the fastest finisher. On dirt, however, tactics can sometimes seem to neutralize that kind of brilliance altogether. The two big juvenile races on the main track, remember, produced spectacles pretty well as sterile as the Classic.

As I'm always saying, this is a two-way street and the gene pools either side of the ocean will always benefit from mutual transfusion. In terms of the speed-carrying dirt model, however, you couldn't ask for a much better package for stud than Knicks Go, whether in performance or paternity.

Paynter's dam has turned out to be one of Nature's aristocrats, while those of us who cherish Deputy Minister as a distaff influence are delighted that his legacy is being maintained through the top line, too. As such, it feels very wholesome that Paynter has so rebuked the commercial market for its culpable separation of “run” from “sell”.

This, to be fair, is a pretty universal phenomenon. Ludicrously, for instance, Nathaniel (Ire) can in Britain still only command £15,000, despite consistently enhancing his resumé–including, over the past month alone, the GI E.P. Taylor S. winner and a G1 Melbourne Cup podium–since producing Enable (GB) from his debut crop.

Knicks Go, in his new career, will himself offer exactly the kind of unflinching commitment and durability that would help redress the witless infatuation of European commercial breeders with speed and precocity. But let's not forget that he was also a Grade I winner at two, and that the only horse to beat him in three visits to the Breeders' Cup is juvenile champion Game Winner (Candy Ride {Arg}).

While he has earned Paynter a small increment, to $10,000 from $7,500, Knicks Go's own starting fee has perhaps been held down not only by their kinship but also by the left-field names seeding his maternal family. All I'd say is that while his first three dams are by Outflanker, Allens Prospect and Medaille d'Or, these are respectively sons of Danzig, Mr. Prospector and Secretariat. (Besides, variegation in the bottom line hardly restrained American Pharoah–first three dams by Yankee Gentelemen, Ecliptical and Tri Jet–in his Triple Crown campaign.)

Of course, not even turf stallions in Kentucky can penetrate the myopia of European breeders. Certainly they have missed a trick in English Channel, whose sudden loss has come as such a heartbreaking shock. He couldn't have done more to arrest their attention than to round off the fourth season of a career that began with Saratoga juvenile success than by thrashing the raiders in the GI Breeders' Cup Turf. In the past seven years, however, he has had precisely seven starters in Britain.

We're used to that. Among dirt sires, not even Tapit is apparently deserving of a chance in Europe; while Kitten's Joy has been unrewarded for producing champion Roaring Lion among other elite horses from a small export sample. In the past couple of years, English Channel had usurped even that titan as the premier turf stallion in America, and he nearly exited in style when War Like Goddess ($1,200 weanling, $30,000 2-year-old) was collared by just half a length last Saturday.

The fact that the winner was one of two on the card for Japanese raiders must be recognized as a straw in the wind. Japan has become a sanctuary for many stallions who cannot get commercial traction in Kentucky or Europe. We recently lamented the fact that neither of those markets could match Japan's valuation of Poetic Flare (Ire) (Dawn Approach {Ire}), a miler tough and classy enough to run first, sixth and second in three Classics over 22 days. But if a stallion as accomplished as English Channel has failed to achieve commercial success, when right under their noses, then we can't expect breeders in the Bluegrass to show any more imagination than their peers over the water.

Commiserations to the Calumet Farm team. Not all their experiments are going to work as well as English Channel, but at least they are trying to redress the most grievous genetic gaps in the modern breed. This was a stallion who not only produced tough, sound, relentlessly thriving horses, as has Paynter in Knicks Go. He also traded in the flair so critical to grass racing. Looking at the main track last weekend, did that feel like another asset we can do without?

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