This Side Up: Fostering a Sense of Legacy

Ours is the most nostalgic of sports, sustained by trusted cycles. And if the calendar pauses somewhat, between the end of the Triple Crown and the renewal of beloved summer rituals at Saratoga and Del Mar, that won't preclude an evocative resonance in some of the things we can enjoy Saturday.

True, the idea that Letruska (Super Saver) is any kind of throwback, just because she is managing a second start in three weeks, is a measure of how effete the modern Thoroughbred has become. I've drawn attention previously to Jim Bolger's campaigning of Poetic Flare (Ire) (Dawn Approach {Ire}), who last month contested three Classics in 22 days, so hopefully everybody registered his career-best display at Royal Ascot the other day. Note, too, that this colt is by a stallion discarded by the commercial market, now standing privately on Bolger's own farm.

Be that as it may, the ferrous qualities perceived in the Mexican mare will be doing no harm to a picaresque narrative that has already exalted her from El Hipodromo de las Americas to early mutterings about Horse of the Year. But if Letruska is perhaps not quite as old-fashioned as would appear, then the same could be said of another highlight of closing day at Churchill.

The GII Stephen Foster S. is a race that somehow feels more venerable than its history warrants. It was only inaugurated in 1982, and a couple of years ago lapsed from the Grade I status secured by some who contributed to its precocious stature. In 1998, for instance, Awesome Again and Silver Charm rehearsed to within half a step their GI Breeders' Cup Classic exacta that November. The following year, Victory Gallop stopped the clock at 1:47.28–a mark that still looms over Maxfield (Street Sense) and friends today. Saint Liam, Curlin and Gun Runner are among the other names decorating the roll of honor. But what really gives the Stephen Foster that sepia tint is, well, Stephen Foster.

I find it very gratifying that our community honors a man who notoriously died at 37, with 38 cents in his wallet, adrift in the flophouses of the New York theatre district. Though he celebrated our sport directly in Camptown Races, we view his principal bequest as My Old Kentucky Home.

Singing Foster's anthem is a Derby Day highlight | Coady

Recently, of course, the undertones of our Derby Day anthem have been subjected to fresh examination. That's an exercise pretty typical of our times and, for some, duly began with an aggressive presumption that the song sought to place a romantic gloss on the era of slavery. But while the same misapprehension has doubtless been shared by many under the Twin Spires over the past century, Foster's original lyrics and intentions have instead been newly saluted for a compassion, uncommon at the time, for the sufferings of those “sold down the river”.

In many respects of his shadowed life, no doubt, Foster failed to transcend the norms of the epoch in which his genius was forged. But it feels right that we can still honor the human spirit that still flickers, all these years later, in a soul darkened by drink and despair. For once, perhaps, this controversial process has actually served its purpose: not “cancellation”, but a better understanding of the pathos and dignity that unites Foster's own story with that of his cherished lament.

Food for thought, here, for any horseman who proudly anticipates the respect of posterity. For how will history judge those who are pushing the slack boundaries of their calling today? No less than when we look back at Foster, it will be the context of our time that allows proper judgement, for better or worse, of what truly abides in our individual natures.

Will trainers be judged simply by the big races they have won? Or will it be additionally asked why Trainers A, B and C signed up to publication of their veterinary records, signed up to WHOA, and maintained a clean violation history; and why Trainers D, E and F conspicuously did not? Because make no mistake, if our sport has survived at all, then it will only be because those questions have become much more important than appears to be the case right now. The fact is that if you're one of those trainers who can look yourself in the mirror every morning, then you're also meeting with a candid eye the inquiring gaze of future Turf historians.

The river that unites Louisville and Foster's home state of Pennsylvania was also the medium through which his work became endowed with flavors of the antebellum South, of which his personal experience was actually extremely limited. But it's a son of New Orleans I'd like to follow in the reverse direction Saturday. Because the man who saddled Tom's d'Etat (Smart Strike) to win the Stephen Foster last year, Al Stall, Jr., saddles a most interesting candidate for a race with a far longer history in the GIII Ohio Derby.

Masqueparade | Coady

Masqueparade (Upstart) certainly has the best of antecedents, bred by Brereton C. Jones and his exemplary team at Airdrie, and trained by a gentleman whose record of achievement–highlighted by another Stephen Foster winner in Blame–presents so cleanly. Stall brought the horse along steadily through the Fair Grounds winter, taking four attempts to break his maiden, but that dozen-length romp on the Derby undercard looked a real coming of age. Masqueparade was awarded a 97 Beyer for that, breathing down the neck of Medina Spirit (Protonico)'s 102 in the main event, and I hope that he can now break into the elite of a crop with much to play for in the second half of the season.

Raised the way he was, Stall will be well aware that 1924 Kentucky Derby winner Black Gold, whose remains are interred in the Fair Grounds infield, won this race on his first start after Churchill. Sadly, one of the great fairytales of the American Thoroughbred would reach an unworthy conclusion when Black Gold, having proved infertile, was restored to competition only to suffer a grotesque breakdown.

Though his one and only foal was killed by lightning, Black Gold survives in the fabric of our sporting heritage. Back at Churchill, indeed, those who contest the GIII Bashford Manor S.–35 minutes after the Ohio Derby–will also find his name in its annals.

This communal sense of legacy, however, only serves its purpose so long as it remains dynamic and not merely ceremonial. We see that in an evolving relationship with the sentimental anthem we have long harnessed to our greatest occasion. Because we don't want a homesickness for a place that never existed; nor nostalgia for a past that didn't, either. Respecting and understanding the past also instructs us about the present, and our duty to the future.

A due sense of heritage reproves us that we are only ever custodians of the Thoroughbred. As breeders, certainly, we should always try to operate in a way that will earn the gratitude of our successors. And trainers, similarly, should remember that their deeds of today will not be judged tomorrow simply by their trophies. None of us wants to end up in the gutter, with 38 cents to our name. But wherever we end up, posterity will always know whether or not we could still see the stars.

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This Side Up: When the Going Gets Tough…

And so the dust settles on a Triple Crown in which not a single horse showed up for all three legs, with the one awaiting promotion as “winner” of the GI Kentucky Derby instead resurfacing this weekend in a non-graded stakes at Monmouth.

When they withdrew him from the Classic fray, the Mandaloun (Into Mischief) team obviously had no idea that he might abruptly find himself elevated onto the Derby roll of honor, albeit burdened with an asterisk. But they certainly captured the spirit of the age, one we deplored last week in celebrating the Classics as a historically reliable signpost to the genetic assets we should want to recycle.

To that extent, how we campaign horses actually involves making decisions on the same continuum–namely, the extent to which we're putting it all out there in a way that future generations can trust–as the more notorious ones made over the range of “therapies” today available from science.

From the outside, we can only judge what's happening inside a barn from the animal presented to the public. All of us with a stake in the breed, then, have a duty to try and identify (and, wherever possible, to invest in) those who are palpably working in its interests. So, for instance, owners who choose a barn with an extraordinary strike-rate need to ask themselves what kind of practices they might be supporting in the cause of self-interest.

Now there are certainly trainers who can settle any such questions in coherent and satisfactory fashion. I can think of some, for example, whose excellence has earned them patrons with elite resources in a field lacking due competition: in turf racing, perhaps, or in a pool struggling for depth, as is sadly the case at present in California. But there are other cases so egregious that their patrons should ask themselves whether they would sound any more convincing, after the barn is raided someday, than did those who piously pronounced their shock after the arrests of Jorge Navarro and Jason Servis.

Servis, of course, brought Maximum Security (New Year's Day) to the same race as Mandaloun–Sunday's Pegasus S.–for his first start following wildly contrasting fortunes at the Derby, only to be turned over at 1-20. However things play out for Mandaloun from here, I'm scandalized to hear people urging that the Triple Crown schedule be revised to accommodate the behavior of horsemen today. No sir! No ma'am! A thousand times, no. If the horses we are breeding (or their trainers) aren't equal to the time-honored test, then that's something we all need to know. Rather a weaker Triple Crown series than a weaker breed.

Hot Rod Charlie | Sarah Andrew

Now, so long as it's only a few mavericks of high principle who make a stand on resilience and constitution, then it's going to remain difficult for breeders to make that work at the marketplace. Oxbow, for instance, had begun to seem a pretty impossible commercial proposition by the time he came up with last week's GI Belmont S. runner-up Hot Rod Charlie. But if every other operation could meet the exemplary standards of Calumet, who gave Oxbow a thorough grounding before he ran a superb race in all three Classics, then breeders would know themselves for a fact to be using materials that have been honestly tested. (As it is, of course, very few farms do so–and that confines a branding guarantee to the likes of Oxbow, and others on his roster like Keen Ice and now Bravazo, effectively trading somewhat lesser performance eligibility for unimpeachable toughness.)

I have no idea whether Hot Rod Charlie has arrived in time to bring his sire back from the brink, but I do know that when his own time comes to go to stud, this nugget of a horse will owe his credentials every bit as much to Oxbow as to the remarkable mare who has also given us, in Mitole (Eskendereya), a champion sprinter by another unfashionable stallion.

Because what Hot Rod Charlie did last Saturday was absolute throwback stuff. Maybe he couldn't have done it, but for sitting out the Preakness. We'll never know now, obviously. But you'd like to have seen it tried, because this was one of the most heroic exhibitions of carrying speed in defeat you'll ever see.

As has been widely remarked by now, Hot Rod Charlie's 22.78 opening quarter was the fastest ever recorded in the Belmont S. His 46.49 half was beaten only by a horse called Secretariat. Here, clearly, was the work of a sibling to Mitole. Yet while the two horses who shadowed this pace floundered into oblivion entering the stretch, Hot Rod Charlie responded to the challenge of the crop leader (and that, in terms of accomplishment, is plainly what the superbly professional Essential Quality {Tapit} remains for now) by summoning his inner Oxbow and opening a gap of 11 lengths on the Preakness winner.

Essential Quality | Sarah Andrew

Congratulations, then, to Antony Beck of Gainesway for having secured a place for this extraordinary young horse alongside his champion Tapit, now the only sire of modern times to sire a fourth Belmont winner. (On which basis, as we explored midweek, Tapit stands as a transatlantic foil to Galileo {Ire} himself, in terms of wholesome Classic influences.)

Perhaps the whole Derby trauma might have played out differently had Hot Rod Charlie not allowed Medina Spirit (Protonico) to control such a processional tempo. Regardless, the pluck of “Chuck” is going to land a big one at some point, perhaps on the doorstep of some of his younger owners at Del Mar in November. If so, he could offer the game valuable succour in this time of need. For if the $1,000 yearling who won the Derby has quickly proved a public relations disaster, then a $17,000 short yearling offers a pricelessly accessible combination: an enthusiastic, multi-generational group of sportsmen, on the one hand; and some truly venerable antecedents on the other. (As we've often noted, he's the final legacy of his late breeder Edward A. Cox, Jr.; and was raised at Hermitage Farm by a man, in Bill Landes, who condenses all the sagacity and dignity our business needs so sorely today.)

So let's look on the bright side, as is seldom hard to do with Saratoga and Del Mar on the horizon. Despite continuing legal ructions over the Derby, there are many more welcome “positives” brewing in our environment. For one thing, paradoxically enough in the circumstances, we've just negotiated a first Classic season without Lasix. We have happy crowds restoring vitality to our great occasions. We have a bloodstock market suggestive of impatient demand. And we have a renewed sense of vibrancy and relevance at that cherished bastion of tradition, Keeneland, in a series of flawless appointments starting with that of Shannon Arvin. This regeneration, which has since included the hiring of Tony Lacy and Gatewood Bell, was extended Thursday by the naming of Cormac Breathnach as Director of Sales Operations.

Breathnach will leave a void at Airdrie, but then it was only in measuring up to such a peerless farm that he proved his eligibility for wider responsibility in our industry. Rather like the people who gave us Hot Rod Charlie, Airdrie combines the best of the old school with the dynamism of youth. The standards Governor Jones has established are being scrupulously maintained by his son Bret, as vice-president, and Ben Henley as general manager. And so long as our community has such people in our corner, setting an inflexible premium on integrity and class, we'll keep producing not just the right kind of horses but also the right kind of horsemen.

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Another Belmont Brings Tapit to New Heights

So here, not before time, is some better news. For while it sometimes feels as though our industry is trying to put out all the fires of hell with a single horse blanket, we must be doing something right if the benchmark stallions of the decade, either side of the ocean, are influences as wholesome as Galileo (Ire) and Tapit.

On Saturday the dynasty established by one of the greatest sires in the long story of the breed extended its grip on Epsom with a first G1 Derby winner by his premier son, Frankel (GB). Just a few hours later, Essential Quality qualified Tapit as the only modern sire with four winners of the GI Belmont S.

We'll consider another time Godolphin's achievement in raising homebred colts, foaled 10 days apart, to win two such venerable races on the same day. For now we're going to focus on the good fortune of 21st century breeders in being able to draw upon a genetic resource unmatched since the Belmont was in its infancy.

For make no mistake, the record matched by Tapit was set by Lexington in a very different era. Classic racing had been introduced in Britain, nearly a century before the first running of the Belmont, as part of a revolution that supplanted the arduous running of heats over marathon distances with a single dash showcasing the speed of younger horses. The sport has hastened along the same arc since, too recklessly for many of us, to the point where the Belmont is now a uniquely demanding test for an American 3-year-old. As late as the 1850s, however, Lexington himself was still operating in an antediluvian racing environment of four-mile heats.

Nonetheless, much as had earlier been the case with Eclipse on the other side of the water, Lexington's stock proved ideally suited to the demands of “modern” racing: his progeny won nine of the first 15 runnings of the Travers, for instance, contributing to his record as 16-time champion sire.

In our own time, is it special indeed to have a stallion capable of combining elite commercial performance with the kind of old-school attributes that have made Classic races the most reliable signpost to breeding selection.

Essential Quality was given the most searching of examinations on Saturday, forced miles clear of the GI Preakness S. winner by a colt of bottomless pluck in Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow). In the process the champion juvenile was able to summon the same “auxiliary” Tapit horsepower as Tonalist, Creator and Tapwrit, notably the first two in having won desperately tight finishes.

For the Gainesway titan trades in the elusive grail sought by all breeders: the ability to carry speed under duress. That is always said to be a dirt trait, but that hardly inhibited the Northern Dancer revolution in European breeding ultimately responsible not just for Galileo but also a son, Frankel, who himself ran just like a dirt horse and tends to sire gallopers that just keep galloping.

By this stage I have long since worn out the record about the transferability of speed-carrying genes in presumed dirt stallions, and the culpable failure to experiment among elite European stables.

Yes, only four of Tapit's 27 Grade I scorers have reached that level on grass. But just think about that for a moment. This is such an exceptional sire, turning out stakes performers at an extraterrestrial 19% of named foals, that only his less gifted stock will ever even be tried on turf. And actually, in that context, his performance “on the weeds” stacks up pretty well.

One in 10 of Tapit's lifetime grass runners has black type. That's not up to his usual standards, of course, but if you accept that only a Tapit who isn't working out will tend to try grass, then it's a ratio that bears comparison with many stallions considered more versatile: from a young one like American Pharoah (10.6%) to the late Elusive Quality (9.1%). It's presentable even against the specialists, with Kitten's Joy and English Channel both nudging 14%. And it is way better than, for instance, Street Sense (5%, despite strong turf genes), Tiznow (4.6%), Bernardini (3.9%), Curlin (5.9%), Munnings (5.5%) and Flatter (2.8%).

And the fact is that hardly any of the big powers have even tested the water in Europe with Tapit. As it happens, Godolphin did give a belated debut at Leicester only on Monday to a 4-year-old colt bought for $700,000 way back at the 2018 September Sale. After showing inexperience, he finished strongly for third, beaten around a length. But he is only the ninth Tapit to run for a British trainer since 2013.

The other eight include six winners and three stakes horses, notably the Group/multiple stakes winner Wissahickon whose disposal of 32 runners for the hectic stampede that is the Cambridgeshire H. was one of the most flamboyant in the long history of that race. Whatever has been holding this horse back since, including in a couple of Stateside starts, his problem clearly isn't an aversion to grass.

So to me this looks a familiar story of self-fulfilling, prescriptive thinking by owners and their agents, managers and trainers. Remember that Tap Your Heels, the dam of Tapit, though by a bona fide dirt influence in Unbridled, is out of a daughter of Nijinsky, last winner of the British Triple Crown. (Nijinsky, moreover, also gave us the third dam of Tapit's sire Pulpit.) And if that mare, Ruby Slippers, is famously also dam of a dirt speedster in Rubiano, she herself won on both surfaces. She also had a half-brother, Glitterman, whose principal credit at stud was Balto Star, winner of the GI United Nations H. on grass. Their dam, meanwhile, was a sister to a very versatile animal, in terms of both distance and surface, in Relaunch.

I'm not saying that Essential Quality and Adayar could simply have changed places in the foaling straw and ended up winning the same two races. But the odds against that would perhaps be less than generally surmised.

Essential Quality's first two dams are by stallions renowned for their flexibility in Elusive Quality and Storm Cat. Indeed, the family's principal distinction of late is Contrail (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn}), top-class on grass in Japan. He's out of a daughter of Folklore (Tiznow), the first foal of Essential Quality's second dam Contrive.

It was Folklore's emergence as champion juvenile filly in 2005 that advanced her unraced mother's auction value in 12 months from $140,000 to $3 million. That investment has proved a fairly slow burn for Sheikh Mohammed, yielding a couple of fillies who managed a single Grade III placing apiece. One of those, the sprinter Delightful Quality (Elusive Quality), started her second career with three duds, an unraced pair by Bernardini and Tiznow and a gelded son of Tapit who finished tenth of 11 on his only start. Luckily he had been such a handsome foal that the mare was returned to Gainesway, and the result is Essential Quality.

That there were always genetic embers worth stoking can be judged from the fact that Contrive had cost Robert and Beverly Lewis $825,000 as a yearling. She extended a branch of the great La Troienne line through Striking (War Admiral), 1961 Broodmare of the Year and sister to Hall of Famer Busher. (Both Striking and Busher, incidentally, feature prominently behind Tapit's great-grandsire Seattle Slew.)

Contrive's dam Jeano (Fappiano) was a dual graded stakes scorer out of GI Delaware H. winner Basie (In Reality), whose branch of the family (elsewhere decorated by Private Account, Mineshaft and Woodman) yielded another Classic winner in Smarty Jones. Presumably it was his example, then very recent, that had governed the choice of his sire Elusive Quality when Contrive produced the dam of Essential Quality.

But the real glue of this pedigree is found in the sires of Essential Quality's third and fourth dams. Both Fappiano and In Reality can also be found behind Tapit's dam Tap Your Heels: she is by Fappiano's son Unbridled, while the granddams of both Tap Your Heels and Unbridled are by In Reality.

Another conspicuous flavoring in a pedigree saturated with repeat influences is Secretariat, whose greatest achievements as a broodmare sire account for three of the four stallions in Essential Quality's third generation: Weekend Surprise's son A.P. Indy, as Tapit's grandsire; Terlingua's son Storm Cat, as sire of Contrive; and Secrettame's son Gone West, as sire of Elusive Quality.

One way or another, then, Essential Quality has a pretty solid foundation to enter the intensifying contest to succeed Tapit, whose sons already at stud are led by Constitution and have been freshly decorated by a breakout Grade I winner for Tonalist.

At 23 and 20 respectively, Galileo and Tapit have both retained their giddy market value into the evening of their careers, despite competition from less expensive sons. (Staggeringly, Galileo has 20 with Group 1 winners!) Tapit is admittedly down to $185,000 in the pandemic market, from $300,000 not so long ago, but his books and libido have always been sagely managed by Gainesway and, with a finite career ahead, he will surely remain cherished as an increasingly precious “tap” of quality.

The industry owes a lasting debt to Antony Beck for his work at Gainesway, in general, and this inspired roll of the dice, in particular. Tapit had shown flashes of brilliance in a short and fitful career, but Beck recognized that he was drawing on genes of proven functionality. Launched at $15,000 into what turned out to be a pretty stellar and evergreen group, Tapit landed running as champion freshman ahead of the likes of Candy Ride (Arg), Medaglia d'Oro and Speightstown, and has never looked back.

Certainly he quickly redressed a superficial impression of fragility, which had actually traced to a lung infection; and nor has a reputation for feisty temperaments prevented hardy influences like Nijinsky and In Reality becoming integral to the Tapit brand. Sure enough, it's deep in the stretch where that extra “try” comes through to stifle even a rival as stubborn as the one Essential Quality finally put away on Saturday.

That's somewhat evocative of Galileo, whose trainer counsels caution with his stock because they will, if you are reckless enough to ask them, literally run through a brick wall for you.     Aidan O'Brien also trained the late Giant's Causeway to become celebrated as “The Iron Horse” but the gray coat of Tapit, if now bleached by the years, clearly manifests similarly ferrous qualities. And Saturday's purse takes Tapit's lifetime earnings past $170.5 million, breathing down the neck of Giant's Causeway who is holding out at the top of the all-time American table at a few cents over $172.3 million. It was barely 18 months ago that Tapit overtook Smart Strike on $151 million, so he's plainly going to have set a pretty formidable record by the time he is done.

Once he becomes the richest American stallion in history, there won't be much left to achieve. Tapit has made a strong start both as a sire of sires and as a broodmare sire, given the modest mares he received in his early books. As it happens, his first daughters to produce elite runners did so on turf, in Japan and Australia. In that connection, as we've stressed, it would be nice if Tapit could be given a better chance to extend his dominion into Europe. But the real unfinished business remains nailing that first Kentucky Derby.

Everything looked so promising in the spring. In the event, Essential Quality endured his only defeat; while Greatest Honour was injured, albeit he could yet return to prove best of the crop. Still, even if Tapit never gets that blanket of roses, then Beck and his team will just have to comfort themselves with the status he will inevitably secure with this summer's purses: the number-one stallion in American history.

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An ‘Ultra’ Compliment to Twirling Candy

Curious how we can always explain what makes a pedigree work once a horse has shown he can actually run. They call it “ex post rationalization” or sometimes “hindsight bias”. Working backward from a high-functioning racehorse, you isolate whatever elements of the page flatter your prejudices and methodology, and triumphantly announce that you have found the key to the genetic engine. You could, of course, perform pretty much the same exercise with countless slow horses whose antecedents contain equally plausible elements. Funnily enough, however, we don't bother doing that quite so often.

It feels very wholesome, then, when horses come along “to keep us honest”. And certainly that tendency to self-validation has been challenged by the first two legs of the Triple Crown, respectively won by a $1,000 yearling by Protonico and now a colt whose first four dams are by Cowboy Cal, Afleet, Vigors and Knightly Manner.

We are familiar, of course, with Classic winners whose families have arcane seeding–try American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile), whose equivalent parade comprises Yankee Gentlemen, Ecliptical, Tri Jet and Crozier–and I do think we should gratefully embrace the vigour sometimes latent when stagnant reaches of the gene pool are stirred. That principle aside, however, the material otherwise available to Rombauer (Twirling Candy) surely adds fresh luster to two names in his background whose merit has already been established at this kind of level.

One of these is his granddam, Ultrafleet, who must now be saluted as a truly remarkable mare. Her fame has hitherto hinged on two foals by Avenue of Flags: the millionaire sprinter California Flag, and the “Queen of the Hill”, Cambiocorsa, whose branch of the dynasty has since given us the tragic European champion Roaring Lion (Kitten's Joy). But now Ultrafleet's unraced daughter by Cowboy Cal has given us a GI Preakness S. winner, a feat that clearly demands a fresh look at bloodlines so unpromising that John Fradkin had to pay only $10,500 for the future matriarch as a yearling.

First, however, let's congratulate Rombauer's sire Twirling Candy on this vital consolidation of his candidature as principal heir to Candy Ride (Arg), a contest lately heated by the likes of Gun Runner, Mastery and Unified.

Twirling Candy | Lane's End

At 14, Twirling Candy has reached a stage where he is no longer trying to get established but aspiring toward the elite echelons largely populated by older stallions. Since joining his sire at Lane's End, he has barely missed a beat. Yes, he had the standard bump in the road, required to negotiate a couple of smaller books pending the advent of his first runners in 2015. With 25 winners from 45 juvenile starters, however, his freshman success secured him 159 mares when restored the following year to his opening fee of $15,000 (had dipped to $10,000).

That first crop, with GII San Felipe S. winner Danzing Candy as pathfinder, ultimately yielded two Grade I scorers who sketched out what has meanwhile become his calling card: a remarkable versatility. One was the sprinter Finley'sluckycharm; the other, the five-season, two-turn scrapper Gift Box.

Rombauer's breakout means that Twirling Candy–about to launch his seventh wave of juveniles–has consecutively mustered Grade I winners from his 2016, 2017 and 2018 crops, following Concrete Rose (the prolific turf router sold for $1.95 million at Keeneland last November) and Collusion Illusion (who, as a dirt dasher, confirmed their sire's range in the GI Bing Crosby S. a couple of months previously). Even before that pair raised the bar, Twirling Candy had covered 171 mares at $40,000 last spring–which, by the commendably restrained standards of his farm, basically amounts to oversubscription. Sure enough, he was one of few Kentucky stallions to maintain his fee in the pandemic economy.

The diversity seen in his stock, in both surface and discipline, was amply advertised in Twirling Candy's own career. He won the GII Del Mar Derby on grass before breaking the track record in the GI Malibu S.; and later switched to synthetics to win the GII Californian S. before stretching out for narrow defeats at 10 furlongs back in Grade I company.

That was all consistent with his roots: Candy Ride himself funnels plenty of chlorophyll, from both Argentina and France, while Twirling Candy's damsire is Toussaud's GI Arlington Million winner Chester House. His granddam brings into play one who transcended all environments, in Danzig, but then the next dam knots together three undiluted dirt icons: by Seattle Slew out of an Alydar half-sister to Affirmed. As such, the 2021 Triple Crown trail has yielded a touching postscript to the epic 1978 series, through her owners' decision to console Alydar with Won't Tell You, the dam of his nemesis.

The Fradkins (fourth and fifth from left) join Rombauer in the winner's circle |MJC photo

We'll never know whether Rombauer might himself have had a Triple Crown on the line, if only trainer Michael McCarthy had managed to persuade owner-breeder Fradkin and his wife Diane to run in the GI Kentucky Derby. That race didn't really set up in a way that would have played to Rombauer's strengths, but it's poignant to reflect that all these damaging headlines might conceivably have been confined to a Derby runner-up!

Be that as it may, Rombauer is a spectacular new bloom on the Ultrafleet family tree. Fradkin bought her with the spoils of his very first dabble in ownership, a 7-year-old gelding claimed after finishing last, with a swollen ankle, at Hollywood Park in 1993. Freshened up by Ron Ellis, the old boy resurfaced at Del Mar two months later. They didn't see which way he went, and his owner was hooked.

Just days afterward, Fradkin could be found at the Keeneland September Sale. He assumes that his bid was the only one that took a roan filly by Afleet, bred by William A. Purdey, past a $10,000 reserve.

Making no show in a handful of maiden claimers, Ultrafleet looked like becoming a painful lesson to her novice owner. Instead Fradkin decided on a fresh experiment: breeding. Through 25 years since, he has just maintained a couple of mares, one typically at Old English Rancho in California and another at Woodstock Farm in Kentucky. As commercial programs go, it could scarcely be more modest. And, as has by now been well chronicled, only happenstance caused Rombauer to join those few graduates to have been sporadically retained.

Jan Vandebos Naify with Cambiocorsa (left) and Vionnet (right) | Courtesy of Jan Vandebos Naify

One that did sell, early on, was Ultrafleet's 2002 daughter by Avenue of Flags, a $90,000 Barretts juvenile. As Cambiocorsa, she gained rather a cult following at Santa Anita, crowning a six-race streak out of the downhill turf chute with the first of two graded stakes wins. Cambiocorsa, in the loving hands of Jan Vandebos and her late usband Bob Naify, has subsequently done better still in her second career: she has produced two Grade II winners on turf, Moulin de Mougin (Curlin) and Schiaparelli (Ghostzapper), and three other stakes scorers including Grade I-placed Vionnet (Street Sense). Sadly Vandebos lost Vionnet in 2018, even as her first foal was evolving into a champion in Europe; and subsequently, of course, fate would permit Roaring Lion himself only a single season to recycle what had now come to seem royal genes.

Cambiocorsa's brother California Flag (in whom Fradkin retained a stake) was another prolific turf sprinter whose three wins in the GIII Morvich H. incorporated a track record; while Ultrafleet has also produced Shadow Raider, a graded stakes-placed, ten-time winner by Memo (Chi). But her penultimate foal, an unsold, unraced Cowboy Cal filly named Cashmere, appeared to be a dud.

Cowboy Cal! He was exported to South Korea for 2017, having mustered 125 winners from five crops of racing age. He could take with him a millionaire resumé on turf/synthetics, plus kinship to the top-class Behrens (Pleasant Colony), his dam's half-brother. On the whole, however, it surely reflects lavishly on Ultrafleet that a daughter of Cowboy Cal should now have delivered a Preakness winner.

Cashmere's first three foals are all multiple winners and one, Treasure Trove (Tapizar), was actually beaten only a length though last of five in the GIII Ben Ali S. at Keeneland last month. But if their hallmark has hitherto been toughness sooner than class, then the entry into the equation of Twirling Candy has changed all that.

True to the variegation of his genes, Rombauer started out on grass before McCarthy alertly proposed an opportunist crack at the GI American Pharoah S. His big move that day, circling the field to close down an always-handy winner, was made with such style that some of us played Rombauer at giddy odds for the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile. He ran creditably, without ever laying a glove on the winner, but reiterated that Twirling Candy adaptability when pouncing for the El Camino Real Derby on synthetics on his resumption. In hindsight, it was too easy for him to track the front pair in the GII Blue Grass S., a race that didn't really draw adequately on the stamina that tends to underpin acceleration off a stronger pace.

The popular California Flag (front), one of several overachieving members of this family | Sarah Andrew

But there we go again, rationalizing “ex post”! In which spirit, let's go back to the package that held so little market appeal, that fateful day when Ultrafleet entered the ring. We've noted the left-field names seeding Rombauer's family. But if the first four dams are by sires lacking clout, at least each one funnels some truly resonant blood: Cowboy Cal is by Giant's Causeway, and Ultrafleet's sire Afleet by Mr. Prospector; while the next two dams are by sons of Grey Dawn (Fr) and Round Table.

Canadian Horse of the Year Afleet established one of the more precarious branches of the Mr. P. empire (via Northern Afleet/Afleet Alex) and left for Japan soon after siring Ultrafleet. Looking at her pedigree as it appeared at the time, can we honestly rebuke the lack of interest? Sure, the family had a light sprinkling of stakes performers. But only when you get back to Ultrafleet's fourth dam, Albany Isle (GB), does something begin to stir.

And even that line has been through a couple of wastelands. Albany Isle did ultimately trace to one of the most potent tap-root mares in the story of the breed, but that was way back in Victorian times and her family had lately done very little (outside steeplechasing) to warrant her export from Ireland in the 1950s. Yet today she pegs down the pedigrees of such high achievers as Country House (Lookin At Lucky) and Rock Your World (Candy Ride {Arg}).

It was the GI Santa Anita Derby winner–himself, of course, a son of Twirling Candy's sire–whose switch from the Californian turf was supposed to have a seismic impact on the Classics this year. In the event, that trick has instead been played by Rombauer.

Perhaps we can see echoes of Ultrafleet's damsire Vigors, whose flamboyant charge won some of California's marquee dirt races, in the turn of foot that might otherwise be credited to Rombauer's grassy influences. It's also worth mentioning that Vigors was by a notable distaff influence in Grey Dawn, whose own sire Herbager moreover resurfaces in the top half of Rombauer's pedigree: Twirling Candy's grandsire Ride the Rails is out of a Herbager mare.

But really it's edifying to admit to ourselves that there was no obvious reason why Ultrafleet should have cost more than she did, and that little she has achieved since can be easily reduced to repeatable formulae.

What we do have is a nice mix of West Coast dash and hardiness, combined with plenty of turf flair out of South America and Europe. We have a stallion whose brushes work on any palette. And don't forget that Rombauer is still only an adolescent, really, after seven starts; that he was raised on the same small farm, Woodstock, as Derby third Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow); and that he has been expertly trained since. To be fair, that all makes some kind of sense–and maybe as much as we should ever hope to find.

The post An ‘Ultra’ Compliment to Twirling Candy appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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