Chris McGrath | Horse Racing Free Tips

Another Baby with That Special Zip

On the face of it, just another graded stakes where you could round up the usual suspects. Bob Baffert as winning trainer and Bernardini as the successful damsire. And the success of Du Jour, in the GII American Turf S. on the Derby undercard was a welcome reminder of the value offered by his sire Temple City. But what really draws attention to this emerging talent is an extraordinary female lurking in his background.

No, we don't mean either of the owners, for all that both may qualify for the same description. Instead it's the blood of none other than Baby Zip–Du Jour is out of a granddaughter of the celebrated dam of Ghostzapper and City Zip–that permits the most important of all Baffert's clientele, his wife Jill, to dream that a horse she co-owns with Debbie Lanni could someday secure a place at stud.

Baby Zip died four years ago, at 26; and City Zip followed just three months later. He has posthumously continued to enrich their mutual legacy, with both Collected and Improbable winning at Grade I level before running second in the Breeders' Cup Classic–a vivid measure of the way a precocious sprinter by Carson City gradually expanded his portfolio. Ghostzapper meanwhile overcame a rocky start at stud to recycle his exceptional flair, most recently through G1 Dubai World Cup winner Mystic Guide. Both siblings tend to deal in stock that thrives with maturity, with City Zip's 7-year-old son C Z Rocket now among the fastest in the land; while Ghostzapper, from a line of broodmare sires, already has a Triple Crown winner to his credit in that guise.

Yet there was a curious imbalance to the breeding history of Baby Zip, a stakes-winning sprinter by Relaunch acquired by Frank Stronach for his Adena Springs broodmare band at the end of her racing career. Three of her first four named foals were fillies; but nine of her remaining 10 were colts. As a result, the value of her female line was established too late to have much chance of complementing the legacy she created through her sons.

Baby Zip's first foal, a Silver Ghost filly who won a maiden claimer in a light career, was sold for $32,000 just a few weeks before her next two made their respective debuts in 2000. One, a sophomore filly by Silver Deputy named Getaway Girl, would win three of five starts at Great Lakes. The other was City Zip (Carson City), who had been discarded as a short yearling for just $9,000 but included a storied Saratoga treble (GII Sanford S./GII Saratoga Special S./dead-heat for the GI Hopeful S.) among 11 juvenile starts. It was this spree that doubtless prompted the retention of Baby Zip's next foal, but unfortunately she was by an ordinary sire in Birdonthewire and proved unable to win.

Getaway Girl, meanwhile, was culled by Adena Springs for $65,000 after City Zip's sophomore campaign had levelled into a plateau that

City Zip | Tony Leonard

saw him start his stud career in New York at $7,500. Unfortunately for her purchasers, they moved Getaway Girl as soon as the following November, for $90,000 at Keeneland. She would prove poignantly well named. Just nine days after she left the ring, now in the ownership of Indian Creek, Baby Zip's 2-year-old by Awesome Again won by nine lengths on debut for Bobby Frankel at Hollywood Park.

As Ghostzapper matured into one of the great speed-carrying Thoroughbreds of the era–in the process earning City Zip a game-changing transfer to Kentucky–their half-sister's shrewd purchasers were able to cash in a series of yearlings at prices as high as $500,000. That standout dividend came through a Bernardini filly, at the 2011 September Sale, albeit Getaway Girl's return to that stallion did not prove quite so productive when the resulting yearling, again a filly, made $100,000 from David Redvers in the same ring three years later. This was Guiltless, the dam of Du Jour.

Having shown very little as a juvenile in England in the silks of Qatar Racing, Guiltless was quickly discarded for 32,000gns at Tattersalls. “Flipped” at Fasig-Tipton just three months later, she brought $60,000 from Woods Edge Farm.

Du Jour, her second foal, raised only $19,000 as a yearling from V.C. Corp, deep in the September Sale, but proved a wonderful pinhook when sold to agent Donato Lanni at last year's OBS “Spring” 2-Year-Old Sale–eventually a summer auction–for $280,000 after a :10 1/5 breeze for Off the Hook.

Bob Baffert couldn't resist trying Du Jour on dirt, after a promising debut, but the colt didn't really respond and, restored to the grass, he's now unbeaten in three starts since. Saturday's performance was a really stylish one, under a matching ride from Flavien Prat, and more of the same in the GI Belmont Derby might already give the home team hope for the Breeders' Cup. The Europeans tend to get away without having to beat Baffert, who candidly tends to view turf as his “last resort” for struggling horses.

Woods Edge has banked limited dividends from the first three foals out of Guiltless: her first foal (modest winner by Carpe Diem) did make $90,000, but we've seen Du Jour brought little and her Klimt filly last year made less. But she is only eight and Peter O'Callaghan, a worthy bluegrass ambassador for a clan of Irish horsemen touched by genius, can surely now anticipate a due yield on an inspired investment. Next off the belt is a yearling filly by Twirling Candy, while Guiltless was reportedly bred back to Not This Time.

The fact is that Baby Zip's family had become paradoxically quiet even as its two magnificent scions made her one of the most significant mares of recent years. The matriarch herself did produce one other talented runner from that sequence of colts, in Canadian Grade III winner City Wolf (Giant's Causeway); but her handful of early daughters generally proved mediocre producers. Indeed, the one by Birdonthewire was eventually sold for $800; while Adena Springs soon gave up on Baby Zip's only daughter after producing Ghostzapper, an unraced filly by Golden Missile sold to Russia for $50,000. Getaway Girl had already proved the exception, having emulated her mother in giving Giant's Causeway a Grade III winner in Canada, but now she has sparked new life into the dynasty through Guiltless.

Temple City | EquiSport photos

So let's give Temple City some credit, for stoking up those embers. In Du Jour's pedigree, after all, he places another quite exceptional female right opposite Baby Zip. Macoumba (Mr. Prospector) was a Group 1-winning half-sister to a Group 1 winner, the pair out of a Group 1 winner, and her whose first foal was Malibu Moon (A.P. Indy). Two years later she produced a filly by Danzig, Curriculum, who never made the track for breeder B. Wayne Hughes but when mated with Dynaformer produced a colt that would eventually assist the revival of the Spendthrift roster.

Temple City won a single Grade III before rounding off his career with a narrow defeat in the GI Hollywood Turf Cup, but his genes made him a legitimate roll of the dice. Because it has been a hallmark of the Roberto line–a vital source of substance and functionality in the modern breed–that its principal conduits have often proved more illustrious in their second careers than in their first. That was certainly true of Kris S., who had to earn his passage out of Florida; and equally so of Dynaformer, who started out at $5,000 at Wafare Farm before transferring into the big league at Three Chimneys.

Unfortunately Dynaformer's quest for an heir has proved troublesome: there was a preponderance of fillies and geldings among his best performers, while those who were equipped for a stud career were cursed by ill fortune. What happened to Barbaro was bad enough, but don't forget that Brilliant Speed–who has just resurfaced as damsire of none other than Medina Spirit (Protonico)–was killed by lightning at the age of eight.

There is much at stake for Dynaformer, then, in the stud careers of Point of Entry (who faced steep commercial odds from the outset, as a slow-maturing turf horse) and Temple City.

Auspiciously, Temple City represents the same formula as Arch, who wonderfully sustained the Kris S. branch of Roberto's line, being also out of a Danzig mare. But he faced the customary obstacles, too, as a late developer impolitic enough to save his best for a mile and a half of grass.

Malibu Moon is closely related to Temple City | Spendthrift photo

Fortunately, the propensity to exceed expectations at stud is not confined to Temple City's sireline. His dam's half-brother Malibu Moon was famously confined to a maiden success before starting his stud career at $3,000 in Maryland.

So it was perhaps unsurprising that Temple City should have made such a brisk start at stud. Launched into what has proved a remarkably strong intake (including Quality Road, Munnings, Lookin At Lucky, Blame, Kantharos and Midshipman), he mustered three Grade I performers among his first sophomores, a feat matched among his peers only by Blame. The following year Temple City had two Grade I winners over a single weekend, including Miss Temple City who ended up with third such prizes in what was her third campaign. Once again, then, this is wine that ages well: another graduate of his first crop, Bolo, was as old as seven before earning his Grade I (like Miss Temple City, over a mile on turf).

Hiked to $15,000, Temple City covered 360 mares across 2016 and 2017. That was a striking tribute to his merit, as a source of runners, but we know that the racetrack holds little interest for commercial breeders and by last year he was back down to 55 mares. With that loaded pipeline, then, the emergence of Du Jour could prove a very significant straw in the wind. Whatever additional talents may emerge from those big crops, after all, can be expected to stick around and keep his name in lights.

Even last year Temple City was quietly punching his weight, his black-type footprint (five winners, 14 on the podium) toe to toe with a bunch of more expensive stallions. All he lacked was a headline horse, and that's why Du Jour has the potential to become an important contributor to the whole Dynaformer story.

Du Jour | Coady

Just like Temple City, any eligibility he can establish for stud will be supported by a landmark name pegging down his maternal line. The overall package may contain a touch too much chlorophyll for commercial tastes, though whatever enabled Macoumba to produce a dirt stallion like Malibu Moon could yet be drawn out, through his genes if not his deeds, by the familiar seeding of Du Jour's family: his first three dams are by sons of A.P. Indy (Malibu Moon's sire, of course), Deputy Minister and In Reality. The next dam, incidentally, is by Tri Jet–a name dusted off by American Pharoah's third dam–and ultimately the line tapers to the same foundation as that of the great Affirmed (plus another Derby winner in Lil E. Tee).

What's so exciting, given his genetic profile, is that Du Jour should be capable of such a dashing exhibition as a sophomore on the first Saturday in May. The resonance of that benchmark directed most eyes to a barnmate later in the day, but just think of the tide against which Du Jour is wading, in terms of precocity. Between the record of Baby Zip's stallion sons, on the one hand, and the whole Roberto line on the other, the chances are that he is only just getting started.

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This Side Up: Like It or Not, All in this Together

This time, it's not just the Susans that have a black eye.

You'll forgive me a little hesitation before addressing the 146th running of a race that can seldom have been staged in so febrile a context. Two weeks ago, I was incautious enough in this column to hope for just a nice, boring Derby, after the rancour of 2019 and the dismal postponement of 2020. Then, last week, I asked why even his own industry had been so ungenerous to a trainer who had now won four of his seven Derbys with horses that had at various times changed hands for an aggregate $54,500.

Me and my big mouth, huh? But then I'm no different from anyone else. Every single member of our community will feel like he or she has something at stake in the latest contamination of its standing in the wider world: from our judgement, to our very livelihoods. By the same token, we all have a share in how we go about repairing matters.

Because this is not just a question of whether or not Bob Baffert can cogently secure exculpation. The merits of his case will be tested by due process. For the rest of us, the imperative will remain the same regardless of the outcome. We cannot keep missing our cue. If all we do is mutter resentfully, every time society turns up the spotlight, then we can't be surprised if the theatre gradually empties until they take off the show altogether.

True, some of Baffert's own peers have responded with candid vexation to the latest and most conspicuous fissure he has opened in perceptions of our sport. They have been irritated by his emotive attempts to depict himself as a victim of “cancel culture”, and to transpose fault from his own regime–which seems, on a charitable reading, at least to be curiously accident-prone–to a lack of regulatory discrimination.

Albeit Baffert has raised the bar, his profession includes many paragons of achievement who have never had so much as peppermint on a horse's breath. These tend to respect boundaries rather than push them. Yet even some who position themselves on the “pragmatic” end of the therapeutics spectrum are exasperated. They view Baffert's history of infringements not as inherently sinister but as tiresome and avoidable.

Some feel that even proceeding to Pimlico with Medina Spirit (Protonico) guarantees a lose-lose scenario both for his connections and for the sport as a whole. To be clear, The Stronach Group have handled an invidious position competently. They couldn't and shouldn't stop the horse running. Nor could they have made their position more accessible and coherent than by a) rightly stating that “we cannot make things up as we go along” while also b) stipulating with Baffert exhaustive pre-competition testing. But it's a horrible situation, all round, with the hapless horse transformed overnight from a symbol of hope to one of despair. If he is beaten, connections will have gained nothing from standing up for his right to run. And if he does win, well, it'll be interesting to hear what kind of reception he gets on returning to unsaddle–and, indeed, when entering the Belmont paddock with his trainer's third Triple Crown on the line.

As we've already suggested, however, the story has already left Baffert and Medina Spirit far behind. (Which is exactly what makes so many people mad at Baffert, even if they consider his horse a perfectly deserving Derby winner.) Predictably enough, the mainstream news agenda has hastened to combine this trauma with various others recently endured by our sport, too wearily familiar to require reprising here. Just as predictably, and just as promptly, apologists have complained of a parallel conflation, so that trainers concerned only for the welfare of their horses are tarred with the same brush as those who cheat brazenly with blood doping or steroids.

But you know what, that's exactly why people out there in Main Street can't tell the difference between, say, Christophe Clement and Rick Dutrow. What else can we expect, if people inside the business keep telling the lay audience that they just don't understand, and please to go away? The choice is clear: insist on our gray areas, or sacrifice them to a corporate clarity of purpose. As it is, what is the world beyond our parish supposed to make of professional associations litigating for what will inevitably be perceived (however unfairly, and however complex the reality) as their constitutional right to dope racehorses?

Medina Spirit this week at Pimlico | MJC photo

We cannot keep putting each new alarm back on “snooze”. It's only human for Baffert, in a corner like this, to be turning round the guns so that it's all someone else's fault: hyperregulation, clumsy veterinarians, whomever. But the rest of us have to do better than that. Whatever the merits of his own case, we're all in that same corner now. And we have to earn, really earn, a way out.

So for now forget all those picograms and thresholds, and whether Baffert is as innocent as he claims, or whether he's a little too reckless, or worse. The fact is that our whole culture, to this point, has enabled far more obviously egregious cases at every point of the compass: guys who are thriving because a) the worst that can happen is that your assistant gets a few days with his name on the racecard and b) too many investors would prefer a piece of a barn's inexplicable strike-rate than to admit that it's actually all too explicable.

Some stables won't even enter at particular tracks, or against particular trainers, because they know they won't be in a clean fight. Many of us, especially when patrons of Messrs. Servis and Navarro professed such amazed indignation, have remembered Captain Renault being “shocked, shocked” that gambling is taking place in Rick's Café. (He is, of course, promptly handed his winnings by a croupier.)

Let's not kid ourselves either that this is only happening at bush tracks, or that we can solve everything by turning Baffert into a pantomime villain. Just as he can't blame everyone else, nor can everyone else blame only Baffert. Do that, and we'll very soon discover how short a slip divides frying pan and fire.

In the end, Captain Renault comes good. But he needs the inspiration of high-principled Victor Laszlo, the one man in Casablanca whose conscience permits him to sleep well. So who, in our business, will step up for that role?

Well, again without presuming any judgement on Baffert himself, it was fascinating to see B. Wayne Hughes of Spendthrift yet again taking a lead. Hughes prides himself on not giving a damn what other people think, so long as he is satisfied that he is doing right. That attitude has not always endeared his rivals, even if they have largely ended up imitating his every move. And you can bet that nothing has panicked Baffert this week more than Spendthrift “hitting the pause button”.

Having always proudly plowed a different furrow from what the English know as “the Establishment”, Hughes has also been in the vanguard in facilitating microshare entry into elite racing. Quite clearly, he understands how the very survival of our sport no longer depends on the jousting of wealthy egos, but on popular engagement. And that requires us to go out there with absolutely nothing to hide.

If we can do that, then we might be granted the respect and time to solve our other problems: breakdowns, say, or what to do about the whip. (Besides, one of the key premises of hay, oats and water is obviously to prevent breakdowns.) But first we have to go into Main Street ready to show everyone, with undiluted honesty and pride, every single thing we do with these beautiful animals.

Oh, one more footnote. The biggest hole in this horse race may not be where everybody is looking. Because whatever Baffert may or may not have to explain, his peers have fallen badly short in presenting just three of the Derby field for the second Classic. If their regimes are really so wholesome, then they shouldn't be scared of what history tells us: that many a Preakness winner has left behind Derby defeat precisely because of a robustness that wasn't artificial.

It's all very well telling Baffert that he must turn out every pocket when he comes to a big race. But he might be entitled to wonder whether one or two of his rivals meanwhile have nothing to hide except their racehorses.

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Derby Clouds Offer Mandaloun Silver Lining

If those who scaled the summit of our sport a few days ago suddenly find themselves slithering back down the scree, then their closest pursuers must feel no less stunned to have retrieved a foothold that could yet allow them to resume their own climb. In its way, that must feel almost as unsettling. Everyone sees that the sport is suffering, from this latest trauma, but does that ultimately mean that nobody will be allowed to feel like a winner?

With the case against winner unlikely to be finally resolved any time soon, connections of GI Kentucky Derby runner-up Mandaloun (Into Mischief) might do worse than seek counsel from those of Country House (Lookin At Lucky). Because their experience, two years ago, could prepare the Mandaloun team for how it feels to achieve the single greatest ambition animating the American Turf in unaccountably bittersweet fashion.

Nobody would choose to enter the Derby annals under an asterisk. On the other hand, too few acknowledge the merit required to do so. Even on the face of it, there is extremely rare distinction in finding just one colt in the entire crop capable of thwarting you on that critical date, known from the moment a foal first staggers to his feet: the first Saturday in May, three years hence. And if that single colt happens to do so unfairly, well, the transferred laurels must be given and embraced as fully deserved.

It was especially hard on Country House that he was denied the opportunity to reiterate his own excellence, despite being kept in training. By the time he arrived at Darby Dan, this talented, well-bred animal had accumulated around 0.01% of the column inches devoted to Maximum Security (New Year's Day) and, later, his trainer. Of course, Country House may yet have the last laugh in their second careers. For now, however, the chief aspiration for Mandaloun must be that he is permitted to build on foundations actually not dissimilar to those laid by Country House at the time of his exit. Both, remember, appeared to take a step backward between the GII Risen Star and the GII Louisiana Derby, before ultimately beating all bar one at Churchill.

You could argue that Mandaloun has already paid a heavy price, through no fault of his own, for the scandal menacing Medina Spirit (Protonico): with no Triple Crown apparently on the line, it had already been decided to sit out the GI Preakness this Saturday.

Just a half length separated Mandaloun and Medina Spirit | Coady

So let's take a step back and examine a colt whose promotion, should it come to that, would divide the toasts of our industry between two of its most reliable navigational landmarks. You could almost say that one of those iconic twin spires might represent Mandaloun's late breeder; and the other, one of the most remarkable stallions in the story of the American Thoroughbred.

True to his flair for new precedent, Into Mischief could end up with two Derby winners in eight months. We saluted 2020 as the year of his “authentication,” not only retaining the general sires' championship he had won for the first time in 2019, but doing so with a Horse of the Year who had, virtually overnight, settled the only remaining question mark against him: would an upgrade in his mares stretch Into Mischief's trademark speed sufficiently to make him a legitimate Classic influence? The Spendthrift phenomenon was still only standing at $45,000 when Peter Blum sent him Flawless (Mr. Greeley) in 2016, and their son Authentic answered that question in such explosive fashion that Into Mischief has now been hiked to a still higher fee, $225,000.

Even before Authentic, there had been straws in the wind: both Audible and Owendale emerged from much cheaper coverings to finish strongly for a Classic podium. But now we have a graduate of Into Mischief's $75,000 book, in 2017, immediately sealing the deal in terms of what he can be expected to achieve now that he has access to truly aristocratic mares.

In this instance, he has been able to tap into a family cultivated by one of the landmark modern breeders, Juddmonte Farms, whose founder Prince Khalid Abdullah died just days before Brad Cox tested the Classic waters with Mandaloun in the GIII Lecomte S. in January.

Mandaloun traces to one of the Prince's foundation mares in fourth dam Queen of Song. A $700,000 purchase at the Keeneland November Sale of 1989, Queen of Song had won six black-type races (14 in all) and was a sister to Cormorant, who had run fourth in Seattle Slew's Preakness. (Cormorant was hosed down to win the GI Jersey Derby just nine days afterward, albeit his finest hour still awaited as sire of Go for Gin.) Queen of Song doubtless held particular appeal to the Prince as a daughter of His Majesty–like Razyana, whose first foal Danehill had just been crowned champion sprinter for his European stable.

If not yet in the very front rank, relative to the Prince's overall legacy, the Queen of Song dynasty would never have survived under the Juddmonte umbrella to this point without due consistency. Sure enough, the first dam is a Group 2 winner, and the second a stakes-winning sister to a Group 1 winner. If anything, however, the real Juddmonte branding is sooner found in the homebred sires who have seeded this family, with dam and second dam respectively by sons (Empire Maker and Dansili {GB}) of the program's celebrated broodmares, Toussaud (El Gran Senor) and Hasili (Ire) (Kahyasi {Ire}).

Classic winner Empire Maker is one of several Juddmonte homebreds that figure prominently in Mandaloun's pedigree | Horsephotos

Though the Prince started a stallion program pretty quickly, with the likes of Known Fact and Rainbow Quest, he was always careful to invigorate bloodlines with external sires and Mandaloun's third dam Aspiring Diva, though the last foal of Queen of Song, was the only one she conceived “in-house.” She did so with Distant View, a dashing miler by Mr. Prospector out of another of the Prince's foundation mares, Seven Springs (Irish River {Fr}), and ultimately a key broodmare influence for the whole program–with crossover reach on dirt, too, as sire of five-time Grade I winner Sightseek.

Aspiring Diva herself won a couple of races in France, and managed one Listed podium, but her key contribution would be made to a sustained wager on Distant View mares with Dansili, the son of Hasili who could not quite match the Grade I/Group 1 wins of five siblings but was probably as gifted as any. The cross would produce one Banstead Manor stallion in Bated Breath (GB), plus the dam of another in Expert Eye (GB) (Acclamation {GB}). In the case of Aspiring Diva, there were two significant dividends: one was G1 Matron S. winner Emulous (GB), and the other a stakes-winning sprinter in France named Daring Diva (GB).

Daring Diva has proved a fair producer, if no more by the elite standards of Juddmonte. Beyond a dual Listed winner/Group 2 runner-up in Ireland by Selkirk, much her most significant accomplishment has turned out to be a daughter by Toussaud's son Empire Maker.

Now, though personally adamant that the breed thrives on mutual transfusion of dirt and turf influences, I grant that nothing will work every time with horses. So I readily accept the assurance of Dr. John Chandler, so long central to the Juddmonte program in the U.S., that an attempt to combine Empire Maker (representing a gold-standard dirt line in Fappiano) with turf mares did not prove a success. (Albeit I note that a parallel experiment [Empire Maker with a turf GSW by Giant's Causeway] has this year already given us the dam of GI Santa Anita Derby winner Rock Your World {Candy Ride (Arg)}.) This is said to explain why Empire Maker was sold to Japan, only for his son Pioneerof the Nile and others to earn his repatriation. Yet it now looks as though those Juddmonte turf matings may have yielded a worthwhile dividend, after all.

Mandaloun captured the Risen Star in February | Hodges Photography

Daring Diva's daughter by Empire Maker, Brooch, won her first four starts (unraced at two) for Irish trainer Dermot Weld between eight and 9.5 furlongs, handling each step up with an aplomb that promised she might make a rather bigger impact beyond Group 2 level than she ultimately managed. Brooch's first foal was a son of Speightstown, also sent to Weld, but he showed very little in two maidens before being gelded and then culled for just 7,000gns at Tattersalls last year. (He has since won a couple of modest handicaps for a small Newmarket yard; and actually a gelded brother to Daring Diva, First Sitting {GB}, went on to Group success after likewise being cheaply discarded.) Brooch's second foal, however, is Mandaloun.

This, to me, is a pedigree characterized first and foremost by a cluster of sires out of mares whose inherent genetic excellence has been repeatedly corroborated by other horses. Along the bottom line we have not just Empire Maker and Dansili, whose dams famously produced nine Grade I/Group 1 winners between them, but also His Majesty–whose no less distinguished mother, Flower Bowl, also gave us (from just five foals) his charismatic brother Graustark and his Hall of Fame half-sister Bowl of Flowers. And then you have Into Mischief himself, out of a modern blue hen in Leslie's Lady, famously further responsible for Beholder (Henny Hughes) and Mendelssohn (Scat Daddy).

(His Majesty actually recurs top and bottom: we've noted him as sire of fourth dam Queen of Song, and also that Dansili's sire Danehill is out of another of his daughters; but don't forget that the sire of Leslie's Lady–the seldom credited Tricky Creek–is also out of a His Majesty mare.)

This is the kind of density I love to see in a pedigree, where the strands of quality are so entwined that it becomes less and less important which particular one comes through. Yes, the bottom line has consistently produced stakes performers, in fact in an unbroken sequence of eight generations, but it has been maintained by the richness of its fertilisation.

The seedbed goes every bit as deep as you would expect, given the price paid for Queen of Song–all the way back, in fact, to Balancoire II, imported from France in 1918 to become a foundation mare for Harry Payne Whitney. She additionally unites the pedigrees of none other than Seabiscuit and Intentionally, but the branch that gave us Mandaloun extends through her daughter Swinging, whose only three foals included dual Horse of the Year Equipoise and his unraced sister Schwester.

Schwester's granddaughter was mated with Swoon's Son, who's remembered primarily for his champion daughter Chris Evert but had something extremely wholesome to impart as winner of 30 of 51 starts. The resulting filly earned two distinctions, as a producer: she produced a Kentucky Oaks winner, Bag of Tunes, and a daughter of the blazing Tudor Minstrel (Ire) who went on to produce Queen of Song.

Juddmonte Farms founder Prince Khalid Abdullah | Horsephotos

The cultivation of this family by the Prince and his expert team made Mandaloun seem an apt candidate to carve a memorial in one of the few great prizes to have eluded Juddmonte. In the event, his performance at Churchill took their record to three runners-up from just six Derby starters, the others being Aptitude (A.P. Indy) and Mandaloun's damsire Empire Maker.

Who would have thought that Into Mischief would beat Juddmonte to a Kentucky Derby? Conceivably he may now haul them up that final step of the podium. Whatever happens, he stands absolutely in his pomp. Don't forget that his most luminous candidate was the derailed Life Is Good; and the pipeline is jammed with both quality and, Spendthrift's business model being what it is, quantity too. In fact, we only get to sample his first six-figure covers on the track this year.

A Derby for Mandaloun would be a windfall, for sure. But after that wild twist toward Protonico, it would also restore the weathervane to a direction it may now maintain for years to come.

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This Side Up: If the Hardboot Fits…

Don't know about you, but I'm not really looking for a Hall of Fame horse out there. I would gladly settle for the one of those blurred snapshots of the adolescent sophomore crop, with plenty left to play for in the Preakness. Just so long as we can guarantee an evening of uncomplicated euphoria for connections of the fated horse among 20 who have already confounded the odds even to enter the gate for the GI Kentucky Derby (presented by Woodford Reserve).

Because they will be able to tell you, Saturday evening, that there's no such thing as an ordinary Derby winner. Okay, so this is not quite the race we pictured a few weeks ago, when Life Is Good (Into Mischief) and Greatest Honour (Tapit) and Concert Tour (Street Sense) seemed to be trapping champion Essential Quality (Tapit) in an asphyxiating triangle of brilliance. But nothing makes a backstretch professional madder than pundits announcing, even as the winner is hosed down, that this looks like it must have been an “average” Derby. If you think a Grade I race of any description can ever be easy, just try winning one. And then come back to us.

That said, personally I would welcome like an old friend a fairly nondescript Derby this time. Because the strands embroidered into the fabric of the race over the past couple of years could really do with some support stitching that offers a little less color, and maybe a little more durability.

To many of us, it felt more important last year to stage the Triple Crown races on their usual dates than at their usual venues. As it was, Churchill's three priorities at the time appeared to be Churchill, Churchill and Churchill, and their unilateral postponement to September (ultimately unavailing, with the turnstiles still locked) rendered the series a nonsense, with a nine-furlong Belmont in June, and a Preakness shoehorned into October.

As for the melodrama of the previous year, and everything that has since happened to one of the central characters, I get a headache just thinking about it. And you know what, whatever the race may owe the owners of its first disqualified winner, connections of Country House (Lookin At Lucky) would probably find someday winning the damned thing “properly” no less cathartic.

Actually there was nothing too ordinary about the year before, either, albeit at the opposite end of the spectrum of edification. For Justify (Scat Daddy) performed a vital service for the breed in underscoring the recent rebuke of American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile) to those who had spent a generation peddling the heresy that a five-week Triple Crown had become obsolete. In fact, one of the incidental drawbacks of 2020 was that some, celebrating the intervals between races, were so quick to renew their complicity with the commercial erosion of the breed.

Somehow, then, this race finds itself on a streak of sensationalism. On the one hand, anything and everything that contributes to the Derby tapestry can only heighten the historic sense in both aspiration and achievement come the first Saturday in May. But right now it would feel great just to showcase some of the abiding virtues that have underpinned the breed, through good times and bad: above all, a fidelity to those attributes in the Thoroughbred that make this stampede–20 horses going flat out at the same, critical stage of their development, balancing speed and stamina on the fulcrum of the two-minute mark–the ultimate measure of its sustainability.

In other words, give me a hardboot winner.

This week our community grieved the loss of John T. Ward, Jr., 20 years after he saddled Monarchos to become the only Derby winner bar Secretariat to break two minutes. That was an old-school masterpiece, built on lore inculcated by two preceding generations: father, uncle, grandfather. Uncle Sherrill, for instance, had saddled his first winner at Kenney Park when just 18 and ended up ushering himself and Forego into the Hall of Fame.

Incidentally, colleague T.D. Thornton reminded us this week that Monarchos was followed by Giacomo four years later as the eighth gray winner. To say that Essential Quality would be ending a gray “drought” since, however, slightly overstates the matter from an English point of view. The Epsom Derby, first run in 1780, has been won by just FOUR grays–and none since 1946!

Arguably Ward's most significant legacy is Sky Mesa, as consistent a stakes sire as he is bred to be, Monarchos being one of many modern Derby winners to have disappointed at stud. Let's hope that promising starts by American Pharoah and Nyquist will help stop the rot, because we certainly we haven't had too many recent races like 2007, with a podium of Street Sense, Hard Spun and Curlin (not to mention Scat Daddy down the field).

O Besos training this week at Churchill | Horsephotos

The only horse in this whole field by a Derby winner is O Besos–and his sire, Orb, has just been sold to Uruguay, having been discarded virtually overnight by the market. From the family of Ruffian, I would love to see him have the last laugh on the fast-buck commercial breeders.

Hometown trainer Greg Foley certainly fits the hardboot bill. His late father Dravo, who started out as a jockey and then trained for 48 years, saddled 1,123 winners as a stalwart of River Downs and Hazel Park. He never did turn up an elite performer, but Greg's sister Vickie won the GI Woody Stephens S. a couple of years ago, with Saturday's GI Churchill Downs S. entrantHog Creek Hustle (Overanalyze), and Greg has also raised the bar: his 1,429 winners since 1981 are now headed by Sconsin (Include), in the GII Eight Belles S. at the “Derby” meet eventually staged last September and set to face Gamine (Into Mischief) in Saturday's GI Derby City Distaff.

O Besos has to buck the Derby speed trend, established since his sire came from the clouds, but looked made for a test like this when closing through the final three-sixteenths in the GII Louisiana Derby in :18 2/5. Okay, the six-week lay-off isn't exactly old-school, but O Besos has been working like a horse sitting on a breakout. And if you think a horse like this could only win an ordinary Derby, well, suits me: Cinderella had to be measured for a slipper, but a hardboot would do just fine.

The post This Side Up: If the Hardboot Fits… appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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