Chris McGrath | Horse Racing Free Tips

This Side Up: Arc of Achievement Unites Brant and Mellon

When Ettore Sottsass was asked which of his many diverse achievements had given him most satisfaction, he gave a shrug. “I don’t know,” he said. “Life is a permanent project. It’s a passage from one thing to another.”

The Italian designer and architect transcended disciplines in a fashion not dissimilar to his compatriot Federico Tesio, whose singular genius was as stimulated by his furniture workshop as by his breed-shaping stud farm.

And there’s a corresponding breadth of engagement to the man who wrote to the widow of Sottsass, asking permission to honor his memory with a Siyouni (Fr) yearling he had bought at Deauville in 2017. Peter Brant has assembled his stable with the same curator’s eye as he has his art collection; and the same quixotic awareness that no masterpiece can ever achieve perfection, can ever fully requite the yearnings that sustain his twin passions.

The success of Sottsass (Fr) in the G1 Qatar Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe on Sunday was certainly a masterpiece, in the technical craft of his trainer Jean-Claude Rouget. And it belongs in the same gallery as Brant’s unique achievement in breeding a GI Kentucky Derby winner, Thunder Gulch (Gulch), as well as his sire and dam. Already, however, the project has its next passage, with Sottsass now starting a new career at Coolmore.

For just as the work of Renaissance masters has far outlasted the span of any human life–creators, preservers, collectors–so our own humble endeavors, from one generation of horsemen to the next, will endure in the genetic complexion of the breed, as recorded across the centuries in the Stud Book.

Brant is rightly proud that Thunder Gulch, winner of the definitive test in dirt racing, was delivered by a mare imported from Europe. The obvious, reciprocal challenge would now be to breed a dirt champion by his Arc winner.

Asked this week whether that is something he’d like to attempt, someday, Brant gave a chuckle.

“Someday?” he said. “Try, like, three or four months from now. I mean, sure. That doesn’t mean I have to be right. I was right once, doesn’t mean I’ll be right doing it again. But I’m certainly going to try.”

With the far-sightedness that has sustained his business empire–not least in adapting to the wild societal changes eroding demand for its original base, newsprint–Brant absolutely grasps the vitality available in dismantling perceived barriers between the transatlantic gene pools. It’s often been done before, after all, not least in the transformative impact of Northern Dancer’s speed-carrying dirt blood on European Classic racing.

Brant bought Shoot a Line (GB) (High Line {GB}) after seeing her finish a plucky second to the great Ardross (Ire) in the 1981 Gold Cup at Royal Ascot, over two and a half miles, and had her covered by Northern Dancer’s son Storm Bird. The resulting filly, Line of Thunder, was sent to Luca Cumani in Newmarket.

“She was a classic-looking, old Thoroughbred type,” Brant recalled. “And what happened is history. I bred her to Gulch, who won the Met Mile twice and the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. He could carry his speed, he was third in the Belmont Stakes and ran second to Personal Ensign in the Whitney, but going a mile-and-a-quarter, mile-and-a-half, was really not his thing. He was a very fast, very sturdy horse. And from Line of Thunder he got Thunder Gulch.”

On the same basis, Brant made sure that his White Birch Farm recruited staying females from the Weinstock dispersal and also the Wildenstein sale.

“A lot of times you’ll go to sales in Kentucky and they’ll say: ‘That’s a grass horse, you don’t want that, we want to win dirt races,'” he remarked. “But I believe that staying blood is very important, if you want to win any of those Classic-type races, from a mile up to a mile-and-a-half. You definitely need speed as well, because often they are a product of pace: sometimes no pace, sometimes too great a pace. It’s the ability to quicken that is so important.

“But so many stallions had great speed–horses like War Front, maybe a horse like Constitution–and if you breed speed to them you’re going to have trouble in those middle-distance races. I believe you need to get some Classic blood in there with it. Yes, a lot of times you’ll breed to a stayer, and the progeny goes more towards the female and you’re out of luck. But you do need a combination. Especially over two or three generations, you need that classy staying blood somewhere.”

Sottsass himself, of course, is by a fast horse in Siyouni (Fr) out of a Galileo (Ire) mare. Up until Sunday, Brant confesses, he had wondered whether the colt’s optimal range might fall short of the Arc distance. But the demands of the race on the day–not especially strongly run, perhaps, but calling for unyielding dynamism through heavy ground–actually showcased assets that may combine well with dirt-bred mares; and, someday, give Sottsass some traction as a crossover influence.

As is well known, this is Brant’s “second time round” on the Turf. But his ardour for the Arc traces back to his earliest enthusiasm. His heart was first won by weight-carrying New York stalwarts like Kelso and Carry Back, so he knew of the latter’s fish-out-of-water bid for the 1962 Arc. What really brings things full circle, however, is that his first personal experience of the race came nine years later, when Paul Mellon–whose aesthetic sensibilities similarly found a common margin between art and the Thoroughbred–became the first American to own the winner.

Though still in his early 20s at the time, Brant was in Paris to produce “L’Amour,” a minor cult movie by Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey. (He collaborated with Warhol on many projects and his publishing stable still includes Interview, a magazine founded by the pioneering artist in 1969.) Finding himself in a café one Saturday afternoon, Brant noticed the racing from Longchamp on a television in the corner. He realized that the Arc was the next day, and resolved to head out to the Bois de Boulogne.

So it was that he saw Mill Reef beat the wonderful French filly, Pistol Packer, with Caro (Ire)–subsequently such an important stallion at Spendthrift–fourth.

Europe’s championship race, then, is woven into some of the defining strands of his life: some tracing to those heady years in the vortex of the Beat Generation; others, to the Parisian fashion community that long worshipped his wife, the model Stephanie Seymour.

“‘L’Amour’ was a great, low-budget film that did very well, and is still kind of a classic today,” Brant said. “And, yes, we had a lot of fun. It was wonderful moment. As a matter of fact, one of the stars in that movie was Karl Lagerfeld, who became the big designer for Chanel. At that time he was working for Chloé, the Paris fashion house, so there were a lot of fashion people in the film.”

Not that Brant could ever get Warhol interested in the Turf. His cousin, Joe Allen, who bred War Front, was also friendly with Warhol and commissioned him to do a portrait of his very first racehorse, an ex-claimer. And the Wertheimer family asked him to depict Ivanjica, their 1976 Arc winner–a work you will today find in the office of a certain Kentucky farm owner, of similarly rare discernment.

“I’m not sure how thrilled the Wertheimers might have been, at the time, with his Ivanjica,” Brant noted wryly. “Andy’s way of doing those portraits was to take a polaroid, and then silk-screen it, and paint over that. Now even the new book about President Carter has Andy’s portrait on the front. He was always way ahead of his time.”

Brant has always tried to be one step ahead, too, having seen repeatedly how the establishment eventually adopts the avant-garde. But he rebukes any assumption that Mellon–whose foundation of the Yale Center of British Art accommodated much sporting art of the old school–was merely anglophile and conservative in his tastes.

“He might have been interested in Stubbs, but that would have been because of his interest in horses,” Brant explained. “But he was a great collector, of all periods; all the way through the 20th Century from Cezanne to abstract expressionists like Mark Rothko.”

In Mellon, with whom he served on the board of the racing museum in Saratoga, Brant could admire an exemplar of philanthropic capitalism. Like Mellon, of course, Brant has also stabled horses with master horsemen on both sides of the Atlantic; and Sottsass has now made a significant new contribution to the tradition, long associated with Mellon, of Americans embracing European grass racing and its bloodlines. Both on and off the Turf, then, there is a very direct cultural succession between the owners of Mill Reef and Sottsass.

Certainly last weekend was a vivid consummation of Brant’s return to the sport and, while there was a bittersweet element in not being able to travel to Paris, that did not diminish the delirium as he watched the race with his wife at their Connecticut home.

“You know something, I can’t say I would have had any better a time anywhere else,” he said. “We were yelling and screaming so much, it felt like the house was shaking. I just couldn’t believe this dream had come true.”

Brant says that he never goes into any race with confidence, but Ger Lyons had given him plenty of hope after taking responsibility for the horse, with Rouget confined to France by COVID restrictions, for his prep run in Ireland.

“After that race Ger said: ‘Your horse is going to run terrific in the Arc,'” Brant explained. “The instructions [from Rouget] were to make sure the horse would be tighter for the Arc, and that was the way [jockey Colin] Keane rode. Jean-Claude had really been pointing at the Arc from the beginning of the year. I think that speaks very well of the trainer, and very well of the race. If you really want to win the Arc, you can’t have anything else on your mind. You can’t say, ‘Well, we’ve run well here, let’s go the Arc.’ You can’t go as an afterthought, and if you make a mistake along the road you probably won’t be winning. It’s so gruelling, both in the conditions you might get and the field. That’s why I feel it would be very hard to do better than winning this race.”

But there are always new horizons, with horses no less than in art.

“Winning a race, any race, you figure that you are pretty close to achieving some kind of perfection,” Brant mused. “But you will always get beat more than you win. It’s a great game, and a fantastic passion for a lot of people: these wonderful, noble animals. Like art, it’s all about that passion. Because that’s what you really need, for it to be fun and for it to be successful.

“Right now, I’m feeling very good that I can take the decision to retire Sottsass in one piece, sound in wind and bone, and not looking like he’s come back from the war. He’s going to stud in the way he deserves.”

Breeding, of course, is a long game; and Brant espouses the long view. He urges optimism, even in such disturbed and disturbing times. Yes, he is dismayed to see responsible journalism swamped by the trash-talk of social media, not least from a boyhood friend he can no longer recognize in the Oval Office.

“But I’m very optimistic,” Brant insisted. “I hope we will soon be able to look on all this in retrospect. In the meantime, people have to be vigilant: listen to science; wear masks, isolate, trace. But I think we’re going to have learned a lot, especially about leadership, from this whole experience.”

If the fate of newsprint is one eloquent measure of a changing world, then so is that of typewriter. The classic machines he designed for Olivetti helped to make the name of Ettore Sottsass. But even as the world changes, genius abides. Sottsass urged that various disciplines were only separated by technique; that all design reflects your ideas about life, about individuals and society. It didn’t matter whether you were making a glass vase or a photograph.

So let’s celebrate the fact that an American, in 2020 as in 1971, has seen through artificial distinctions–between dirt and turf, speed and stamina, Europe and America–and reminded us all of the transferable essence of a great Thoroughbred. The “permanent project,” in horses and horsemen alike, is class. And, though our world may constantly be changing, it is surely a better place for the legacy of a man like Mellon; and, likewise, for the one now being cultivated by Peter Brant.

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Thousand Words Backed Up by Family Deeds

The adage reckons a picture to be worth 1,000 words. Of course, as has been remarked, that means 1,001 words must be worth more than a picture. (On which wiseguy basis, I will generously trade this column for that Rembrandt in your loft.) But then it might take something closer to 1,000 pages to record everything the owners of Thousand Words (Pioneerof the Nile) have experienced over the past year.

This colt gave a literal quality to their topsy-turvy fortunes when rearing and toppling in the Derby preliminaries, sending Bob Baffert’s lieutenant Jimmy Barnes to hospital and himself back to the barn in mild disgrace. For the Albaugh family, the sudden deflation must have taken them back to the numbing split-second when Dennis’ Moment (Tiznow), stumbling out of the gate, threw away a juvenile championship at the Breeders’ Cup last fall.

Yet between those dispiriting bookends, their stable has been achieving some quite remarkable things–so much so, in fact, that success for Thousand Words in the GI Preakness S. would perhaps put Dennis Albaugh in contention for an Eclipse Award of his own.

Last month, in the space of three days, Dale Romans saddled two Ellis Park debut winners to follow up in graded stakes at Churchill: Sittin On Go (Brody’s Cause) in the GIII Iroquois S.; and Girl Daddy (Uncle Mo) in the GIII Pocahontas S. In the process, each earned the first 10 starting points for the 2021 Derby and Oaks, respectively.

By the time those gates are secured and opened, perhaps, we might finally be restored to those simple indulgences past that now seem so decadent; measurable, as well as anything, by the notion of a crowded infield on the first Saturday in May. But if the whole of society can’t get ahead of itself, right now, then certainly nor can those whose aspirations are contingent on a conveyance as unpredictable as the Thoroughbred.

The Albaughs won’t need telling that, not least after Sittin On Go’s success earlier on the card intimated that the force might be with Thousand Words in the GI Kentucky Derby. In the event, they were reserved the cruellest portion of the hollowness that must have filtered from the deserted grandstands into the hearts of all those whose privilege, in making that coveted walkover, had been rendered so bittersweet.

But our business is all about the long game. And the kind of calls that these guys are making will surely flatten even such bumps in the road as unaccountable as the slips and flips of Dennis’ Moment and Thousand Words. Because even with an unbeaten colt and filly on track for the Breeders’ Cup, the Albaugh family’s potential impact on next year’s Classic scene could prove to be broader still.

The way Not This Time has started at Taylor Made, we could be looking at one of the most exciting young stallions of recent times. I can’t resist repeating that I’ve been in his corner throughout, annually banging the drum in our midwinter stallion survey. And he has overcome even that ruinous disadvantage to set a searing pace in the freshman’s championship. His 13 scorers from just 27 starters to date are headed by the brilliant Princess Noor, at $1.35 million the most expensive 2-year-old by a rookie ever sold at OBS.

While there’s plenty of Nerud-Tartan dash in his family (two of Ta Wee’s five named foals put her 2×3 behind his second dam), the beauty about Not This Time is that he is so eligible to consolidate this early promise–in terms both of build and pedigree, as a Giant’s Causeway half-brother to Liam’s Map.

In his own track career Not This Time had already introduced the Albaughs to the rough with the smooth: he won an Ellis Park maiden and the Iroquois, just like Sittin On Go, but then narrowly failed to run down Classic Empire (Pioneerof the Nile) at the Breeders’ Cup (ceding first run, the pair seven lengths clear) before being forced into premature retirement by injury.

He’s out of the family’s foundation investment, Miss Macy Sue (Trippi), a $42,000 2-year-old who became a graded stakes sprinter. Mr. Albaugh bought out his racing partner and resolved to give the young mare every chance with her first covers: A.P. Indy, Unbridled’s Song, Medaglia d’Oro, Giant’s Causeway. And that’s what I love about this operation: they came into the business with no pretensions, from Iowa, but bank on old-fashioned quality in a way that reproves many a Bluegrass horseman who cheapens the breed in slavish pursuit of fashion.

Now it turns out that you can have the best of both worlds. The Albaughs appear to have produced a legitimate commercial heir to Giant’s Causeway; and, in the sire of Sittin On Go, may yet give us a second.

Brody’s Cause, similarly, would succeed for the best of reasons: he was bought as a yearling as the son of a proven stallion, from a regal family. Go back to his fifth dam, in fact, and you’ll find a Bold Ruler half-sister to Somethingroyal.

He stands at Spendthrift–the family’s partner, incidentally, in pushing a seven-figure boat out for Thousand Words as a yearling–and the Albaughs supported him at market by giving $65,000 for his very first foal, a January 11 colt bred by and delivered at Wynnstay Farm, as a weanling at the Keeneland November Sale. Returning him to the same ring last September, they set a reserve at the same price, only for bidding to stall at $62,000. That’s how Sittin On Go is still in their stable; that’s how these ups and downs can even out.

Let’s not forget that Thousand Words had soured in the spring and would not have lined up for a May Derby, either. Turning him round to beat poor old Honor A. P. (Honor Code) in their Derby prep has been an achievement commensurate with the Preakness record beckoning Baffert. But Romans, the family’s principal trainer, may yet prove equal to an equivalent challenge with Dennis’ Moment, who returned to the worktab just this week.

That colt, remember, is by Tiznow–who shared one of the great Breeders’ Cup duels with Giant’s Causeway. Proper stallions, these, as favored by proper horsemen. Between Romans, bloodstock agent Barry Berkelhammer, and Albaugh’s son-in-law and racing manager Jason Loutsch, this is an exemplary crew. And if Mr. Albaugh is already building a legacy, that’s because his team are using durable, high-caliber materials: proven stallions, deep families, speed that will stretch through a second turn.

So there’s one picture that really would be worth a Thousand Words–and that’s one that shows him draped in a blanket of Black-Eyed Susans.

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No Mystery about Mystic Potential

Of all the oddities shoehorned into the 2020 calendar, a Jim Dandy on Derby day felt like one of the most incongruous. In a regular year, this Grade II race serves as a midsummer crossroads for sophomores with an eye on the GI Travers: a chance either to regroup, after participation in the Triple Crown series, or to test the water after missing the Classics through immaturity or injury.

At least this latter function was maintained, this time round, in the coming-of-age of ‘TDN Rising Star’ Mystic Guide (Ghostzapper), a colt for whom even a four-month postponement of the GI Kentucky Derby proved to be not quite enough. His response to a pair of blinkers, however, suggests that he could yet profit from the drastic realignment of the Classics to follow the Derby winner to the GI Preakness S.

In carving his name below that of his grandsire Awesome Again–himself too late on the scene for the U.S. Classics, when winning the race in 1997–Mystic Guide made a breakthrough that had certainly appeared within his compass, despite an odds-on defeat in the GIII Peter Pan S. at the start of the Saratoga meet. The dynamic move he made into third that day, having been going nowhere mid-race, spoke of an unusual talent still in development.

Though again striking from last place, a more focused animal contested the Jim Dandy. This time Mystic Guide’s brawny physique required far less organizing–partly, no doubt, thanks to the blinkers covering up that big blaze of his; but also showing the benefit of trainer Mike Stidham’s forbearance, in never having tried to make him run before he could walk.

In terms of pedigree, there can’t be many horses in training right now whose ability is easier to explain: his first and third dams are both five-time Grade I winners, and his unraced second dam additionally produced a Classic winner in France. And his sire, of course, is one of the most venerable speed-carrying influences around.

Not that this kind of seamless quality routinely plays out in breeding. No less than when we sift a more plebeian family, to find the hidden genetic nuggets that might explain an unexpected talent, this one contains its challenges. Because where we normally ask which cold flints have been rubbed together to spark a flame, here we must ask why so obvious a formula has not worked more consistently.

In each case, we are guilty of the besetting vice of pedigree analysis: picking and choosing such evidence as best fits the outcome. A situation like this, however, should perhaps be viewed as a reminder of how the daily misadventures of the Thoroughbred can unravel even the best pedigrees, the best horsemanship, the most lavish care.

That applies to the Maktoum empire no less than to the rest of us. The fact is that Mystic Guide’s dam Music Note (A.P. Indy), who besides her Grade I wins (Coaching Club American Oaks, Mother Goose, Beldame, Ballerina, Gazelle) made the podium in consecutive editions of the GI Ladies’ Classic at the Breeders’ Cup, has otherwise failed to produce foals commensurate with their sires and trainers. Though herself as sound and consistent as she was talented, she has previously mustered only one that has sustained the basic functionality of a racehorse–and that was a son of Street Cry (Ire) claimed for $16,000 on his second start. He then managed a dozen wins in 64 subsequent starts, no fewer than 60 of them at Penn National.

Who knows what innate ability may have been stifled by ill luck in Music Note’s other foals? But her progeny otherwise include an Elusive Quality filly, unraced after making just $17,000 as Hip 2990 at the September Sale; two foals by Distorted Humor that managed a single unplaced start between them; and a son of Street Cry who did manage to win a race in a light career for Andre Fabre in France, though only after being gelded early.

Music Note was homebred for Godolphin by Gainsborough Stud from the unraced Note Musicale (GB) (Sadler’s Wells), whose dam It’s in the Air had broken the Keeneland November Sale record when acquired for $4.6 million in 1984. From the first crop of Mr. Prospector, It’s in the Air had shared the 2-year-old fillies’ championship in 1978 and won the GI Vanity H. twice, as well as the Ruffian H., Alabama S. and Delaware Oaks. She was tough, too, winning 16 of 43 starts.

Though It’s in the Air produced nine winners in all, the only one to achieve real distinction was the Seattle Slew filly she was carrying at the time of her sale, Bitooh (GB), who won the G2 Criterium de Maisons-Laffitte. But several other daughters proved fertile producers, notably the dam of Storming Home (GB) (Machiavellian), a top-level winner on either side of the Atlantic while best remembered for his chaotic disqualification in the GI Arlington Million. Another daughter, Group-placed Sous Intendu (Shadeed), has produced three stakes winners including G1 Prix Jean Prat runner-up Slip Stream (Irish River {Fr}), as well as the dam of Australian Group 1 winner Alverta (Aus) (Flying Sour {Aus}).

It was the unraced Note Musicale, however, who did most to defray her dam’s purchase. Besides Music Note herself, she also produced Musical Chimes (In Excess {Ire}). A Classic winner for Fabre, taking the G1 Poule d’Essai des Pouliches before finishing third in the G1 Prix de Diane, Musical Chimes was exported to win the GI John C. Mabee H. for Neil Drysdale before becoming another who proved rather disappointing at stud.

The success of It’s in the Air in her second career, somewhat deferred as it was, is gratifying to those of us who believe that quality pooled beneath a pedigree can sometimes percolate unseen through a generation or two. Because her dam, A Wind Is Rising, was certainly a conduit for the right stuff.

You wouldn’t necessarily have said so, judging her as a Florida-bred, one-time winner by Francis S.–a well-bred but largely forgotten stallion, winner of the 1960 Wood Memorial for Harbor View/Burley Parke. Typical, in fact, of the material Mr. Prospector had to work with, when he started out in Ocala. (Albeit there’s an echo of It’s in the Air in some of the most valued animals around today: Francis S. was damsire of Ogygian, whose daughter Myth–herself out of a Mr. Prospector mare–gave us Scat Daddy’s sire Johannesburg.)

A Wind Is Rising certainly had a most remarkable symmetry to her pedigree: both her damsire Nasrullah and grandsire Royal Charger are sons of Nearco; and Royal Charger is out of Nasrullah’s half-sister Sun Princess. This really is as copper-bottomed as the last century gets: the dam of Nasrullah and Sun Princess was a half-sister to the mother of breed-shaping Mahmoud, the pair of them out of the champion sprinter Mumtaz Mahal, the fount of so much vital Aga Khan blood. The mating that produced It’s in the Air, moreover, introduced an extra strain of Nasrullah, his son Nashua being damsire of Mr. Prospector.

I know people get impatient with these ancient parchments, but A Wind Is Rising also surfaces as fifth dam of dual G1 Dubai World Cup winner Thunder Snow (Ire) (Helmet {Aus}). That’s because Sheikh Mohammed doubled down on the family by buying Red Slippers (Nureyev), a great-granddaughter of A Wind Is Rising, from Robert Sangster after she broke her maiden at Ascot in 1991. Red Slippers went on to win the G2 Sun Chariot S. at three, encouraging another deal with Sangster when her half-sister by Storm Bird won both juvenile starts the following season. This was Balanchine, whose bold success against the colts in the G1 Irish Derby would set a bold template for Sheikh Mohammed’s new adventure with Godolphin. And while Balanchine has made a limited impact as a broodmare, Red Slippers produced G1 Prix de Diane winner West Wind (GB) (Machiavellian) as well as Eastern Joy (GB) (Dubai Destination), dam of four graded stakes performers besides Thunder Snow.

Another European luminary of this family is Saoirse Abu (Mr Greeley), a dual Group 1-winning juvenile for Jim Bolger in Ireland (also Classic-placed). She shares a granddam with Red Slippers.

Valuable mares owned by rich breeders get expensive coverings, and their offspring should get top-class trainers. So there are always any number of factors when the likes of Thunder Snow and now Mystic Ridge come good, three or four generations after their maternal line parted.

But I do think it comforting to find a family loaded with this kind of blood. After all, people are always eager to credit a sireline when it has tapered away to no less tenuous a degree.

And actually the sires who have seeded Mystic Guide’s branch of the family only compound the influences we just noted behind It’s in the Air. A.P. Indy doubles up the Nasrullah line through both sire and damsire. And the dam of Sadler’s Wells is by a Royal Charger-line stallion, while her granddam Thong is by a son of Nasrullah.

In a horse as well-bred as this, then, it doesn’t really matter which threads of the pedigree come through: they’re all gold. Both Mystic Guide’s parents, for instance, are out of dams who bred another elite runner: Note Musicale had Musical Chimes as well as Music Note, and Baby Zip had City Zip as well as Ghostzapper. Exactly the same is true of the respective dams of damsire and grandsire: Weekend Surprise had Summer Squall as well as A.P.Indy, and Primal Force had Macho Uno as well as Awesome Again.

Not even that brings any guarantees, as Mystic Guide’s disappointing siblings show. But if luck and judgement are now combining to permit the fulfilment of this pedigree’s potential, then there won’t be a single creaking floorboard on the stage.

And, someday, that could become hugely important. Because if Mystic Guide can earn a legitimate place at stud, he will have a chance to address the one lingering omission in the career of the phenomenal athlete who became his sire.

Justify (Scat Daddy) has announced with unmissable fanfare the emergence of Ghostzapper as a broodmare sire, unsurprising in a grandson of Deputy Minister. And, yes, Ghostzapper has Shaman Ghost standing alongside him at Adena Springs; and McCraken, his most precocious son, now making his way at Airdrie. These two have everything to play for, respectively launching their first yearlings and weanlings. At 20, however, time is running out for Ghostzapper to increase competition among his male heirs.

This is a stallion whose lifetime ratio of stakes and graded stakes winners is comfortably in step with Medaglia d’Oro and Curlin, and way ahead of many other big names. So the stakes are high, with Mystic Guide; no higher, however, than the roots are deep.

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Collector a Local Hero for Lunsford

“The Homeboy, I call him: the Louisville Homeboy.” Bruce Lunsford gives a proud chuckle. “With Tommy, and Brian, we’ve made it an all-Louisville crowd. So that’s kind of fun. In fact, when we laid out a plan, one of the good things was that we could get all the way to the Breeders’ Cup without leaving Kentucky. I think that’s an advantage, but who knows?”

One thing he does know: he would prefer to cede the limelight to those unsung horsemen, Tom Drury, Jr. and Brian Hernandez, Jr. But if Art Collector (Bernardini) can keep their dream alive in the Runhappy Ellis Park Derby, Lunsford will have to accept his share of civic goodwill when his homebred colt ships back along the Ohio River for the GI Kentucky Derby itself.

Because it’s the silks, above all, that qualify Art Collector as the hometown hope: the silks of a Kenton County native whose entire life—whether in business, in public service or, as now, in pursuit of a sporting passion—has rooted him in the Bluegrass.

Here’s a guy who was not just raised on an 80-acre tobacco farm, but who was running the place, right down to hiring the help, when 13 years old. That way, his dad could go out and work. The lesson, he said later, was that “the meek will inherit the earth, but not any time soon.” Sure enough, he worked on a road crew to pay his way through college. After the University of Kentucky, it was night classes at law school, between Army Reserve stints at Ft. Thomas.

At 32, he was appointed the state’s first Secretary of Commerce by Governor John Y. Brown Jr. Then, still in his thirties, Lunsford co-founded Vencor, the nationwide healthcare group nowadays known as Kindred but still with its headquarters in Louisville. And he even ran Mitch McConnell close, unexpectedly so, in their Senate race in 2008.

Lunsford has always polled well in Henderson and, within the prevailing restrictions, can again bank on local support Sunday.

“I used to spend a lot of time at Ellis Park, in my early days of racing,” Lunsford says. “I’ve a lot of friends down there. I’ve known the racing secretary for years, and everybody sounds so thrilled about having this horse come down. Hopefully it could really make their day.”

It would be hard, however, to do more than maintain the emotional pitch of Art Collector’s success in the GII Toyota Blue Grass S. Not just because Lunsford views Keeneland as another highly evocative environment, but also because of the personal significance of that particular race.

“In my college days I knew a lot of the old guys at Keeneland, the trainers and agents, names people might not know anymore,” Lunsford says. “That was when Keeneland really led the show. And it was a Blue Grass day when I really decided that I wanted to own horses: when I saw Graustark get beat by Abe’s Hope in a huge upset [in 1966]. Graustark was ahead 12, 15 lengths in the backstretch only to take that bad step. But he had such guts that he only lost by a nose. I got a copy of the photo finish, and had a painting made of it, because it meant so much to me being in the business. So I always wanted to win the Blue Grass S.”

As such, it was a poignant day when First Samurai (Giant’s Causeway), a dual Grade I winner co-owned with Lansdon Robbins III, derailed in the 2006 running. One minute they were on their way to the Derby, the next their horse had fractured ribs and would be retired.

“I owned him with a close friend, and he’d run third in the Breeders’ Cup despite getting stuck in the gate, then he’d run big in Florida,” recalls Lunsford. “He’s turned out to be a very good sire, at his level. But yes, that was a real, punch-in-the-gut lesson.”

So there will be no complacency about Art Collector making the Derby line-up until the moment the gates open. Fortunately, a syndication deal for First Samurai had already been tied up. At 72, however, Lunsford will this time roll with any punches.

“There’ve been lots of offers to buy Art Collector,” he admits. “But I don’t need the money, at this stage of my life, so I’m hopeful that maybe I can get lucky and he could be something akin to a long-term sire for me. I learned a lot watching Bill Young handle Storm Cat, and it would be great to have a really superior stud that I can co-own with people, and do favors for friends, and watch him grow. I may or may not get that chance. But at my age, it’s nice for this to be my baby.”

That’s a prospect that brings things full circle for Lunsford, as Art Collector’s grand-dam Bunting (Private Account) was one of his first two purchases—counselled by Seth Hancock of Claiborne Farm, where First Samurai found his home—after he decided to start his own program. Having been Grade I-placed, and offering a foothold into the Green Tree family of Buckaroo, Stop The Music and company, Bunting cost $500,000 as a 3-year-old in 1994.

“I can’t even remember the name of the other mare,” Lunsford says. “I sold her because she was one, out of not many that year, that did manage to get in foal to Lure. But yes, Bunting was bought to be a foundation mare. Up till then I’d just been fiddling around on a cheaper scale, claiming and stuff, kind of learning the business the way the old guys did it. At that time, $500,000 would put you in the top of the crop, to get a pretty nice mare. I raced Bunting for a year and then I bred her to Storm Cat.”

The result was Vision And Verse, who won the GII Illinois Derby and was beaten only by Lemon Drop Kid (Kingmambo) in both the GI Belmont S. and GI Travers S. The whole program, indeed, got off to a flying start. The first foal of another of his very first mares, again picked out by Hancock, turned out to be Golden Missile (A.P. Indy). Though sold as a weanling, Golden Missile’s third in the GI Breeders’ Cup Classic enabled Lunsford to cash in the dam days later for $1.35 million.

Bunting couldn’t quite come up with another Vision And Verse, but in 2007 delivered a Distorted Humor filly who matured into a very smart grass runner: Distorted Legacy was second in the GI Flower Bowl Inv., and then just missed the podium in a bunch finish for the GI Filly and Mare Turf at the Breeders’ Cup. Art Collector is her second foal.

His story, to this point, is well chronicled: one of the few silver linings to the clouds of COVID-19.

Art Collector was first welcomed by Drury at the Skylight Training Center in Goshen, Ky., simply for a spell of freshening. The colt was following a well-worn path. For while Drury had never been formally credited with graded stakes success, he can claim a behind-the-scenes contribution to animals as accomplished as Tom’s D’Etat (Smart Strike) or Lunsford’s cherished, Classic-placed Grade I winner Madcap Escapade (Hennessy).

Art Collector was initially just taking some time out after an impressive allowance success for Joe Sharp at Churchill last fall. When stripped of that success, as one of three Sharp horses that tested positive to a deworming agent, Lunsford decided that Art Collector should not return to his previous trainer but join Rusty Arnold. Then came the pandemic. Race programs and horse traffic were suspended. Lunsford told Drury to train Art Collector up to a race, when Churchill reopened; and when the colt won so well, it was decided to let destiny take its course. Characteristically, Arnold was among the first to ring and congratulate Drury.

Lunsford is thrilled that a horseman educated by Frankie Brothers, the trainer of First Samurai and Madcap Escapade, should now be getting his day in the sun.

“I’ve known Tommy almost since he started,” he says. “He has always been the go-to guy, out at the farm there, to bring horses back. And I’m one of the few who would go ahead and let him race once or twice before I sent a horse back out of town.

“Now Joe Sharp did a good job getting this horse ready as a 2-year-old, and I give him credit for that. But when all that stuff happened, I was going to send the horse to Rusty because he’d be going to Saratoga. And then the COVID has come along and we sat down and I said, ‘You know what, Tommy? You race this horse first and we’ll see what we got, okay?’

“I had never wanted to press this horse. You rush a horse to the Derby and they either never race again, or not much. So I’d laid him off for three months: a little swimming, a little jogging, let him grow up a little. And I could go out there and watch him train. Unlike a lot of these horses, he wasn’t losing any training time. And he just got better and better.”

Lunsford remembers hauling Drury into the winner’s circle photo when Madcap Escapade won her first race at Gulfstream back in 2004.

“He was young then but he’s still incredibly humble,” Lunsford says. “He’s a really good horseman with a work ethic second to none. The last two and a half years, he’s had one day off. He’s got a good head on him, and has had good mentors over the years, Frankie being one of them. I feel almost like I’ve got a nephew training for me. And I think his time has come.”

Another important member of Lunsford’s team is Patti Miller, who helps him at the sales; while he is also grateful to the teams at Claiborne, where he boards his mares, and Hill ‘n’ Dale, where he partners with John Sikura in a few others. A big decision looms, if Art Collector happens to go well in the Derby, as his Into Mischief half-brother is in the September Sale. (Distorted Legacy also has a weanling by the same sire, and is now in foal to Justify.)

In principle, however, Lunsford remains pretty much a breed-to-race guy; quite a throwback, as such, and likewise in his disinclination for the kind of high-end partnerships that are nowadays so common. He likes a horse to have an identity; and wants to share the highs and lows with his real buddies.

“Back in the old days, you knew who owned a horse,” he says. “Whether it was Claiborne, or E.P. Taylor, everybody knew. Now you have 17 people in a partnership to get these very expensive horses.

“I’m a little bit of a jokester and kidder anyway. Most all of us who know each other, we all do that, right? So I think that’s part of the game. With my closest friends—Greg Hudson, his dad Hoolie, and Bill Latta—we’ve been going to the races for 52 years. I mean, that’s unbelievable. We’ve gone to Del Mar, we’ve gone to London, we’ve had a tremendous amount of fun. When Vision And Verse ran in the Belmont, we had 16 people in an Italian restaurant and it was just a hoot night. And then flew back about one in the morning. That’s the kind of stuff that makes your memories.”

Lunsford has taken a similar approach to his business career. He loves to be in the thick of the action.

“I either want to be involved or not be involved,” he says. “I’m a guy with lots of interests and have never rested long. I grew up on a really small farm. I took care of the farm so my dad could have a job 40 hours a week, so we could get by. I raised tobacco, I did all kinds of things, and as a result I learned a lot about how to run things, both small and big. I think that’s helped me in life. And even today, at the companies I’m invested in, I don’t want to be passive.”

Of course, the ultimate example of this engagement, this urge to get out there and make a difference, is a political career crowned by that stirring Senate race in 2008, when he slashed McConnell’s margin from 29.4% to 5.9%. (Compared, moreover, with a 16.2% buffer for presidential candidate John McCain at the top of the state ticket.) Today, standing back from the political fray, he views the present crisis as a cue for leadership that inspires unity, not division.

“I think it’s been driven by a lot of things,” he says of the virulence of political discourse. “For one thing, by too much money spent on campaigns. I guarantee they’ll spend $3 billion in this presidential race. Both sides, and it’s all negative. And the media has picked sides. With no real advertising done anymore, the only way they can make revenue is through subscribers. So what they tend to do, liberal or conservative, is pander to their audience. It’s become so negative.

“I think it was Winston Churchill said democracy is a poor form of government, but it’s better than all the rest. And eventually democracy will win out. At the moment, we lack strong leaders. If you go back, I’m a big fan of the guys that made tough decisions in tough times. Truman probably made the toughest decision of all time, when he allowed the atomic bomb. Churchill, completely over-matched in the battle, called on England to fight on anyway. And they won. The spirited leaders know how to get things done. But I think a lot of avenues in the country have been [taken] because money has bought direction, not policy or values.”

But Lunsford feels optimism, too. He predicts a bright future for our industry in Kentucky, that’s for sure, and hopes that Art Collector can assist morale in the meantime.

“Listen, this is a horse that could be fun if he stays sound,” he says. “We all know that’s day-to-day. But I’m really proud of Tommy. I tell him all the time: ‘Just enjoy the ride. Enjoy the interviews, enjoy the media, enjoy everything that happens. Because it could be over in one day and then you’d look back and ask why you didn’t.’ I’ve always tried to be like that that with my horses. Even when something happens like with First Samurai, I don’t wear it too hard. I feel you learn a lot just by being in the business for a long time. You learn a kind of a free-spirited attitude about it.

“And I think Tommy’s felt that. He’s doing a great job, really handled himself well. He has tremendous passion for these horses, so I would really like to see it for him. I think the only time I ever cried at a race was when Madcap Escapade won her second race and set a stakes record down at Gulfstream Park. Because I felt a horse like that was what I’d got in the business for. So if this horse were to win the Derby, I don’t know if I’d cry more for Tommy, or more for the horse. But that’s how I feel about it.”

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