English Channel’s Far Bridge Earns ‘Rising Star’ Nod at Gulfstream

Calumet Farm's unbeaten homebred Far Bridge (c, 3, English Channel–Fitpitcher, by Kitten's Joy) kicked home impressively for 'TDN Rising Star' honors in a grassy optional claimer at Gulfstream Park Saturday.

The bay was a head better than the promising Carl Spackler (Ire) (Lope de Vega {Ire}) over the same course and distance on debut Jan. 21. Carl Spackler returned to earn a 'Rising Star' tag of his own with a smashing, 8 3/4-length maiden victory here Feb. 25.

Hammered down to 1-2 here, Far Bridge raced under cover passing the grandstand for the first time. He was in no hurry racing toward the rear through an opening quarter in :22.99 and had his work cut out for him entering the far turn. All dressed up with nowhere to run at the top of the stretch, he knifed his way through rivals in the stretch and unleashed an explosive turn of foot to score by 3 1/2 lengths over Harry Time (Ire) (Harry Angel {Ire}).

This is the second 'Rising Star' for the late, perennial leading turf sire English Channel. The English Channel over Kitten's Joy cross is also responsible for GISW Channel Cat; MGSW Spooky Channel; Canadian champion 2-year-old colt, GSW & MGISP Admiralty Pier; and GSW English Bee.

Far Bridge is the most recent produce for winning Calumet homebred Fitpticher, who died in 2021.

9th-Gulfstream, $72,000, Alw (NW1X)/Opt. Clm ($75,000), 3-11, 3yo, 1 1/16mT, 1:41.14, fm, 3 1/2 lengths.
FAR BRIDGE, c, 3, by English Channel
                1st Dam: Fitpitcher, by Kitten's Joy
                2nd Dam: Teenage Temper, by A.P. Indy
                3rd Dam: Pleasant Temper, by Storm Cat
Lifetime Record: 2-2-0-0, $85,200. Click for the Equibase.com chart or VIDEO, sponsored by TVG. Click for the free Equineline.com catalogue-style pedigree.
O/B-Calumet Farm (KY); T-Christophe Clement.

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English Channel’s Last Call Upsets the Natalma

X-Men Racing 2 LLC and SF Racing's Last Call (English Channel) broke her maiden in style with a 21-1 upset in the GI Natalma S. at Woodbine, a “Win and You're In” for the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf in November at Keeneland.

Second on debut at this venue July 23, Last Call was fourth last out going seven panels over this course Aug. 20. Dismissed by the bettors while shedding blinkers here, the $30,000 KEESEP acquisition was unhurried early, racing in second last off the rail as Star Candy (Candy Ride {Arg}) dictated terms, clocking early splits of :24.27 and :49.02. Advancing rapidly up the outside approaching the bend, Last Call was four wide at the top of the lane and hit the front halfway home, holding off favored Cairo Consort (Cairo Prince) to score by a length. G Laurie (Oscar Performance) filled the show spot.

“We put the blinkers on early because she just wasn't showing a whole lot in the beginning and then the lightbulb kind of kicked in and she just started working more impressive each time,” said winning trainer Kevin Attard. “And we were obviously a little disappointed in her last start, but we thought she was a little rank, she wouldn't relax and settle so we've taken the blinkers off. I think just now with a couple races of experience under her belt and obviously her pedigree leans to more distance she put it all together today.”

Pedigree Notes:

Last Call is the 13th Grade I winner, 34th graded winner and 65th black-type scorer for her late sire English Channel. The winner's dam Over Served is a half to GSW Yearly Tour (Half a Year) and MGSW Victor Avenue (Avenue of Flags). The 16-year-old mare did not have a foal in 2021, but had an English Channel colt this year and was bred back to Unified.

Saturday, Woodbine
JOHNNIE WALKER NATALMA S.-GI, C$508,000, Woodbine, 9-17, 2yo, f, 1mT, 1:36.49, fm.
1–LAST CALL, 121, f, 2, by English Channel
                1st Dam: Over Served, by Black Minnaloushe
                2nd Dam: Victorian Village, by L'Emigrant
                3rd Dam: Sir Ivor's Sorrow, by Sir Ivor
1ST BLACK TYPE WIN, 1ST GRADED STAKES WIN,
1ST GRADE I WIN. ($30,000 Ylg '21 KEESEP). O-X-Men Racing 2
LLC & SF Racing LLC; B-English Channel Co-Owners & Jodi
Cantwell (KY); T-Kevin Attard; J-Rafael Manuel Hernandez.
C$300,000. Lifetime Record: 3-1-1-0, $240,659.
*Full to English Tavern, MSP, $203,245. Werk Nick Rating: B.
Click for the eNicks report & 5-cross pedigree. Click for the
free Equineline.com catalogue-style pedigree.
2–Cairo Consort, 121, f, 2, by Cairo Prince
                1st Dam: Absolutely Awesome, by Street Cry (Ire)
                2nd Dam: Discreetly Awesome, by Awesome Again
                3rd Dam: Pretty Discreet, by Private Account
1ST GRADED BLACK TYPE, 1ST G1 BLACK TYPE. ($37,000 RNA
Wlg '20 FTKNOV; $95,000 Ylg '21 FTKOCT). O-William B.
Thompson, Jr.; B-Frankfort Park Farm (KY); T-Nathan Squires.
C$100,000.
3–G Laurie, 121, f, 2, by Oscar Performance
                1st Dam: Lovely Island (SP), by Arch
                2nd Dam: Lovely Isle, by Double Honor
                3rd Dam: Eleven Islands, by Island Whirl
1ST BLACK TYPE, 1ST GRADED BLACK TYPE, 1ST G1 BLACK
TYPE. ($80,000 Ylg '21 FTSAUG). O-Madaket Stables LLC;
B-Kenneth L. & Sarah K. Ramsey (KY); T-H. Graham Motion.
C$50,000.
Margins: 1, 3/4, 2. Odds: 21.15, 1.65, 3.20.
Also Ran: Wickenheiser, Adora, Collecting Flatter, Courtly Ro, Star Candy.
Click for the Equibase.com chart and the TJCIS.com PPs. VIDEO, sponsored by TVG.

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Eyeing a Championship with War Like Goddess

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY–With a sterling race record that befits her very distinctive name all wrapped in an engaging story, War Like Goddess (English Channel) is an impossible-to-ignore race mare bidding for a championship.

Though her late sire was a champion on the track and a top turf stallion for many years, the first foal out of Misty North (North Light {Ire}) brought a mere $1,200 at auction as a weanling and did not draw a single bid at the 2018 Keeneland September yearling sale. At the June 2019 OBS sale, bloodstock agent Donato Lanni purchased the 2-year-old for $30,000 for longtime client George Krikorian.

“I bought her with that name and I told Donato 'I don't like that name,'” Krikorian said. I didn't see the horse then because he was in Florida and I was out here in California when he called me about the horse. I didn't get to see her for maybe four months or five months later. When I saw her, I looked at her and I said, 'Hey, we don't need to change her name. She's beautiful. She is a War Like Goddess.'”

Some 38 months after Lanni identified her as a budget-priced project, War Like Goddess is certain to be the race favorite for the seventh-consecutive time when the 5-year-old goes to the post Saturday in the $600,000 GII Flower Bowl S. on the inner turf course.

Unbeaten in her three starts at Saratoga Race Course, War Like Goddess has won eight of 10 lifetime starts and earned over $1.2 million in the care of Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott. She took the 2021 Flower Bowl by 2 1/4 lengths when it was run at Saratoga for the first time at the new distance of 1 3/8 miles. Long a Grade I, it was dropped to a Grade II this year.

After War Like Goddess won the GII Glens Falls S. by 1 1/4 lengths at 2-5 Aug. 6, Mott said he was considering running her against males in the Sword Dancer on Aug. 26 to give her another shot at a Grade I win and keep her at 1 1/2 miles. He opted for the Flower Bowl, where she drew post four in the field of seven.

In the Glens Falls, she won by a narrower margin than in 2021, but Mott said it was just the result of a patient ride by Joel Rosario.

“This year, she was sitting there and he rode her from about here to that wash rack,” Mott said, point to a spot fewer than 40 yards away. “It looked like to me that she was sitting, sitting, sitting and he got her going, he scrubbed on her a little bit.”

The final words of chart notes describing the Glens Falls win were “as rider pleased.”

“He took her back in his hands, it looked like,” Mott said, “as he was approaching the wire.”

Lanni recommended that Kirkorian ask the ever-patient Mott to train the filly. Mott agreed and said he doesn't recall there being any expectations about her when she joined his stable.

“You just kind of wait and see,” Mott said. “You just train them and do the best you can. We had to give her a fair amount of time. She didn't run until September of her 3-year-old year. It took that long to kind of get her ready. She had baby stuff, shins, stuff like that.”

In that first start at Churchill Down, War Like Goddess rolled into contention from far back and won the nine-furlong by three-quarters of a length. Mott said it is an obvious strength that has her batting .800 in her career.

“She can run,” he said. “She's got a very good turn a foot. That's what it takes. She's quick.”

Krikorian, the president and CEO of Krikorian Premiere Theatres, has a lifetime of experience with Thoroughbreds. His father, George Krikorian Sr., was a trainer on the New England circuit and he was raised near Rockingham Park in New Hampshire. As his entertainment venue businesses grew, he became an owner and then a breeder. Equibase stats show him with 290 victories–24 in graded stakes –from 1,729 starts in his name since 2000.

With the $323,500 she has earned this year, War Like Goddess has leaped over Grade I winners Starrer (Dynaformer) and Hollywood Story (Wild Rush) to the top spot on the Krikorian career stable list. Her ability to unleash a late run has made her Kirkorian's third millionaire and fifth Grade I winner.

“It's amazing when she just puts it on, how fast she accelerates,” he said. “It's just amazing to watch her do that. She's very competitive, as you can see. She does not want to lose a race. She'll fight hard.”

The first horse Lanni recommended that Krikorian buy was Starrer, who was picked up for $35,000 at the 1999 Fasig Tipton Fall Sale. In 2002, they bought Hollywood Story for $130,000. Krikorian said that when Lanni–now a well-known advisor–calls he listens.

“We have a bloodstock agent in Donato Lanni who has an eye for a horse that most people don't have, most of the bloodstock agents don't have, for sure,” Krikorian said. “We've known each other and been friends and have done business for years now. And when he tells me he sees something that he likes. I'm really happy to hear that because he's usually right, for sure.”

War Like Goddess won her first-level allowance in late October in her second start and launched her 4-year-old year with a fifth in the 1 3/16ths miles the GIII Very One S. at Gulfstream Park on Feb. 21. She rebounded from that setback and rang up four graded-stakes wins before finishing third by a half-length as the favorite in the GI Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Turf. Mott thought that over all she ran well in the Breeders' Cup.

“She did it maybe a tick wide and maybe a tick early,” he said.

This year with Rosario replacing Julien Leparoux, she returned to the races in April with a second victory in the GIII Bewitched at Keeneland. A minor physical issue kept her out of the GI New York in June and the River Memories S. on July 10 at Belmont Park did not fill. She handled the field of seven in the Glens Falls off a three-month layoff and heads into the fall in the Flower Bowl toward the 12-furlong GI Breeders' Cup Turf against males.

Mott said he is inclined to run in the Turf because the GI Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Turf will be contested at 1 3/16 miles instead of the 1 3/8 miles due to the configuration of Keeneland turf course. He believes she at her best at 12 furlongs, where she is 4-for-4, and that he is not concerned about her having a bit of a lighter schedule this summer.

“Maybe it'll help,” he said. “She's not a great big, stout filly. Although she can run, I don't think she's one you want to be leading over there every three weeks. Of course, the way the races are, we wouldn't be able to do that anyway. We would have had one more race in her, I guess. And maybe they did us a favor. Sometimes those things work out. Maybe the fact that we didn't have a race down at Belmont, maybe that's to her advantage later in the year. We always use the term 'they happen for a reason…,' you know.”

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This Side Up: The Vital Quest for New Joy

Polite but perfunctory. That was pretty much the tone in which people tended to praise Kitten's Joy while he was with us, and I guess it should be no different now that he's gone. Even so, it strikes me that his loss has been inadequately lamented. Not just in his own right, as an avowed turf stallion who freakishly contrived two general sires' championships in North America; but also, virtually unremarked, as a final straw in what has over the past nine months become an outright catastrophe for the enlightened minority persevering with grass breeding in Kentucky.

Last November, the sustained challenge of English Channel to the primacy in this sphere of Kitten's Joy was unraveled by a sudden illness at 19. In March, Crestwood lost Get Stormy out of the blue at 16. And now we must bid farewell to the elder statesman himself, at 21.

 

Listen to this column:

 

 

Given the grim commercial odds to be overcome by anyone attempting to launch a turf sire in Kentucky, this trio's departure represents a colossal test of the way many Americans talk a good game about populating an expanding turf program. Because when it comes to walking the walk, they have tended to head straight to the exit the moment a yearling with chlorophyll in its pedigree is led into a sale ring.

One breeder's existential challenge, admittedly, can be another's game-changing opportunity. There are some promising young stallions around with the potential to fill these intimidating vacancies. Karakontie (Jpn) has been getting black-type action at an auspicious percentage, and should kick on again once over a numerical bump in the road with his current sophomores. In fact, he has just had three stakes winners in three days, one becoming his first millionaire. Oscar Performance, meanwhile, has been launched with real panache by a farm making a welcome return to the stallion game, and is already making a mark with his early runners.Even as it was, however, we're already well accustomed to the American turf program being farmed by European imports, whether as horses in training or, increasingly, from the elite yearling sales. Both the Grade I prizes contested on grass over the past two weekends were harvested by Chad Brown with one of each model, Adhamo (Ire) (Intello {Ger}) being acquired as a French Group winner last fall and In Italian (GB) (Dubawi {Ire}) as a Book I yearling at Tattersalls.

But this kind of lopsided trade stores up trouble on both sides of the water. While a lucrative export market offers a crucial avenue to viability for European horsemen contesting inadequate prizemoney, it may ultimately contain the seeds of its own demise through the ongoing dilution of standards. And while purse money is plainly superior in the U.S., it surely can't supplant commercial breeding as the driver to sustainable investment. It's great that these imports can earn big on the racetrack, but they won't ever offer that home run in the breeding shed unless or until the Bluegrass changes its commercial perspective on turf blood.

Because right now you wouldn't give even a new Nasrullah (Ire) much of a prayer. We obviously wouldn't have had Bold Ruler or Nashua, and everything they have since entailed, if Kentucky breeders in the 1950s had been as insular in their outlook as their successors today.

The same farm that imported Nasrullah had, of course, already demonstrated the transferability of European turf blood through the likes of Blenheim (GB) and Princequillo (Ire). But if they could now bring even Frankel (GB) over the water, I wonder how low his fee would have to go before commercial breeders thought he would represent a feasible play.

I have regularly cited the same program's Flintshire (GB) as an especially flagrant example of the way things are today. Supplanted as Juddmonte's highest earner only by a member of the same family in Enable (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire}), he was nonetheless reduced to a final Kentucky book of eight mares before finally returning to Europe in despair. If Kitten's Joy and English Channel couldn't earn the indulgence of the market, with its inflexible prejudices on physique, then what chance did Flintshire ever have—even at a farm as far-sighted as Hill n' Dale?

It was John Sikura, of course, who gave Kitten's Joy a fresh Kentucky platform when his owners had become so incensed by commercial indifference that they very nearly put pen to paper to stand him in Europe instead. In the parallel world where that deal was done, however, it would have been instructive to see what kind of reception Kitten's Joy would have had over there. Even after finding a European champion in Book I of the 2016 September Sale for $160,000—and the tragedy of Roaring Lion only raises the stakes for Oscar Performance and others, in terms of their sire's legacy—David Redvers was still able to return to the same auction two years later and buy a G1 2,000 Guineas winner for barely half that price. European investors, it seemed, had learned little more respect for the horse than the local market.

Little wonder, then, if they remain still more unimaginative when it comes to the kind of dirt blood that has, historically, stimulated cyclical regeneration in the European gene pool. For another constant complaint of mine is that this has to be a two-way street, and this mutual schism will ultimately prove equally damaging to the Europeans.

As things stand, we must simply hope that the plucky few who remain more interested in fast horses than fast bucks—and, on any sustainable model, that must also mean horses competent to run hard and long—can respond to the crisis with exactly the kind of flair that already sets them apart. Those who did keep the faith with Kitten's Joy, English Channel and Get Stormy must now stick to their guns, and seek out their replacements.

They know where to look, after all. The farm that grieved Get Stormy, for instance, perseveres stubbornly with the same brand: teak-tough runners and/or aristocratic pedigrees. Nor must we neglect the potential contribution of stallions that might, in this perverse environment, have their commercial credibility damaged if unduly promoted as equally effective influences on turf, such as American Pharoah, Not This Time, Twirling Candy or Blame.

But on the weekend when Zandon attempts to renew the fleeting impression he made on the home turn in the Derby, in a compelling race for the GII Jim Dandy S., it would be remiss not to finish with a nod to the farm that may have marked its 50th anniversary with the emergence of a new Indian Charlie or Harlan's Holiday in his sire Upstart.

Because Airdrie's fidelity to the kind of genetic resources most urgently required by the modern Thoroughbred gives breeders of sufficient vision a chance to roll the dice on a son of Kitten's Joy receiving precious little oxygen even in this suffocated division. Divisidero won graded stakes across five consecutive seasons, accumulating 13 triple-digit Beyers, and was denied his third Grade I in the Breeders' Cup Mile by barely half a length. Critically, moreover, the four mares in his dam's third generation are (drum roll, please): Miesque, Lassie Dear, Height Of Fashion (Fr) and a daughter of Cosmah. Not too many Thoroughbreds could better that, anywhere in the world.

True, his studmate Preservationist comes extremely close, with Natalma, Weekend Surprise and Too Chic. Down the shedrow, meanwhile, Cairo Prince is proving quite a flexible influence, in terms of surface, while Airdrie is also showcasing a son of War Front—the one patriarch of our time to have maintained elite stature at the sales despite an aptitude for turf.

Obviously War Front now has a luminous new dirt prospect starting out elsewhere, in Omaha Beach, but attractive channels for his versatility include not just Summer Front at Airdrie, but War of Will alongside his sire at Claiborne—who, promisingly, were pushed to their absolute limit in his debut book.

War Front's own traffic is naturally being managed more conservatively than ever, as he enters the evening of his career. He has long been beyond the reach of most breeders anyway, but remember that he only owes his credibility in Europe to opportunity (thanks largely to John Magnier). And that's the one thing—opportunity—breeders need to be brave enough to give some of these young turf stallions now.

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