Old Friends will host its 18th Annual Homecoming Event Sunday, May 7th, beginning at 12 noon.
The event features a live and silent auction of artwork, prints, and racing memorabilia, including several premiere collectible stallion halters. Absentee bidding for halters, which are all accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity, is currently open. On the block are halters worn by the following horses: Afleet Alex, Charismatic, Constitution, Da Hoss, Essential Quality, Feathered, Lava Man, Nashville, Pioneerof The Nile, Silver Charm and Tapit.
The deadline to receive bids is Saturday, May 6, at 9 p.m. (EST). To bid, email your name, address, and phone number along with your highest bid to: horses@oldfriendsequine.org
Also up for bid during the live auction will be this hand water-colored portrait of Secretariat by the artist, Judith Berkshire Jones. It is a limited edition, artist proof, with hand coloring over the original limited edition print of her pencil drawing, done from life, of Secretariat. This one of a kind item of the great champion is 8 x 10-inches, and is in an archival 11 x 14-inch double mat and framed. The outside frame measures 13-1/2-inches x 16-1/2-inches. The portrait is accompanied on the back by a certificate of authenticity hand signed, dated, and inscribed by the artist.
The deadline to receive bids is Saturday, May 6, at 9 p.m. (EST). At the event, someone will be assigned to proxy bid for you starting low and bidding up to your highest number.
The Old Friends Homecoming event will be highlighted by live music, a barbecue buffet, book signings, and farm tours where guests can meet the farm's Kentucky Derby Champion Silver Charm, along with one of the farm's newest retirees, Lava Man.
The TAA-accredited R.A.C.E. Fund, a 501c3 that stands for “Retirement Assistance and Care for Equines,” will launch its 2023 fundraising drive May 12. The online auction will appear on eBay and end May 19.
A number of halters–including those of Essential Quality, Serena's Song, Quality Road, Mandaloun, and Upstart–horseshoes, and signed pictures will be part of the auction, as will a VIP farm tour of Three Chimneys.
“We have some very exciting and amazing auction items again this year,” said R.A.C.E. Fund president Marlene Murray. “We would like to especially thank volunteer Roxanne Campbell for her dedication and tireless efforts as well as Airdrie Stud, Claiborne, Darley, Denali Stud, Gainesway, Juddmonte, Lane's End, Taylor Made, Three Chimneys, and author Patricia McQueen for their generous support by donating such valuable items of racing champions to help us raise funds.”
The non-profit organization was established in 2004 and focuses on racehorse retirement and rescue. All proceeds raised will be used to help Thoroughbreds. Visit racefund.org for more information or email info@racefund.org.
We had the Forte (Violence) bit last week. Now for the piano. The champion juvenile resumed his sonata in virtuoso fashion, reprising themes established in its first movement with familiar verve. From his barnmate Tapit Trice, in contrast, we have so far only had a couple of experimental arpeggios–but even those have sufficed for their trainer to remove the local trial winner from his path in the GIII Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby on Saturday.
Now there are perfectly coherent grounds within his own game plan for evicting Litigate (Blame) to New Orleans, where he can open the final cycle of higher-graded qualifiers by contesting more starting points, and more money, over more real estate. Litigate having already sampled stakes competition, it's Tapit Trice who would seem more likely to remain in need of experience before the first Saturday in May. (Four of Todd Pletcher's five previous Tampa Bay Derby winners took in either the Wood Memorial or Blue Grass en route to Churchill.)
Even as things stand, however, a lot of people feel that the gray has the potential to wind in the geographical spread that typically makes the Kentucky Derby what it is–a showdown, on neutral ground, between the emerging leaders of their various local packs. While the center of gravity for the hibernating crop has arguably tilted away from Florida in recent times, with Oaklawn and the Fair Grounds offering a strengthening foil to the Californian talent pool, this time the two key protagonists could conceivably be strolling the same shedrow at Palm Meadows.
Listen to this week's edition of This Side Up here.
Tapit Trice has explored different dimensions of his talent despite a brief career to date, having set up his flamboyant allowance display with a gutsy maiden defeat of a colt who underscored his own talent when second in the GIII Gotham S. last week.
In that context, I can't omit to complain that Raise Cain (Violence) surely merits rather more respect than he has been receiving for a visually quite staggering exhibition at Aqueduct. You only have to think back to last year's Derby to see what can sometimes happen when a horse switches from synthetics to dirt, while hindsight discloses in Raise Cain's earlier races a pretty cogent foundation for what he did last Saturday.
Even switching from grass to synthetic prompted a barely less revelatory performance from Congruent (Tapit) in the John Battaglia Memorial S. (Both Raise Cain and Congruent, incidentally, graduate from the mystery tour that gave us Rich Strike (Keen Ice) last year). For now, however, Congruent is primarily a reinforcement for a sire whose admirers are rooting for Tapit Trice largely because it would be a travesty for the Derby to remain the single glaring omission on a glorious resume.
At 22, Tapit is in the evening of his career and his books will increasingly be curated with all the prudence you would expect of the Gainesway team who have managed his career so superbly. (And who also, by the way, bred and co-own Tapit Trice.) As such, his remaining shots at the Derby are clearly finite. It was looking pretty promising two winters ago, when he had Essential Quality playing the Forte hand, with Greatest Honour and Proxy coming through pianissimo. In the event, Essential Quality instead made Tapit the only modern stallion to produce four winners of the GI Belmont S.
To put that record in its epoch-making context, it is shared with a 19th century stallion whose stock was adapting exceptionally well to the novel demands of what–relative to the punishing four-mile heats contested by Lexington himself–was almost a form of sprint racing. (For instance, Lexington also produced nine of the first 15 winners of the Travers, then over 14 furlongs.) The idea of showcasing the speed of younger horses, in a single dash, had gained prestige through the Classics introduced in Britain the previous century. For many of us, however, that arc has since been followed too steeply–to the point that the Belmont is now a unique test of the American sophomore's stamina.
I've often remarked on the dilution of the Kentucky Derby tempo since the willful exclusion of sprint speed by the points system, and conceivably this has also contributed Tapit's wait for the winner he so deserves. Setting aside last year's aberration, the race is no longer making the same demands that formerly identified the kind of speed-carrying genes we should be looking to replicate. Essential Quality, for instance, found himself in a procession of a race, the protagonists maintaining their relative positions virtually throughout.
Unluckily, moreover, the colossus who bestrides even all Tapit's other work was only able to explore a second turn as an older horse. Otherwise, of course, Flightline offers the perfect template for anyone who spends seven figures on a Tapit yearling, such as the one now hot favorite for the Tampa Bay Derby. Whether Flightline should command a higher fee than his sire is another matter: it will be 2026 before he can sire the winner of a maiden claimer, while Tapit has 30 Grade I winners and counting.
Not that we can ever neglect the bottom half of the equation. The Fappiano mare Jeano, for instance, appears not only as third dam of Essential Quality but also as fourth dam of none other than Forte. This branch of the La Troienne dynasty has already produced a Derby winner in Smarty Jones. But while Tapit finished midfield that day, covered in slop, he now stands on the brink of a fresh series of landmarks in his second career.
Tapit Trice is bidding to become Tapit's 99th graded stakes scorer and (through Thursday, at any rate) his 991st individual winner. The earnings of his stock, already unprecedented, have just tipped $195 million. Moreover these tallies have been achieved at an exceptional clip, underpinned by equally outstanding ratios for starters (84 percent of named foals) and winners (63 percent).
And that's what I adore about the legacy he has been putting together: Tapit has not allowed the huge books of the commercial age to distort his efficacy, instead maintaining a dependability poignantly at odds with the extraneous frustrations that hindered his own fulfilment on the racetrack. How apt that Tapit claimed the earnings record from one whose ferrous qualities earned him celebrity as “The Iron Horse”. Of what, then, must he be made? Tungsten? Whatever it may be, he's worth his weight in it–no less than that first Derby, as and when it finally comes, will absolutely feel worth the wait.
As we approach the opening of the 2023 breeding season, the TDN staff is once again sitting down with leading breeders to find out what stallions they have chosen for their mares, and why. Today we caught up with JCB Stables' Ezequiel Cesar Valle, who represents the aforementioned American branch of Haras Firmamento, one of the largest farms in Argentina.
MAID OF HONOR (6, Medaglia d´Oro–Lovely Regina, by Deputy Minister), to be bred to Street Sense
We bought five mares at the last Keeneland November Sale, and she was the most expensive at $260,000 carrying her first foal by Twirling Candy. She was originally a $400,000 yearling.
Maid of Honor is a half-sister to MGSW Thiskyhasnolimit (Sky Mesa) and her second dam, Cara Rafaela, literally fills the page. We are sending her to Street Sense because he is one of the best stallions in America; a top sire and sire of sires who will suite her physically, too.
BELLA AURELIA (6, Medaglia d´Oro–My Miss Aurelia, by Smart Strike) to be bred to Hard Spun
Another purchase from Keeneland November. You do not have to explain too much about her; she is the first registered foal out of champion 2-year-old filly My Miss Aurelia. She has a colt by Munnings and now is in foal to Maclean´s Music.
Hard Spun is the real deal. There are not too many proven stallions like him with 15 career Grade I-winners.
BY THE HOUR (5, Tapit–Miss Super Quick, by Rock Hard Ten) to be bred to Twirling Candy
Another Keeneland November purchase, this one carrying her first foal by American Pharoah. We love her pedigree, she is from the immediate family of GI Kentucky Derby winner Super Saver, and many other Grade I stakes winners.
Twirling Candy, one of the best sons of Candy Ride (Arg) at stud, suites her perfectly. Candy Ride numbers with Tapit mares are incredible and he has already shown a remarkable affinity for the A.P. Indy branch
CLEOPATRA'S CHARM (6, Pioneerof The Nile–Careless Jewel, by Tapit), to be bred to Hard Spun
Our first purchase. We bought her at Keeneland November in 2021 in foal to Omaha Beach and we have a very nice and strong colt. Her first foal is a Bernardini filly that we acquired at the last Keeneland September sale for $155,000. She is currently in foal to Blame and I like Hard Spun for her this year because the Hard Spun/Empire Maker cross is proven (Silver State, for example).
Cleopatra's Charm's dam is a Grade I stakes winner and she is a 3/4-sister to Reframe, a very famous filly in Japan who won a Listed race.
BRASSY (6, Medaglia d´Oro-Cheeky Charm, by A.P. Indy), to be bred to Nyquist
Brassy has a lovely pedigree. Her dam is 3/4-sister to Sky Mesa and Velvety, the dam of Maxfield. Her third dam is the influential mare La Affirmed, ancestress of Bernstein, for example. She was our last purchase at Keeneland November, in foal to Hard Spun.
Brassy is booked to Nyquist, one of the best young sires in America and who also crosses well over mares from the Medaglia d´Oro and A.P. Indy lines.
STREET SLAYER (4, Street Sense–Ghostslayer, by Ghostzapper), to be bred to Twirling Candy
Street Slayer is a half-sister to GSW Biddy Duke (Bayern) and descends from the same family as Forte, Folklore, Contrail, and Essential Quality, among other Grade I-winners.
We bought her as a broodmare prospect at Keeneland November and she is now booked to Twirling Candy, too. Twirling Candy is out of a Mr. Prospector line mare and has found success with mares from that line. And as I mentioned before, there are not too many active, proven stallions in Kentucky as good as him for $60,000.
KNOCKOUT KISSES (4, Into MIschief–Transplendid by Elusive Quality), to be bred to Blame
We acquired Knockout Kisses as a broodmare prospect at the Fasig-Tipton July sale last year. She is a young half-sister to GSW Dennis' Moment (Tiznow). She has a lot of Into Mischief and we chose Blame because it's a great physical match as well. We really like Blame, he is a proven stallion and he offers good value even at the increased fee of $25,000.
Interested in sharing your own mating plans? Email garyking@thetdn.com.
