Legacy pedigrees made their presence felt last week as debuters and Derby contenders alike took to the stage. Here's how things stand now that the dust has cleared.
One last hurrah for Giant's Causeway…
Classic Causeway flies his late sire's flag high as part of a very exclusive club. One of three members of Giant's Causeway's final crop–and all colts, the GII Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby winner is the third son of the 'Iron Horse' to conquer the race behind Carpe Diem and Destin. With two generations of Classic-winning dam sires in his pedigree, the chestnut seeks to fly in further rarified air in May.
An American in the Land of Oz…
LNJ Foxwood's Lighthouse (Mizzen Mast) might have shown a new light on US participation in Australian racing when the mare came home strongest of all to win the G1 Coolmore Classic at Rosehill on Saturday. She's the second US-bred in three years to win the Coolmore, joining Con Te Partiro in 2020. Con Te Partiro was purchased privately from Newgate SF (after RNA-ing at Keeneland November in 2020) by Sheikh Fahad's Qatar Racing for $1.6 million.
A strong Constitution…
We the People declared himself a voice unable to be ignored when the Constitution colt dominated his allowance rivals at Oaklawn Park en route to declaration of rising stardom. The $230,000 FTFMAR snag by Winstar Farm, CMNWLTH, & Siena Farm became his sire's seventh 'TDN Rising Star' in two years. We the People was bred on the same Constitution/Tiznow cross as MGISW Tiz the Law. Picked up by Henley Farms for $40,000 at the 2019 KEEJAN sale with We the People in utero, his dam, Letchworth produced an Always Dreaming colt in 2020 and an Audible colt in 2021. Both are May foals. She was bred back to More Than Ready.
Team Valor sees green with inexpensive filly…
Green Up (Upstart) might be a bit immature with room to grow, according to Barry Irwin, but the filly has already shown the only path for her is up. Coming off a big figure second place effort for prior connections, the globetrotting silks flew home in a 6 3/4 length masterclass in Hallendale with 'TDN Rising Star' honors as icing. A modest $10,000 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic yearling, and a later private acquisition by Irwin's syndicate, Green Up claims the solid runner Just Call Kenny (Jump Start) in her female family. She is her sire's second Rising Star along with Reinvestment Risk last year and Upstart also claims Kentucky Oaks prospect Kathleen O.
The Curlin Factor…
Juddmonte homebred Obligatory began her 2022 campaign the same way she ended 2021: with a graded win. Curlin, who is the sire of this filly and 46 other graded winners, has 86 black-type winners to his name, representing just over 11% of his starters. Incredible numbers especially when considering 16 of those are Grade I winners. Obligatory is a third-generation Juddmonte homebred. Juddmonte bought her unraced third dam, Nijinsky Star, for $700,000 at the 1987 Keeneland November sale.
Where it comes to Kentucky West Racing LLC and Clarke M. Cooper's Classic Causeway (Giant's Causeway), mapping out race strategy is a fairly straight-forward undertaking. For the second time in as many starts as a sophomore, the handsome chestnut found the front after breaking like a shot and widened his advantage late to take the GII Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby and secure a berth in the starting gate in the GI Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in eight weeks' time.
“That early speed is a great asset to have because you're going to stay out of trouble when you can break fast and clear,” winning trainer Brian Lynch commented. “When you have a horse that can run them off their feet early, get a chance to take a breather and relax and still be able to finish, that is a great asset in a horse.”
Same as he did when wiring the field in the GIII Sam F. Davis S. Feb. 5, Classic Causeway hit the ground running beneath Irad Ortiz, Jr. and galloped them along in the two and three path.
Grantham (Declaration of War), fourth in what is becoming a productive renewal of the GIII Withers S. the same afternoon, was given a more positive ride this time from gate one and argued from the rail, while Giant Game (Giant's Causeway) and Trademark (Upstart) were also part of the early mix. Davis runner-up Shipsational (Midshipman) settled in about midfield while trapped out very wide from a high draw.
The first quarter was timed in a very manageable :23.67 and the half was up in :48.17 as Classic Causeway continued to show the way, content to chart a course at least three paths off the inside over a track that took plenty of rain earlier in the day and was rated 'good' for the Derby. Shipsational was the first to try to make a race of it as he loomed up four wide under a Manny Franco drive at the five-sixteenths, but Ortiz, Jr. was saving Classic Causeway for a bit of a finish and spurted clear again, despite drifting out a touch in upper stretch. Firmly in front as they hit the final furlong, the odds-on pop held sway and was actually going away at the wire, with a final sixteenth of a mile in a modest :6.50. Grantham plugged on gamely for second on what may not have been best part of the track, just holding off a game Shipsational for third. Golden Glider (Ghostzapper) showed some late interest to be a further neck back in fourth.
“He gave me the same performance again [as in the Davis],” Ortiz, Jr. reported. “He broke good. He gave me good position and I just went from there. He was traveling perfect all the way to the 3/8-mile pole. When I asked him, he was there. Getting close to the wire, he was looking around a little bit, but I felt I had a lot more horse. He's acting like he can carry his speed more. These last couple of races he's been acting after the wire like he still has more left. I don't want to jinx it, but I think there is something more there.”
One of the more impressive juvenile winners at Saratoga last summer, Classic Causeway had to be used from the 13 hole in the GI Claiborne Breeders' Futurity and set a sharp pace before understandably retreating late to finish an excusable third. Beaten on the square by 'TDN Rising Star' Smile Happy (Runhappy) in the GII Kentucky Jockey Club S. at Churchill in late November, he set a more pressured pace in the David, but had plenty left late and went on to best Shipsational by 3 3/4 lengths.
Pedigree Notes:
As has been widely reported, Classic Causeway is one of three members from the final crop of his sire–all colts. Giant Game finished eighth in Saturday's race, while the final member of the crop, Shadwell's Monaadah, was an impressive debut winner in a 1400-meter turf allowance when making his career debut at Meydan Mar. 3.
Classic Causeway is the third Tampa Bay Derby winner for the 'Iron Horse', joining Carpe Diem and Destin, the latter of whom was the last to complete the Davis/Derby double.
Classic Causeway has plenty of Classic influence close up in his pedigree. Dam sire Thunder Gulch caused a 24-1 upset in the Run for the Roses in 1995, while Temperence Hill, sire of the colt's third dam, won the 1980 Belmont S. for Loblolly Stable at a robust 53-1.
One of five winners from eight to race out of the multiple stakes-winning Private World, Classic Causeway has a 2-year-old half-sister by Lookin At Lucky and a yearling half-brother by Justify. Private World is due to the Triple Crown winner for 2022.
Saturday, Tampa Bay Downs LAMBHOLM SOUTH TAMPA BAY DERBY-GII, $350,000, Tampa Bay Downs, 3-12, 3yo, 1 1/16m, 1:44.90, gd.
1–CLASSIC CAUSEWAY, 118, c, 3, by Giant's Causeway 1st Dam: Private World (MSW, $166,058), by Thunder Gulch 2nd Dam: Rita Rucker, by Dmitri 3rd Dam: Darlease, by Temperence Hill
O/B-Kentucky West Racing LLC & Clarke M Cooper; T-Brian
A Lynch; J-Irad Ortiz Jr. $210,000. Lifetime Record: GISP,
5-3-1-1, $511,100. Werk Nick Rating: A. Click for the eNicks report & 5-cross pedigree.
2–Grantham, 118, c, 3, Declaration of War–Darby Blush, by
Arch. 1ST BLACK TYPE, 1ST GRADED BLACK TYPE. ($100,000
Ylg '20 FTKOCT; $280,000 2yo '21 OBSAPR). O-Three Diamonds
Farm; B-Winter Creek Farm (KY); T-Michael J Maker. $70,000.
3–Shipsational, 118, c, 3, Midshipman–Regal Approach, by
Thunder Gulch. ($27,000 Wlg '19 KEENOV; $210,000 2yo '21
OBSMAR). O-Iris Smith Stable LLC; B-Bertram R Firestone
(NY); T-Edward R Barker. $35,000.
Margins: 2HF, NK, NK. Odds: 0.80, 37.90, 4.60.
Also Ran: Golden Glider, Trademark, Spin Wheel, Belgrade, Giant Game, Happy Boy Rocket, Major General. Scratched: Money Supply, Strike Hard. Click for the Equibase.com chart, the TJCIS.com PPs or the free Equineline.com catalogue-style pedigree. VIDEO, sponsored by TVG.
WITH BELLS ON (American Pharoah) starts her career for owners Bass Stables LLC and Cheyenne Stables after realizing $300,000 at the 2020 Keeneland September Yearling Sale. The dam, a juvenile stakes winner on the turf by Giant's Causeway, has already produced two winners on the dirt including Princess Mo (Uncle Mo). Second dam Marylebone (Unbridled's Song) was also a stakes winning juvenile, taking the GI Matron S. Trainer Todd Pletcher is 11-36 over the last five years with 3-year-old first-time starters on the dirt at Aqueduct and looks to add to that tally here. TJCIS PPs
MILLION-DOLLAR YEARLING FILLY DEBUTS AT TAMPA
6th-TAM, $40K, Msw, 3yo, f, 6f, 2:44 p.m.
When the hammer finally dropped at the 2020 Keeneland September Yearling Sale, GINA ROMANTICA (Into Mischief) left the ring for a final bid of $1,025,000, another million-dollar feather in her sire's cap. The filly makes her career debut here for owner Peter Brant and trainer Chad Brown after several quick works at Payson Park, including her most recent Mar. 6 where she went four furlongs in :49 4/5 to be the third-fastest of 33 at the distance. Gina Romantica is out of the prolific broodmare Special Me (Unbridled's Song) who, though not a winner herself, has produced the likes of MGSW Stonetastic (Mizzen Mast), MGSW Special Forces (Candy Ride) and MGSW and Lane's End stallion Gift Box (Twirling Candy). She picks up Irad Ortiz for the ride. TJCIS PPs
INTO MISCHIEF COLT TAKES ON THE TURF
6th-GP, $60K, Msw, 3yo, 7 1/2fT, 3:01 p.m.
Bred by Hare Forest Farm, WATASHA (Into Mischief) tries the turf for the first time for trainer Chad Brown. The bay colt realized a final bid of $450,000 at the 2020 Keeneland September Yearling Sale and returns off an eight-month layoff since making his only start as a juvenile, a distant fifth-place effort on the dirt July 24 at Saratoga. Watasha will seek to be the seventh winner out of the Elusive Quality mare Alwaan. He adds Lasix for the first time here, stretches out the extra furlong and a half, and gets Tyler Gaffalione aboard. TJCIS PPs
SPEEDY LORD NELSON COLT REACHES DEBUT
9th-GP, $60K, Msw, 3yo, 6f, 4:38 p.m.
From the first crop of recently deceased stallion Lord Nelson, CAPE TRAFALGAR (Lord Nelson) makes his first start at Gulfstream Park for owner Peachtree Stable. Bred by Spendthrift Farm LLC, the colt brought $325,000 at the 2020 Fasig-Tipton Selected Yearlings Sale, the second highest price paid for a Lord Nelson yearling that year. Cape Trafalgar is out of Goldrush Girl (Political Force), who placed second in the GII Golden Rod S. Trained by Saffie Joseph Jr., he comes into this race off a bullet drill Mar. 5 where he worked five furlongs in :59 to be the best of 31 at the distance. TJCIS PPs
There is always something especially shocking about the death of a stallion in his prime. Nature contains no more vivid an incarnation of vitality than this most literal of life forces, daily renewing the gift of existence. For a candle as bright as Get Stormy to be extinguished so abruptly, then, will leave a grievous void at Crestwood Farm.
Having spent five years in training, even at 16, Get Stormy's second career was only just entering its key phase. For not until the next year or two will his best stock start reaching the track, his books having soared in both quality and quantity after an early stakes barrage led, from his second crop, by triple Grade I winner Got Stormy. No less than her name implies, she was inlaid with the watertight genetic teak of her sire, matching his own record of graded stakes success through four consecutive campaigns.
It's all there in the McLean family slogan, “We raise runners.” In a business where so many horses are raised to do no more than stand and stroll, with breeders heading for the hills the moment the gavel comes down, that fairly rudimentary aspiration has an almost quixotic quality. But a trademark combination of blood and guts governs nearly the whole Crestwood roster: Jack Milton (War Front), for instance, won a Grade I at five and, much like Get Stormy himself with Moccasin (Nantallah), brings into play a Claiborne matriarch in Bourtai (Stimulus); while Heart To Heart (English Channel) won graded stakes annually from three to seven.
Get Stormy's nickname on the farm was Clyde, because he had so much brawn and timber that he evoked a Clydesdale. I've always had a mad theory (actually supported by the stats) that his reputation as a turf sire is self-fulfilling, and that his physical stamp, toughness, and speed-carrying style were ideally tailored for dirt. Be that as it may, despite nudging an initial fee of $5,000 no farther than $7,500, Get Stormy already leaves us half a dozen graded stakes winners. (That's as many as Maclean's Music, for instance, from the same intake.) And his two millionaires to date were respectively out of a $4,500 Malabar Gold mare, and a daughter of Brahms unsold at $18,000 on her only visit to the ring.
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Two days after Get Stormy's loss, on just the other side of Georgetown Road, the venerable heart of Go For Gin also gave out at the Kentucky Horse Park, his home since retiring from stud in 2011. At 31, he had been the oldest surviving Derby winner—and long enjoyed precisely the kind of dignified, pampered retirement everyone was someday anticipating, a few years down the line, for Get Stormy.
But while life's disasters seldom arrive with any rhyme or reason, perhaps we can glimpse some timely succor for Crestwood. Because any clients with mares booked to Get Stormy should certainly consider another stallion on the roster, also from the Storm Cat line, who only last weekend reiterated the striking promise he has shown from minimal opportunity to date.
Firing Line has mustered no more than 39 starters from his first couple of crops but 24 of them have already won and, having burdened him this winter with a place on a TDN “Value Podium”, I was delighted to see Venti Valentine confirm her candidature for the GI Kentucky Oaks with a seven-length romp in the Busher S. last Saturday. Other credits to Firing Line include Nakatomi's success in the Bowman's Mill S. at Keeneland last fall, after placing in the GII Saratoga Special S.; plus the recent Fair Grounds romp of his $210,000 2-year-old Oscarette.
Besides beating all bar a Triple Crown winner in the Derby, don't forget that Firing Line was only denied a juvenile Grade I by a head and broke the track record in winning the GIII Sunland Park Derby by 14 lengths. True to Crestwood principles, moreover, his talent was rooted in a mile-deep pedigree: his dam is a Grade I-placed sibling to the mothers of two Grade I-winning milers, their line extending to matriarchs Kamar (Key to the Mint) and Square Angel (Quadrangle).
Whether or not Firing Line can fill the breach, Get Stormy will undoubtedly be making posthumous additions to his legacy. After all, Giant's Causeway himself—perhaps the greatest conduit of all, for this sire-line—is not quite done yet, even though he bequeathed just three foals from a handful of final coverings before his death in the spring of 2018. Incredibly, two of them now line up together for the GII Langholm South Tampa Bay Derby with a total of 85 gate points on the line for the first Saturday in May.
Curiously, both were born on 22 February 2019. Classic Causeway is being brought along beautifully at Palm Meadows by Brian Lynch, with a foundation of longer breezes for his comeback before dialing up the speed since; while Giant Game has himself been working the house down after some running repairs on a displaced palate.
Still more remarkably, it was only last week that the final Giant's Causeway of all—born eight days after the other pair—made a winning debut for Shadwell in Dubai, charging clear by four and a half lengths. So the hope that the Iron Horse might “rust in peace”, which may sound irreverent but intends a wholly affectionate tribute to his ferrous qualities, is proving happily misplaced. This is not the dull shimmer of iron, but a last glint of genetic gold.
Perhaps Giant's Causeway is looking down in vexation after his son Protonico just had a Derby winner effaced from the record. Depending how things go at Tampa Bay, however, maybe this time he won't have merely a vicarious presence at Churchill, admirably though he is being represented by Not This Time.
Mind you, even giant steps must always be made one at a time. The card also features the resumption, at long last, of the colt who looked like the pick of his crop this time last year. Let's hope the patience of everyone involved with Greatest Honour (Tapit) finds due reward in his maturity.
Ironically, his own sire's frustrating sophomore career gave a quite misleading impression about the toughness he has tended to impart to his stock; and someday, no doubt, Greatest Honour will validly recycle one of the best pedigrees you will ever see.
Certainly he won't be one of those stallions, so corrosive to the breed, that teeter to market on a wafer-thin page and a whizzbang speedfigure or two. The Thoroughbred's vocation is not for the flimsy of limb, nor the faint of heart. So while Crestwood may have lost their flagship, they have not lost their bearings. They are navigating by the stars, by the fixed points of soundness and pedigree, and we would all do well to follow in their wake.
