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Keeneland’s Cormac Breathnach Joins TDN Writers’ Room Podcast

It's a busy time at Keeneland. The September sale has just ended, the fall race meet is upon us and the November sale is right around the corner. With that in mind, the TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland called upon Keeneland Director of Sales Operations Cormac Breathnach to fill us in on the latest from one of America's favorite racetracks. Breathnach was this week's Green Group Guest of the Week.

The foal crop keeps dropping every year, but that doesn't seem to affect the September sale. There were 4,215 horses entered in the sale this year, the second straight year that number had increased. Breathnach was asked how Keeneland has avoided a downturn in the number of horses entered in the sale.

“It's a great question, and I'm not sure there's an easy answer, but there's a lot of things that we look at in there,” Breathnach said. “We're very grateful for the support that we get. Twenty-four percent of the entire North American foal crop goes through the Keeneland September sale, which is staggering. It's a tribute to the people who came long before Tony (Lacy) and I, people like Rogers Beasley and Geoffrey Russell and everybody else that made this sale what it is today. We're just trying to be stewards to advance that as far as we can. There are a lot of very clever, very experienced, very dedicated commercial breeders. And thankfully for us, they're looking to our September sale as a large outlet for their for their stock every year. That's a privilege for us, but also a huge responsibility that we do the best we can with what they're bringing us.”

The November sale will feature stars like GI Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint winner Caravel (Mizzen Mast), Grade I winner Dalika (GER) (Pastorious {GER}) and Puca (Big Brown). Puca is the dam of GI Kentucky Derby winner Mage (Good Magic) and will also be carrying a foal who is a full sibling to Mage. The sale will also give buyers their first chance to buy mares who are in foal to 2022 Horse of the Year Flightline (Tapit).

“We've had a lot of calls about Flightline already from all over the world about what mares are going to be in the catalog that he was bred to and how many and so on,” Breathnach said. “I think he's going to create the splash that everybody expects. People still remember that last year we sold a 2 1/2 percent share in him that went for $4.6 million. We're excited to continue that story.”

Keeneland opened Oct. 6 with its Fall Stars Weekend. Like everyone else, Breathnach is looking forward to what should be a great weekend of racing.

“It's going to be fantastic,” he said. “We have 11 stakes this weekend. Eight of them are Breeders' Cup 'Win and You're In' races. It's three unparalleled days of action here. One race that I think really jumps out to me is the Darley Alcibiades. I think that race is loaded. Look at the morning line, you've got fillies like Alys Beach at 20-1. It could be one of the best races of the year. The whole weekend, it's going to be action packed, turf and dirt sprints, races going long on the turf and dirt. I can't wait for it.”

Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by the Retired Racehorse Project, the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association, Kentucky Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders, West Point Thoroughbreds, WinStar Farm, XBTV.com and 1/ST Racing, Lane's End, the team of Zoe Cadman, Bill Finley and Randy Moss discussed a story in the TDN in which John Sikura called for a massive purse increase for the GI Kentucky Derby and the GI Kentucky Oaks. While agreeing with Sikura, Finley pointed out that Churchill Downs has very little incentive to increase the pot. The team reviewed last weekend's big slate of races, which included a win by Cody's Wish (Curlin) in the GII Vosburgh S. Looking ahead, the trio agreed that the GI Coolmore Turf Mile at Keeneland could be the highlight of the weekend as it could be a showdown of the best turf horse in the U.S. in Up to the Mark (Not This Time) and the Charlie Appleby trained star Master of the Seas (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}).

To watch the Writers' Room, click here. To view the show as a podcast, click here.

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Ramiro Restrepo Joins The TDN Writers’ Room

Ramiro Restrepo has done a little bit of everything in the racing industry and now he has something else to add to his resume, GI Kentucky Derby winning owner. Restrepo is one of the owners of Mage (Good Magic), the winner of the 149^th Derby. To share his thoughts on the race and what it meant to him, Restrepo joined this week's TDN Writers' Room podcast, presented by Keeneland. He was this week's Green Group Guest of the Week.

“I still can't sleep,” said an emotional Restrepo. “I keep watching the race. I can't believe that we won. We won it. It's incredible. The emotion is totally raw. I haven't really been able to put it behind me. I'm still just soaking it up.”

Restrepo has been there from the start. Along with Gustavo Delgado, Jr, the assistant to his father, Gustavo Delgado, Sr., he picked Mage out at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale 2022, where he was purchased for $290,000. (He sold the prior year as a yearling at Keeneland September for $235,000). From there he was sent to the Delgado barn and made the quick transition from being a first-time-starter on Jan. 28 at Gulfstream to the Kentucky Derby winner.

“We knew we had a talented colt,” Restrepo said. “He had shown flashes of being really fast. But I didn't know anything back in January. And anyone who ever says I knew I was buying a Derby winner when it happened is just doing it for pomp and circumstance. In reality, you always try to buy just a nice horse, whether that means a champion sprinter or a monster turf horse or whatever. You're over the moon with that. But what happened with this horse, it is just like a Hollywood ending.”

The GI Preakness will be next and for Mage, it may only be a matter of holding his form from the Derby. But for a horse who is coming back in two weeks and had only three races to prepare him for the Derby, will that happen?

“That's what makes this such a hard series to compete in,” he said. “And that's what adds to the special mystical flair of the two-week turnaround and of the Triple Crown. You have to deal with the cards that are in front of you. The horse was never really pushed to get ready for his maiden. So it's not like he ran 20 races in the morning. The races are making him, and he is evolving physically and mentally. We keep waiting, much like everybody else, for signs that the races have gotten to him physically or mentally. He's flesh and blood and at some point it's just the natural way of the animal, those things catch up to them. No one can answer that question, but the horse at the moment came out of the race as good as one could ever ask for. What you have to do is ride the wave and see how long you can ride it.” .

Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by Coolmore,https://lanesend.com/ the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association, Kentucky Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders, 1/st Racing, WinStar Farm, XBTV, Lane's End and https://www.threechimneys.com/ West Point Thoroughbreds, podcast regulars Zoe Cadman, Randy Moss and Bill Finley dealt with the unpleasant aspects of this year's Derby. Seven horses died in the lead up to the race, including two on Derby day. There was an agreement that it was a very difficult couple of days for the sport and that the message sent out by the mainstream press shed racing in a very bad light. Did we have all the answers? Not really. It doesn't seem that anyone does.

Click for the video of the latest podcast or the audio-only version.

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HISA’s Lisa Lazarus Joins TDN Writers’ Room Podcast

On Monday, there will be a seismic shift in horse racing. That's when the Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Authority will launch its Anti-Doping and Medication Control program and, in most states, will take over the responsibilities of drug testing and drug adjudications. With that date right around the corner, the TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland brought in HISA's CEO Lisa Lazarus to give an update on what to expect once HISA takes over. Lazarus was this week's Green Group Guest of the Week.

Lazarus made it clear that one of HISA's major goals is to do everything in its power to stop anyone who tries to use performance-enhancing drugs to get an edge. To do so, they will go beyond drug testing and will rely on investigations and intelligence.

“Our test distribution plan is going to be investigations and intelligence led,” she said. “We are not going to be relying primarily on post-race testing in order to discern who actually is breaking the rules. We've got a very robust investigative team headed by Shaun Richards, who is a former FBI agent. He is actually the one who worked up all the evidence in the prosecutions in the Southern District involving Navarro and Servis, et cetera. We really are focusing on the intelligence.”

Lazarus said she knows there are still those in the industry who are anti-HISA and have a lot of trepidation about it taking over when it comes to drug testing. She said one of her main goals for HISA is to change that narrative.

“I would like to have gained the trust of the majority of horsemen and players in the industry,” she said when asked about her goals for the coming year. “You may agree or disagree about a rule here or there, and that's all good. That's all part of the dialogue. But I really hope that and believe that we'll have the majority saying that this is actually needed. That we needed a uniform system. We needed uniform rules. This is good. And this is this actually professionalizes our sport to a different level. I hope that horsemen will feel like there is a level playing field. I hope the public sees racing horse racing in a different way, that it is safer and with more integrity.”

Another change that HISA will usher in is that it will differentiate between drugs that are true performance-enhancers and therapeutic medications that were still in a horse's system when they were tested. They will also have a separate category for positives that appear to be the result of environmental contamination.

“We completely separated the rule book into two categories, the banned substances, which are the doping substances; versus the controlled medications, which are the therapeutics,” she said. “And we take a very different philosophical approach to those two categories. If you have a banned substance in a horse, which is a performance enhancement that should never be in a horse, the penalties are severe. They're severe, they're swift, and they will be game-changing. If you make a mistake or if you have a therapeutic overage, there will be consequences, but they'll be proportionate to the to the violation. We also have a policy called the Atypical Findings Policy, which basically has 27 different substances that, if detected in a horse's system, we know it's almost certain to be result of contamination. Those will go through a different process. If we are satisfied after looking at those a little bit more deeply that it really is contamination, there's no loss of purse, there's no sanction. It's like it never happened.”

Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by Coolmore, the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association, Woodford Thoroughbreds, The Kentucky Thoroughbred Association, XBTV, 1/st Racing, WinStar Farm and West Point Thoroughbreds, Randy Moss and Bill Finley took a look at the remarkable year 87-year-old trainer Wayne Lukas is having. Lukas won last weekend's biggest race, the GIII Essex H. at Oaklawn Park with Last Samurai (Malibu Moon). There was also a discussion of the promising numbers that came out of the Equine Injury Database for 2022. The 2022 figure of 1.25 fatalities per 1,000 starters was the lowest since The Jockey Club began compiling fatality numbers in 2009. Looking ahead to this weekend's racing, the team gave their thoughts on the major races at the Fair Grounds and Turfway Park, which include key GI Kentucky Derby preps in the GII Louisiana Derby and the GIII Jeff Ruby Steaks S.

Click for the Writers' Room Podcast's Audio or Video.

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Derby Diary: A Lifetime of a Chance

Being a Certified Financial Advisor, and the son of a CPA, I follow trends and calculate odds constantly. You can say it is in my blood to rationally analyze a set of variables and predict a logical outcome.

When the Kentucky Derby entries were announced, it was no surprise mathematically that those horses represented such a small amount of the overall foal crop. The 20 horses who line up in this Saturday's starting gate represent approximately 1/10 1% of the registered foals born in 2018 (20 of 19,925).

Basically, the odds of winning the Kentucky Derby is equivalent to:

– Finding a four-leaf clover on a hike – 1 in 10,000

– Being struck by lightning – 1 in 11,000

– Dating a Celebrity – 1 in 11,000

– Dying in a canoeing accident – 1 in 12,000

– Having a household income of less than $200,000, and subsequently being audited by the IRS – 1 in 18,000. (As the son of an accountant, I had to include this statistic)!

Knowing the odds are EXTREMELY stacked against us to even have a Derby starter, why do I feel so emotional heading into this weekend's race? Part of the reason for the uneasy feelings are the odds themselves–the sheer unlikeness of having an undefeated starter in the Kentucky Derby is overwhelming. Add into the equation the fact that my family has been in the business for about 40 years, started in over 14,000 races, won roughly 2,300 times, and competed at about 25 different racetracks nationwide makes this pending opportunity a long time coming.

We have raced horses in various weather conditions such as snowstorms, cloud bursts, fog, wind sheers, headwinds, tail winds, heat, humidity and occasionally hail.

We have lost races because the jockey went too fast or too slow, didn't listen to the pre-race instructions, should have ignored those instructions because the race fell apart, got boxed in or “just wasn't feeling it.” Our horses have not liked the surface or the distance, engaged in a speed duel, broke through the gate, got left at the gate, washed out in the paddock, lost a shoe, didn't like dirt in its face, didn't like being pinned to the rail, went too wide, got bothered or intimidated by another horse, needed to be gelded, was “horsing,” was in too tough, didn't ship well, needed blinkers, needed to have the blinkers cut back or removed, needed the race, speed wasn't holding (if you had a front runner), couldn't run down the speed (if you had a closer), didn't see the winner passing him until it was too late, got to the front and stopped, bled, had a temperature, was popping an abscess, didn't like running at night, and my favorite-bolted away from its own shadow. I am confident that I am forgetting some excuses, but you get my point.

The good news is that all of the above horses galloped out well after the wire.

So, when you have a horse who has overcome all of those possible conditions, and still remains undefeated, you get a little excited. Because despite the odds (and racing gods) being against you, here we stand a few days away from fulfilling a dream that has been 40 years in the making.

I look forward to chronicling the events of this week with you and appreciate your support for our horse Helium (Ironicus).

Jon Green is the General Manager of DJ Stables and a co-host of the TDN Writers' Room podcast. He is writing a daily diary about his first Kentucky Derby experience as an owner.

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