Sophomore filly sprinters get their time to shine on the final Friday of the Saratoga meet in the GII Prioress S. Hot Peppers (Khozan) seeks redemption after being run down late and forced to settle for second last out in the Aug. 6 GI Test S. at this venue. She captured her first two starts for the Rudy Rodriguez barn in the June 12 Jersey Girl S. and July 9 GIII Victory Ride S.
“She's doing everything we ask her. We're just lucky they picked us and give us the opportunity,” said Rodriguez. “We just have to keep her happy and she's a runner. I think the trainer before [Ronald Spatz] did a very good job.”
Wicked Halo (Gun Runner) looks to add yet another accomplishment to her sensational sire's constantly improving resume. Winner of the GII Adirondack S. at this venue last year, the gray enters off back-to-back stakes triumphs at Churchill Downs.
A pair of native New Yorkers are also worth a look here in Test fourth-place finisher and Bouwerie S. winner Sterling Silver (Cupid) and track-and-trip, NY-bred union Avenue H. winner Bank On Anna (Central Banker). Also worth a look is Smash Ticket (Midnight Lute), who wired an optional claimer going six panels at the Spa July 20, good for an 89 Beyer Speedy Figure, and ran a field best Beyer of 92 in her previous start at Lone Star.
2nd-Saratoga, $101,850, Msw, 8-27, 2yo, 1m (off turf), 1:38.44, ft, 6 1/2 lengths. FUNTASTIC AGAIN (c, 2, Funtastic–Repeta, by Broken Vow), seventh on debut after chasing the pace and fading late over Belmont's turf course July 1, drew in as a main track only entry Saturday and got the 9-5 nod for his second career start. Despite being difficult through the loading process and breaking last of the field, Funtastic Again, wearing blinkers for the first time, rushed up in a three-wide move to assume command seven furlongs from home. Showing the way from just off the rail down the backstretch, he stayed relaxed even as Triple Start (American Pharoah) came through on the inside to challenge. Given his cue into the far turn, Funtastic Again shook off that rival for good past the quarter pole and drew off, cruising home to win geared down by 6 1/2 lengths. The first winner for his freshman sire (by the late More Than Ready), Funtastic Again is already a half-brother to a pair of stakes horses in Lady Glamour (Discreet Cat), GSP, $126,170 and Mucho Del Oro (Mucho Macho Man), SW, $245,000. His only younger sibling is a weanling half-sister by Volatile, while his dam was bred back to Not This Time for 2023. Funtastic, a half-brother to both the dam of Gun Runner (Candy Ride {Arg}) and horse of the year Saint Liam (Saint Ballado), currently stands at Three Chimneys Farm for a fee of $5,000. Sales History: $60,000 Wlg '20 KEENOV. Lifetime Record: 2-1-0-0, $58,290. Click for the Equibase.com chart or VIDEO, sponsored by TVG.
O-Three Chimneys Farm, LLC (Goncalo B. Torrealba); B-BHMFR, LLC (KY); T-Wesley A. Ward.
Peter Blum's Society (Gun Runner) avenged her lone career defeat to date last time in the GI CCA Oaks with a thoroughly dominating performance in Friday's GIII Charles Town Oaks.
Favored on the precipitous drop in class, the beautifully bred chestnut was hustled straight into the lead by Tyler Gaffalione and the duo was pressed along early by 21-1 outsider Chardonnay (Candy Ride {Arg}), with the well-backed Louisiana raider Free Like a Girl (El Deal) not far away in third. Going along easily after four furlongs in a very manageable :46.54, Society faced a mild challenge from Free Like a Girl rounding the turn, but spurted away passing the quarter pole and was punched out for a convincing victory.
Society debuted for trainer Wayne Mackey at Keeneland last October and pulled clear late to graduate by a length at nearly 28-1, keying a $533 exacta and a triple that paid better than $9,700 for a buck. Transferred to the Asmussen barn this year, the chestnut was the 1 3/4-length winner of a sloppy allowance about 50 minutes after Secret Oath (Arrogate) won the GI Longines Kentucky Oaks May 6 and added a front-running victory in the June 18 Monomoy Girl S., but stumbled at the start of the CCA Oaks and beat just one home in fourth.
Pedigree Notes:
With the victory, Society becomes the eighth graded winner for the outstanding Gun Runner and is his second graded scorer out of a mare by Tapit, joining GII Adirondack S. victress Wicked Halo. Also bred on the Gun Runner/Tapit cross is Echo Again, who achieved 'TDN Rising Star' status for a maiden romp at Saratoga Aug. 20.
Produced by a half-sister to GSW Pleasant Prince (Indy King) and hailing from the extended female family of Sovereign Award and Queen's Plate winner Holy Helena (Ghostzapper) and Midlantic-based sire Holy Boss (Street Boss), Society has a 2-year-old half-brother named Punctuality in training at Churchill Downs, a yearling half-sister Finesse (Street Sense) that is cataloged as hip 237 to the upcoming Keeneland September sale and a foal half-brother named Valor (Omaha Beach). Etiquette was put back in foal to Gun Runner this past breeding season.
Friday, Charles Town CHARLES TOWN OAKS-GIII, $500,440, Charles Town, 8-26, 3yo, f, 7f, 1:23.42, ft.
1–SOCIETY, 120, f, 3, by Gun Runner 1st Dam: Etiquette, by Tapit 2nd Dam: Archduchess, by Pleasant Tap 3rd Dam: My Marchesa, by Stately Don 1ST GRADED STAKES WIN. O/B-Peter E Blum Thoroughbreds
LLC (KY); T-Steven M Asmussen; J-Tyler Gaffalione. $294,055.
Lifetime Record: 5-4-0-0, $545,775. Click for the free Equineline.com catalogue-style pedigree.Click for the eNicks report & 5-cross pedigree. Werk Nick Rating: A+++ *Triple Plus*.
2–Free Like a Girl, 120, f, 3, El Deal–Flashy Prize, by Flashy Bull.
($5,500 Ylg '20 ESLYRL). O-Gerald Bruno Jr, Carl J Deville,
Chasey Deville Pomier & Jerry Caroom; B-Kim Renee Stover &
Lisa Osborne (LA); T-Chasey Deville Pomier. $98,055.
3–Midnight Stroll, 123, f, 3, Not This Time–Midnight Magic, by Midnight Lute. ($14,000 RNA Ylg '20 OBSWIN; $225,000 Ylg '20
OBSOCT). O-Gatsas Stables; B-Carolin Von Rosenberg (FL);
T-John P Terranova II. $49,055.
Margins: 6 3/4, 1 1/4, 4HF. Odds: 1.40, 3.80, 3.70.
Also Ran: Divine Huntress, Chardonnay, Peachy Weachy, Stellar Ride, She's Pure Silver. Scratched: Lady Scarlet. Click for the Equibase.com chart, the TJCIS.com PPs or the VIDEO, sponsored by TVG.
Our sport thrives on anticipation; our business, on outcomes. But actually it can take a while to unpick one from the other–especially when even a race as storied as the GI Runhappy Travers S. is not just an end in itself, but also a potential means to viability for the whole program of whoever is lucky enough to own the winner.
In principle, the bare couple of minutes dividing anticipation from outcome at Saratoga on Saturday will be history tangibly in the making. From the flux of hopes and interests vested in the maturing Thoroughbreds that enter the gate, a single name will suddenly be petrified into the pantheon.
In reality, however, it's very seldom that we can know quite what it is we might be looking at. In terms of volunteering a stallion of due stature, for instance, it has to be acknowledged that the Travers overall shares a rather patchy profile with the GI Kentucky Derby either side of the last horse to win both, Street Sense in 2007. Take out Bernardini, who won the Travers the year before, and it's only recently that a couple of young stallions have begun to shore things up again for either race.
Poignantly, it does appear as though the spectacular flowering of Arrogate in 2016 was a legitimate signpost–only for the road to plunge clean off a cliff. Those bidding for his final crop of yearlings at Keeneland in a few days' time will be contesting a legacy that has very quickly evolved, from an unsurprisingly slow start, via the charismatic endeavors of Secret Oath and now Artorius.
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For the time being, at any rate, Artorius does feel like quite a good example of the way we tend to look into the future through the prism of the past. He brings a fairly irresistible narrative into the Travers, being even more lightly raced than was his sire when picking up the pieces against exhausted Triple Crown protagonists. And, being out of an elite Ghostzapper racemare, he does look tantalizingly eligible to salvage Arrogate's legacy, if only he can cope with this steep elevation in grade. Yet it's almost as though those high emotional stakes have somehow been loaded into odds that imply some ordained destiny.
Yet who would presume to predict the future, when even the past can take so long to separate itself into coherence? Nobody, of course, could have foreseen the tragic denouement of Arrogate's tale. But most of us were pretty sure of where we stood with Gun Runner, when he staggered into third in the Travers, fully 15 lengths behind Arrogate: a horse that had shown his hand, precocious enough to run third in the Derby but apparently tapering off by this point. Gun Runner persevered, however, and after observing Arrogate reach the bottom of the barrel–presumably an oil barrel–in Dubai, he ran up to that sequence of five Grade Is by an aggregate 27 1/2 lengths.
And now here he is, poised to seal one of the most remarkable stud debuts of recent times with two runners–and don't forget that he would have a third, but for the local prohibition of Taiba's trainer–in a race that offers a pretty instructive snapshot of the shifting landscape among Kentucky stallions. Another young gun, Upstart, fields a son who has had this race in mind ever since that fleeting flirtation with an uncontested coronation on the home turn in the Derby; while Not This Time, consolidating his own outstanding start, matches Gun Runner with two: Epicenter, whose candidature for divisional honors makes a Grade I feel pretty imperative, and Ain't Life Grand.
Of the established elite, indeed, only Medaglia d'Oro can muster a candidate to emulate his 2002 success in outsider Gilded Age. To be fair, he also has a stake in proceedings through the dam of Ain't Life Grand, Cat Moves. This is the only mare owned by Peggy and Ray Shattuck, whose homebred GII Iowa Derby winner would hardly be as stupefying a result here as Rich Strike, himself of course by a Travers winner in Keen Ice, back at Churchill in May. While expectations for Rich Strike seem pretty much back to what they were on Derby day, Ain't Life Grand announced himself at Saratoga with a molten 45.88 workout last week, fastest of 79 clocked that morning.
Ain't Life Grand with Tammy Fox aboard | Sarah Andrew
Certainly the game could do with another fairytale. There's no need to dwell on the potential for awkwardness, in showcasing our best to the outside world, when three of eight runners are saddled by a trainer currently subject to such uncomfortable attention. Having been raised locally, this race is one he would prize perhaps beyond any other. But there you go: all of us have to accept that human capacity for anticipation is distinctly finite; and that fulfilment belongs to the complex, unpredictable realm of outcomes.
Setting all that aside, my own anticipations remain stubborn as ever. As Chad Brown would agree, he is only one of many whose dreams are centered on these three horses. And our community could seek no more flattering representation, to those beyond, than Brereton C. Jones and his family at Airdrie Stud, breeders of Zandon. And if this colt can mark the 50th anniversary of the farm's foundation by finally getting it all together here, even greater laurels would be on the line just down the road at Keeneland in the fall.
Yes, I know: all I'm doing is choosing a different script from the one that appears to favor Artorius so inexorably. I'm shoehorning Zandon's ostensible need for a particular tactical scenario, and a different kind of race from the cat-and-mouse of his latest start, into a storyline of far greater neatness and symmetry than tends to be indulged by this unsentimental, unpredictable world. But we're all sports fans first. We all enjoy our anticipation while it lasts. And we can leave dealing with all those business outcomes until such time as we know what they actually are.
