Making Claims: Joe Nevills’ Five Fearless Predictions For The Bloodstock Market In 2022

In “Making Claims,” Paulick Report bloodstock editor Joe Nevills shares his opinions on the Thoroughbred industry from the breeding and sales arenas to the racing world and beyond.

The bloodstock market of 2021 seemed as though it would be easier to forecast compared with the unprecedented turbulence of the prior year, but no one could have foreseen the level of gusto with which certain sections of the market would bounce back.

A starving buying bench took auction returns to record highs last year, while Gun Runner's freshman class of runners put their sire in the history books. Pleasant surprises can be hard to come by in the Thoroughbred business, and last year was full of them.

After a year that went better than expected for many, will that momentum keep up the pace, or will it stall? Which stallions will see their stocks rise and fall in the coming year? I try to answer those questions with five predictions for how the year will play out in the bloodstock market.

1. Into Mischief Will Repeat As Leading General Sire…Again

Into Mischief will stand the 2022 breeding season at Spendthrift Farm for $250,000 live foal stands and nurses

You can't hit the Pick 5 without getting the first leg, so we'll start off with a safe one.

For a second consecutive year, the Spendthrift Farm resident set North America's single-season record for progeny earnings. The $24.4 million his runners earned in 2021 was more than $8.1 million higher than next-closest Ghostzapper at $16.2 million. If that $8.1-million difference were an actual stallion, it would have finished in the top 20 on the general list. That's quite the chasm for any horse to overcome.

In 2020, Into Mischief reached the top of the heap on the strength of Horse of the Year Authentic's Kentucky Derby and Breeders' Cup Classic triumphs, and the success of champion sprinter Gamine. Last year, Gamine was back to add a pair of Grade 1 wins and $851,900 to the pot, joined by a pair of electric 3-year-olds in Grade 1 Haskell Stakes winner and Kentucky Derby runner-up (at the time of publishing) Mandaloun and Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile winner Life Is Good. G1 Carter Handicap winner Mischevious Alex completed Into Mischief's quartet of Grade 1 winners in 2021 and highlighted his 13 graded or group stakes winners on the year.

The reason why Into Mischief is my pick to repeat again as leading general sire is the same one I had last year, and the same one I'll use every year for the foreseeable future: he's got the pipeline set for life.

The commercial market is firmly in Into Mischief's corner, putting him on the conveyor belt of success that includes sending him big-time mares, which produce expensive sale horses that have proven to become serious runners, and the cycle begins again. Once that conveyor belt gets going, it tends to only pick up momentum, as it has here. When one set of elite horses leaves the racetrack, another generation quickly takes its place, and perhaps goes even farther.

Into Mischief is perennially one of North America's most active stallions by mares bred, meaning he'll have a unique foundation of blue-collar earners to support the flashy graded stakes horses, the likes of which few of his rivals can muster. Looking to the future, Into Mischief has 195 newly-turned 2-year-olds of 2022; once again from the strongest book of mares he'd seen to date. They'll be given every shot to take home lucrative maiden special weight purses at the country's biggest meets, then become the next class of major stakes winners to keep their sire at the top of the list for years to come.

Get comfortable. The top of the list doesn't look to be changing anytime soon.

2. The North American Foal Crop Will Rise In 2023

This might seem out of place on a list of predictions for 2022, but stay with me, here.

Many pearls have been clutched over North America's shrinking foal crop, and it's certainly harrowing to see that number get slashed by more than half from 44,000 in 1990 to a projected 18,700 in 2022. Assuming The Jockey Club's projections for 2021 and 2022 hold true, the foal crop will have posted a decline in seven consecutive seasons, and the last time it grew by more than one percent was 2005.

However, this is a business that loves to chase a trend, and after an auction season that saw incredible depth and record-setting returns, it's not hard to imagine present and potential breeders eyeing that landscape and seeking out their own piece of it. The November breeding stock sales were strong to the last day, suggesting there is a commercial craving for broodmares that might not yet be quenched by the sale ring. If there is demand, the supply will catch up, whether that means bringing mares back into production that might have gotten time off or retiring fillies from the racetrack to enter the breeding shed. This is not a business of people who happily accept not getting what they want.

Assuming that demand is met with enough horseflesh, one would assume more mares would be bred than in previous years, with the hope that the market will remain just as electric when the ensuing foals enter the commercial space a few years down the road. Since the foals would be conceived in 2022 and born in 2023, this is a long-term prediction that hinges on the short-term.

With all of that being said, I don't expect the 2022 Report of Mares Bred to be bursting at the seams like it's the 1980s again, or even the post-recession upturn of the mid-2010s. Even if breeders are as enthusiastic as they've been in years, there are only so many mares out there to be bred. Save for a mass exodus of broodmares from other countries, any rise in the foal crop is going to have to be a gradual crawl by design. A percentage point or two of growth, though, would be a giant morale boost for an industry that desperately needs horses to fill starting gates around the country.

3. Justify Will Be The Leading Freshman Sire By Earnings

Justify

The 2018 Triple Crown winner tied with fellow Ashford Stud Mendelssohn as North America's most active stallion of the 2019 breeding season with 252 mares bred, and he attracted an absolute murderer's row of mares to fill his first book. There is little excuse for anyone but Justify to finish at the top of the freshman sire list.

If he is successful in that assignment, Justify will take a familiar path to the top employed by Ashford Stud to get the likes of Uncle Mo and American Pharoah to the head of the freshman list: Get as many foals on the ground and into the starting gates as possible, and use the deep class from that first book of mares to propel the foals into the biggest races. It's the plan that every stallion manager draws up for their rookies, but only a chosen few are able to execute it to perfection.

The commercial market seems willing to go on this ride with Justify. He finished fourth among North American-based sires by average yearling sale price ($357,387) and second by yearling gross ($26,804,000). We'll learn more about whether those looks and pages can run when we get into this year's juvenile sale season, but that kind of early endorsement is critical for a stallion with expectations as big as Justify's.

If Justify is somehow unable to get the job done, the logical next guess would be Lane's End resident City of Light. The stallion himself is a specimen, and his yearlings were received astoundingly well during last year's sales. I get the impression the City of Lights (Cities of Light?) are going to do their best work around two turns, which might preclude them from the early prizes on the juvenile stakes calendar, but I thought the same of Gun Runner, and we all saw how that turned out.

4. Arrogate Rebounds From His Rough Freshman Season

One of the biggest surprises of last year's sire races was the highly-touted champion Arrogate finishing out of the top 10 by earnings among freshman sires. After his brilliant racing career, strong debut book of mares, and fevered support at auction – hastened by his untimely demise – the dominoes appeared to be set for him to contend for the top spot, but his first crop left more questions than answers.

The late resident of Juddmonte Farms finished the year in 12th on the freshman earnings list, and without a North American stakes winner. His first winner didn't come until September at the tail end of the Saratoga meet, and his only stakes-placed runner on the year ran second in a restricted stakes at Delaware Park. Arrogate's freshman season might not have been a worst-case scenario when put up against his lofty expectations, but it certainly teetered on the edge of it.

A year earlier, we were saying a lot of the same things about Runhappy, a much-hyped stallion who limped to a 15th-place finish on the freshman sire chart in 2020 without a stakes winner to his name. A year changed a lot for Runhappy, who leapt to fourth among second-crop sires by earnings in 2021, powered by Grade 2 winners Following Sea and Smile Happy.

Runhappy rewarded patience during his own on-track career, not truly hitting his stride until the summer of his 3-year-old campaign. Arrogate had a similar trajectory, vaulting himself into graded stakes competition during the Saratoga meet of his 3-year-old season, and winning the world's most expensive races later that year and into age four. He didn't even make his first start until April of his sophomore year, so we still don't have an apples-to-apples comparison of what the Arrogates should be doing at this stage based on their sire's own racing career.

The Arrogate foals always had the two-turn look to them as young horses, suggesting they might relish the opportunities to go longer that will be afforded to them as they get older. Any runners that make noise on the Triple Crown trail would be late to the party, but the longer races later in the spring and beyond should play to their advantage if they have the talent to match their pedigrees. One or two of those could change the entire trajectory of a stud career cut short.

The tide has already started to turn for Arrogate, who picked up his first stakes winner on Jan. 1 when Alittleloveandluck took the Ginger Brew Stakes on the turf at Gulfstream Park. Arrogate left himself a lot of ground to make up on the leaders in his class, but he fits the profile of a stallion that's got it in him to pull it off.

5. The Auction Market Cools Off A Bit

I never felt like I got an acceptable answer for the question I kept asking throughout a cracking 2021 auction season: “Why is the market THIS good?”

Were people with gobs of money excited to spend it and blow off some COVID-related steam? I'm sure they were. Are purses up at some of the sport's biggest meets, making it more appealing to race horses? Definitely. Were there some other forces in play? Probably. Even so, it's hard to fathom how even a combination of these factors led major buyers to stick around until Books 5 and 6 of the Keeneland September sale when they'd have normally been home for days.

Personally, I think a lot of key players held on to their money and horses during the 2020 auction season, and once it was clear there was going to be a Thoroughbred industry to come back to in 2021, they had more capital than they normally would. With more money in reserve, that pushed everyone down a book or two in order to buy horses in their price range.

If I'm right about that, it means the end users out there might have spent a big chunk of their surplus in 2021, and they might enter this year's auctions with budgets closer to a typical year.

When a good thing appears suddenly, it can vanish just as quickly. However, the Thoroughbred industry is not known for suddenness, barring some kind of global-scale economic event. I don't expect the market to grow from the fever-dream season it saw in 2021, but I don't expect it to plummet, either.

Record paces are hard to keep up, but a slight downturn can still result in an all-time renewal of a particular sale. That's where I see us headed in 2022, probably for reasons as scattered as the ones that got us here in the first place.

This piece originally appeared in The Back Ring, the Paulick Report's bloodstock newsletter. To learn more about the Back Ring, click here.

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Making Claims: Submitting Eclipse Votes While Navigating The White-Haired Elephant In The Room

In “Making Claims,” Paulick Report bloodstock editor Joe Nevills shares his opinions on the Thoroughbred industry from the breeding and sales arenas to the racing world and beyond.

My Eclipse Awards ballot is shared publicly as a member of the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters' bloc of voters, so in the interest of transparency, I'll share how I filled it out, along with my reasoning for each category.

Let's address a big elephant in the room. I didn't vote for Bob Baffert in the trainer category. I also didn't vote for any horse that remained in Baffert's barn for the entire year, or anyone in the owner category that kept horses with him after the Derby positive, allowing for a reasonable amount of time to move horses out of his care.

Regardless of where one falls on spectrum of what he did, how much it did or didn't affect Medina Spirit's performance, and the degree to which he should be punished for it, it's clear that the lightning rod that Baffert has created for himself and the sport has been largely self-constructed. He called the press conference to announce the Derby positive himself, before any public regulatory announcement. He went on multiple national news programs on his own accord and created such bad narrative for the sport that it spun off at least two biting late-night show parodies. His drawn-out legal battles in front of boards and judges have furthered a culture in the sport that consequences can be evaded with enough lawyer power, and the cycle just seems to continue because of it.

The public's default emotion toward horse racing is distrust. One man is not solely responsible for this, but that one man's actions directly within the sport have been a driving force behind it. It's going to look really bad if Baffert hoists a trophy (or trophies) awarded by an industry vote, and I won't be the one to put it in his hands.

Furthermore, Baffert is allowed the funding and oxygen to continue this cycle in large part because his roster of owners keeps supplying him with horses, and they share in the blame for the public perception of the sport. I've written about this at length.

I've seen arguments that it's not fair to the horses to disqualify them because of their human connections, but those human connections are the ones that will receive the trophy, the acclaim, and the money that comes with having a champion. Eclipse Awards night will just be another Thursday for the horse, the same as the one next to them.

Now seems like a good time for my annual Eclipse ballot disclaimer…

If you think I'm off-base with any of my votes, just remember these two things: First, the voting is closed, so nothing I say here can swing any undecided voters. Second, back in 2011, one intrepid voter chose Drosselmeyer as champion turf male in a campaign where his lone start on grass was a seventh-place effort. No matter how much we might disagree on who should be placed where, please understand that someone out there will go further off the deep end than any of us could imagine and cancel me out.

Let's get on with it.

2-Year-Old Male
1. Jack Christopher
2. Gunite
3. Pappacap

Removing the Breeders' Cup Juvenile winner and a big chunk of the West Coast contingent due to the above restrictions made this division a lot harder to parse out. Jack Christopher got the nod here, both for the dominance of his wins and the strength of schedule. The Grade 1 Champagne Stakes boasted arguably the strongest 2-year-old field for a major race outside the Breeders' Cup, and the son of Munnings was never tested. It's a shame he got hurt before he could prove it against the best, but he might have already been the best.

The two sons of Gun Runner behind him were split by a hair, but I gave Gunite the runner-up spot based on his Grade 1 win in the Hopeful Stakes. Pappacap got close to that Grade 1 a couple times, including a runner-up in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile, but I'd be hard-pressed to give an Eclipse to a horse that didn't have that win at the highest level.

2-Year-Old Female
1. Echo Zulu
2. Juju's Map
3. Pizza Bianca

One of the easier categories to sort out. Echo Zulu was the best in her class from the jump, and she was a driving force in sire Gun Runner's record-setting freshman season. Juju's Map solidified her status on the podium with her runner-up effort in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies, and Pizza Bianca's strong campaign on the turf deserved a spot in the program.

3-Year-Old Male
1. Essential Quality
2. Hot Rod Charlie
3. Dr. Schivel

Essential Quality has been the cream of the crop since last year, and he continued to prove his class in 2021 with wins in the Belmont Stakes and Travers Stakes, the G2 Blue Grass Stakes and Jim Dandy Stakes, and solid tries in the Kentucky Derby and Breeders' Cup Classic. Even in defeat, he never ran a true dud, and in victory, the Tapit colt lived up to every ounce of the hype he set up in his championship juvenile season. A deserving winner.

It was a broad division behind Essential Quality, but one that spent a lot of time beating each other up, making them hard to sort out. Hot Rod Charlie got the second spot for running a consistent campaign, getting his Grade 1 chip in the Pennsylvania Derby, and holding his own against older foes in the fall. Few contemporaries put together as complete a season as Hot Rod Charlie. You'll see why Dr. Schivel made the top three in a bit.

Where's Life Is Good? He had two graded wins against older rivals – the G2 Kelso and the G1 Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile – but even if we remove the Baffert starts from his record, I didn't feel like his wins stood up against the top three. The Kelso win came against a depleted field of three rivals and the Dirt Mile wasn't loaded with killers, either. I couldn't get there with him on strength of schedule.

3-Year-Old Female
1. Malathaat
2. Clairiere
3. Search Results

Malathaat had this one pretty much in the bag before the Breeders' Cup Distaff, but finishing within a half-length of the winner in a blanket finish sealed the deal for the three-time Grade 1 winner. All five of the Curlin filly's starts last year were in Grade 1 contests, and none were shorter than 1 1/16 miles. The definition of class.

Clairiere's campaign was perhaps a little less consistent than that of Search Results, but she got the head up for second based on having a slightly more impressive graded stakes record, and for bringing her shoes to every dance. If Search Results had managed to get the better of Malathaat in their tight Kentucky Oaks battle, this list might look very different.

Older Dirt Male
1. Knicks Go
2. Maxfield
3. Art Collector

A slam dunk on top. Knicks Go set himself up as a potential division leader when he won the G1 Pegasus World Cup Invitational, and he overcame a mid-season swoon to secure that position with a fall campaign that saw the son of Paynter improve with every start on his way to an authoritative Breeders' Cup Classic triumph.

With one clear horse on top, figuring out the next ones in line proved challenging. Maxfield was something of a horse-for-course in 2021, going three-for-three at Churchill Downs including the G1 Clark Stakes, and one-for-four away from Louisville. However, he faced strong fields throughout the year and was never worse than a competitive third. Few in the division could hang their hat on a resume like that. Art Collector came to life once he was moved to the Bill Mott barn, and a win in a stacked G1 Woodward Stakes field helped him secure the third spot.

Older Dirt Female
1. Letruska
2. Shedaresthedevil
3. Ce Ce

Heading into the Breeders' Cup Distaff, the only way Letruska was in danger of being knocked off her perch was if Shedaresthedevil won with flair. Neither had their best day at Del Mar, so the order stayed the same.

As it stands, Letruska beat practically every serious horse in her division during a campaign that saw her win four Grade 1 races at four different tracks. Had the daughter of Super Saver won the Distaff with aplomb and a few other races were taken by outsiders, she could have ended up with the Horse of the Year trophy.

Shedaresthedevil won a pair of Grade 1s last year, and her lone defeat came against Letruska in the G1 Ogden Phipps Stakes, two starts after she beat Letruska in the G2 Azeri Stakes. She didn't entirely control her own Eclipse destiny heading into the Breeders' Cup, but she could have put herself in the hunt with a win. Like Dr. Schivel, you'll see why Ce Ce made the podium in a little while.

Male Sprinter
1. Dr. Schivel
2. Golden Pal
3. Jackie's Warrior

The kids are alright. All three of my finalists were 3-year-olds with a legitimate case at the top spot. Dr. Schivel ended up on top because of his ability to stand up to older foes throughout the season. Four of his five starts came against older opponents, including wins in the G1 Bing Crosby Stakes and G2 Santa Anita Sprint Championship Stakes, and a second by a nose in the Breeders' Cup Sprint where he looked like he had it won until the last half-jump. The Violence colt would have been the top contender as an older horse, but the fact that he did it when he didn't necessarily have to leave his division makes it all the more impressive.

The only dud Dr. Schivel threw came in the G1 Malibu Stakes, where he ran into a freak in Flightline, and he was wrapped up after a nightmare trip made it clear he wasn't going to receive a serious check. Nothing wrong with protecting the horse.

Golden Pal was by far the best turf sprinter in the country last year (and perhaps a bit more. Stick around), and his freak performance in the Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint might have been the most impressive effort of the weekend. If he'd have had one more start somewhere along the way, I'd have had to seriously consider putting him on top. It surprised me a bit that Jackie's Warrior ended up third on my ballot, considering he'd have been a fringe Horse of the Year contender with a win in the Breeders' Cup Sprint, but he lacked the bona fides against older horses like Dr. Schivel after finishing sixth at the Breeders' Cup, and Golden Pal got himself up to second with his own Breeders' Cup effort.

Female Sprinter
1. Ce Ce
2. Bella Sofia
3. Bell's the One

This one will probably end up going to Gamine, but Ce Ce toppling her in the Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Sprint certainly made this process easier for my purposes. The Elusive Quality mare ran a consistently solid campaign through the season, and she took her show on the road, winning graded stakes races at Gulfstream Park, Santa Anita, and Del Mar, with a solid effort in Saratoga sandwiched in between.

Bell's the One could have improved her position with a strong Breeders' Cup, but in her absence, Bella Sofia had a Grade 1 win where he rival didn't in the Test.

Turf Male
1. Golden Pal
2. Colonel Liam
3. Smooth Like Strait

International horses took turns eating the turf male division's collective lunch throughout the year, but I tend to resist runners from outside our borders on top unless we truly have no better option. Fortunately, Golden Pal came through for us. The Uncle Mo colt's freakish Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint might have been the most dominant performance of the weekend, and he was just as disruptive facing older competition in the G2 Woodford Stakes a start earlier. I'd have liked his campaign to be a little longer, but when he did run on U.S. soil, he had no peer.

Colonel Liam was the best of the rest. Though his campaign was cut short, he won the division's first major heat in the G1 Pegasus World Cup Turf, and dead-heated for another Grade 1 score in the Turf Classic. Smooth Like Strait lost a lot more races than he won last year, but he was never more than a half-length behind the winner and never worse than third. Add in a Grade 1 win in the Shoemaker Mile, and the hard-luck horse did enough to deserve recognition.

Turf Female
1. War Like Goddess
2, Santa Barbara
3. Althiqa

Another one where the global horses cherrypicked a lot of the big races. War Like Goddess stayed hot from March to November, and if the English Channel filly had gotten the better of a blanket finish in the Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Turf, there would have been no question at all. That effort was enough to give her the duke, if by a slim margin.

The two horses behind her each came from overseas to win a pair of Grade 1 races as part of greater international campaigns. Santa Barbara and Althiqa had mirror-like domestic campaigns, but Santa Barbara got the nod for second for doing just a little more, both here and abroad.

Loves Only You seems to have been a popular choice in this division, but with just one U.S. start won by a slim margin, and several other viable candidates on the ballot, I didn't feel the need to flip the emergency “Goldikova” switch.

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Steeplechase
1. Abstain
2. Abstain
3. Abstain

I can already feel the performative social media fury bubbling up. Listen, I watched more jai-alai matches this year than steeplechase races (the Langhans brothers are the future of jai-alai in America, especially Benny).

My reasoning remains the same as last year: I abstain out of respect. Nothing in my job requires me to take even a passive interest in the steeplechase races. I know none of the players, the races are often held at venues I'm not familiar with in terms of geography or esteem, and I'm not aware of the unwritten class system that can separate one Grade 1 race from another (like how winning the Kentucky Derby means more than winning the Malibu Stakes). It's an entirely different culture.

If a group of basketball writers were brought in to decide the Eclipse Awards, people would erupt, and rightfully so. It would be disrespectful to the hard work done by an entire industry to have someone outside the circle decide who among them was the best. That's why I leave the steeplechase division to the people who know what they're doing, and don't let my uninformed vote interfere with that. Someone will get a trophy whether I vote or not.

Owner
1. Godolphin
2. Klaravich Stables
3. Peter Brant

Godolphin earned more than twice as much as next-closest Klaravich Stables last year, and its 11 Grade 1 victories was nearly as many as the next three contenders combined. The blue team went bonkers during the Breeders' Cup, and Essential Quality brought home the Belmont Stakes and the Travers.

Klaravich Stables was often the next-closest rival in the big statistical categories, driven by its usual dominance of the East Coast turf races. If Klaravich didn't win those races, Peter Brant often did.

Breeder
1. Godolphin
2. Stonestreet Thoroughbred Holdings
3. Angie Moore

Godolphin obliterated the breeder standings with many of the same horses that helped it obliterate the owner standings. They won with local-born heroes like Essential Quality and Mystic Guide, while their foreign-born horses ran roughshod over the Breeders' Cup. An international powerhouse operating at full strength.

Stonestreet had the kind of year that would have won the trophy in a lot of other seasons, led by top sophomore fillies Malathaat and Clairiere. Angie Moore, the breeder of Knicks Go, makes the list for doing the most with the least, posting only six starters this season as a breeder, and having one of them happen to be the best horse in training.

Jockey
1. Joel Rosario
2. Flavien Prat
3. Luis Saez

Joel Rosario has been overdue for one of these for a long time, and he probably should have won it back in 2013 when he seemed to be winning everything he entered during the first half of the year. As it stands, he rode the best older horse in the game (Knicks Go), the best 2-year-old filly in the game (Echo Zulu), and the best 3-year-old filly in the game (Malathaat). He led all North American jockeys by earnings and graded wins, he won a pair of Breeders' Cup races, and he had over 1,000 starts, meaning he got on more than just the elite stock. Give the man his flowers.

Flavien Prat's 11 Grade 1 wins were the most of any North American rider in 2021, and his herculean effort to win with a broken rein aboard Dr. Schivel in the G1 Bing Crosby Stakes was the kind of showcase effort that proves it was more than just compiling stats on the West Coast. Luis Saez was the first-call rider for Godolphin's top domestic-born runners, helped turn Art Collector into a top-tier horse in the handicap division, and with over 1,500 starts, he put in the kind of schedule most of his peers at the top of the jockey pecking order couldn't come close to matching.

Apprentice Jockey
1. Jessica Pyfer
2. Alexis Centeno
3. Joree Scriver

It's not easy for a young rider to stand out on the ultra-competitive Southern California circuit, but this year's class had two that made an impact.

Jessica Pyfer led all apprentice jockeys by earnings in 2021, and she was second by wins. She was always on the fringe of the top ten by wins at each of the circuit's major meets, highlighted by a sixth-place finish during Santa Anita's elite winter/spring meet, where she rode against some of the best in the country. She also made noise at the highest levels, earning a Grade 2 placing aboard Road Rager in the Great Lady M Stakes at Los Alamitos.

Alexis Centeno lost his bug in mid-August, but he made his time count, finishing 12th in the standings during Santa Anita's winter/spring meet, and riding well in California and the Midwest. He also hooked an incredibly live mount in Brickyard Ride, who he guided to a win in the G2 San Carlos Stakes and a second in the G3 Kona Gold Stakes. Joree Scriver is a little off the beaten path, but she won meet titles at Grants Pass Downs and the Elko County Fair, finished in the top 10 during a long meet at Turf Paradise, and won four stakes races last year. It's hard for an apprentice rack up wins and earn a meet title anywhere, but to do it against the wily veterans of the bullring circuit requires a special kind of toughness.

Trainer
1. Brad Cox
2. Todd Pletcher
3. Chad Brown

Brad Cox's barn continued to get bigger and better in 2021, leading all trainers by earnings, tying for the lead by Grade 1 wins, and finishing fourth by total wins. He took home the Breeders' Cup Classic, the Belmont Stakes, the Travers, the Haskell and the Pegasus World Cup Invitational, among many others. Heck, he might even end up with last year's Kentucky Derby trophy on his mantle sometime in the distant future.

Todd Pletcher nosed out Chad Brown for the most graded wins in 2021, he saddled Life Is Good to a win in the Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile, and he'll have the likely 3-year-old champion filly in Malathaat. Chad Brown did what Chad Brown does best and dominated the East Coast's turf races.

Horse of the Year
1. Knicks Go
2. Essential Quality
3. Letruska

There was only one true choice here. Knicks Go won when it mattered, beat everyone he needed to beat, and even his quasi-slump in the middle of the year only saw him finish fourth at worst. Once he ran off in the Breeders' Cup Classic, it was all over.

Essential Quality was consistently elite throughout the year in the biggest races, and if Knicks Go had been erased from the face of the earth, I'd feel confident giving him the Horse of the Year trophy.

Oh, what could have been for Letruska. If she'd have won the Distaff and chaos reigned in the Classic, she could have very well ended up with the golden statue after a dominant campaign up to that point in arguably the deepest division we've got. Unfortunately, a white-hot pace fizzled her chances in the Distaff and any hope of the top spot here. Still, the conversation of racing in 2021 involves this mare, and she belongs at the table.

The post Making Claims: Submitting Eclipse Votes While Navigating The White-Haired Elephant In The Room appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Predicting The Future Of The Bloodstock Market: The Back Ring, Keeneland January

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS ISSUE OF THE BACK RING

The latest issue of the Back Ring is now online, ahead of the Keeneland January Sale.

The Back Ring is the Paulick Report's bloodstock newsletter, released ahead of, and during, every major North American Thoroughbred auction. Seeking to expand beyond the usual pdf presentation, the Back Ring offers a dynamic experience for bloodstock content, heavy on visual elements and statistics to appeal to readers on all platforms, especially mobile devices.

Here is what's inside this issue…

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS ISSUE OF THE BACK RING

  • Lead Feature, presented by Gainesway: Bloodstock editor Joe Nevills makes five fearless predictions for the bloodstock market in 2022 in his “Making Claims” column.
  • Stallion Spotlight, presented by New York Thoroughbred Breeders, Inc.: The New York Thoroughbred Breeders, Inc. Stallion Season Auction is a crucial fundraiser for the breed organization each year, but the 2022 renewal reaches even further to help those recovering from the December tornadoes in Kentucky.
  • Ask Your Veterinarian, presented by Kentucky Performance Products: Dr. Craig Lesser of Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital explains what horse owners should take into consideration to protect hooves during the winter months.
  • Pennsylvania Leaderboard, presented by Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association: How Li'lbito'charm, a daughter of Smarty Jones, brought in six figures worth of Pennsylvania incentive earnings for her connections in 2021 without entering a single stakes race.
  • First-Crop Sire Watch: Stallions whose first crops of yearlings are represented in the Keeneland January Sale, including the number of horses cataloged and the farm where the stallion is currently advertised.

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS ISSUE OF THE BACK RING

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Making Claims: Racing’s Villains Have Too Many Enablers

In “Making Claims,” Paulick Report bloodstock editor Joe Nevills shares his opinions on the Thoroughbred industry from the breeding and sales arenas to the racing world and beyond.

If it feels like just yesterday when Irish trainer Gordon Elliott rankled the racing world over his photo straddling a dead, prone horse, you're not off by that many yesterdays.

Elliott's six-month suspension for conduct unbecoming to the sport finished this week, and the interview he gave the Racing Post ahead of his return was eye-opening for a few reasons.

First, it sure doesn't seem like he spent a lot of time on true self-reflection during his half-year away. His self-described “lowest moment” had nothing to do with the shame he brought upon himself, his barn, and the sport on a global level, but for the horses that left his barn during his suspension that won elsewhere. He makes two attempts at a genuine apology in the Racing Post interview, and they're both in the direct vicinity of statements about how good he is at training winners, and how he'd like to get back to doing that.

Tell me you're only sorry you got caught, without telling me you're only sorry you got caught.

Second, it was revealed that he only lost about a dozen horses from his yard during the suspension. For some trainers, that could be a back-breaking defection, but Elliott has had 1,000 or more starts in each of the past five years. He lost some good ones, but 12 horses won't interrupt the flow when he returns to the racetrack.

There are several layers of blame to go around for the Gordon Elliott situation – before, during, and after the photo was released.

The center of it is, of course, Elliott himself. For a sport like horse racing that struggles with public perception, an unforced error like his is unforgivable. It will be used as fodder to tear down horse racing's credibility for years to come – much longer than the six months he spent away. The next layer is the person behind the camera, head lad Simon McGonagle. It's hard to tell your boss to stop being a bonehead, but commemorating the occasion with a photo and a snappy caption suggests at least one other person in that inner circle thought this was fine.

Once we leave that atmosphere, we come to the people who could have done something about it in the aftermath, and chose to punt the football.

The Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board had a chance to show that documented desecration of the horse should have career-threatening consequences. Instead, they handed him six months – most of it during the slow part of the National Hunt season, save for the Cheltenham Festival – and praised themselves in the press release for how thorough their unannounced welfare inspections have been.

Then, there are the owners that Elliott praised for sticking with him through the suspension. If he only lost a dozen horses, then it seems most owners did stick with him.

Whether they'd admit it or not – whether they care or not – by remaining in his barn, those owners have endorsed the notion that if their horse dies in training, Elliott is perfectly within his right to use the event as a lighthearted photo opportunity.

The Gordon Elliott situation, and how it was handled, is frustrating for anyone that thinks a horse deserves better, living or dead, but what takes it to another level is the fact that we've seen it all before.

Negative actions come down to individuals making choices, but it's those two parts of the outside layer – the regulators and the owners – whose response can turn those actions into a culture in a barn, a backstretch, and ultimately an industry. It takes a village to raise a villain, and this industry has turned it into a science.

The Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board's relatively light touch on Elliott calls back to any number of instances where racing commissions had the ball set on the tee for them to prove the sport won't tolerate behavior ranging from irresponsible to abusive, and instead chose the most uninspired option. When a decent lawyer and a feckless racing commission can “aw, shucks” the consequences of a serious offense into a minor inconvenience, the horsepeople that choose to misbehave have little to sway them from doing it again.

Be truthful, when is the last time you've seen a horseperson stare down a career-altering suspension for something heinous or habitual and thought, “that's definitely gonna stick”?

What's infuriating about horse racing's regulators is their enabling of bad actors can come in so many shapes and sizes. The due process of appeals and stays of suspension are frustrating from the outside, but they are a necessary part of the system. However, when a regulator neuters another regulator trying to create consequences that might actually change the culture of the sport, it ventures into craven territory.

Who can forget the reflexive disgust shown by the Delaware Thoroughbred Racing Commission when they watched the video of trainer Amber Cobb hitting a tied horse with a rake, then the sudden change in tone when they reduced the stewards' recommended suspension of two years down to two months because she was just so darn articulate?

Who else felt unsatisfied when the Arkansas Racing Commission gave back practically everything to Bob Baffert after lidocane positives disqualified Charlatan and Gamine from their wins, and the justification from the board essentially came down to “we don't even really like these rules, and we hope the feds come in and clean this mess up”?

In both instances, and in others under far less of a microscope, the regulators seemed swayed by information that pulled them away from the root issue at hand, and turn on the complainant. Whether they did it or not became a secondary issue. Not every whistleblower is going to be a reliable one, but when scrutiny turns into mockery and dismissal, it emboldens future offenders and gives pause to future whistleblowers. Again, this is how cultures are created.

Of course, for every time a racing commission has shot itself in the foot to let an alleged villain get away, just as many do the wrong thing through inaction.

There are a lot of cards in the “How Does THIS Guy Still Have A License?” deck, but for the sake of moving things along, consider Marcus Vitali.

Vitali has been handed suspensions that he served to term, but he didn't let that get him down. Instead, he found ways to keep training horses and have them run in the names of others, like Wayne Potts or Allan Hunter.

It's been harder for Vitali to find places to race since he came back from his most recent time on the bench last year, but commissions in New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Arizona have licensed Vitali in 2021 after he was alleged by the Maryland Jockey Club – owners of Pimlico and Laurel Park –  to be running horses in other trainers' names. His alleged accomplice, Potts, is having the most lucrative season of his career, running mostly in New York and New Jersey.

In the places where they've had the door slammed in their faces, it was usually because racetracks barred the trainers on their own volition, independent of any commission ruling. The problem is, a private property expulsion doesn't have the same reciprocity among other jurisdictions as a state-level one, leaving it up to track-by-track judgement calls, sometimes in response to public outcry.

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Through his cross-country trek in search of a racetrack that would have him, Vitali has maintained the unyielding support of some owners, including Carolyn Vogel's Crossed Sabres Farm. Nothing short of blind support would explain why the New Hampshire-based owner would not only stay with a trainer after dragging her into multiple paper training incidents and suspensions, but then entrust him to take her string to the claiming ranks at Turf Paradise – far away from the East Coast tracks where her runners were normally seen.

Again, this is how a culture is made. In a business of independent contractors, employment is endorsement, and permissive or oblivious owners can give oxygen to problematic behavior. If a trainer keeps getting supplied with horses, it's hard to get rid of them. Gordon Elliott will return to business as usual because operations like Bective Stud just kept buying horses for him to train when he got back.

It was hard not to notice who was still running horses with Baffert after the trainer announced that Medina Spirit had tested positive for betamethasone in this year's Kentucky Derby and put the sport under one of the ugliest national spotlights it's ever seen; even after it limited the places where their horses could run. As it stands right now, the expensive 2-year-olds that have kept entering Baffert's barn won't be able to run in next year's Kentucky Derby if they stay there.

It still wasn't enough for some owners to walk away. If they don't feel shame for having their names tied to scandal by association, their trainers have no incentive to feel any different.

We should all be so lucky to find that kind of loyalty in our lives.

But, that's the culture.

Individuals feel emboldened to push limits – or have a chat astride a dead horse while your buddy grabs a shot for Snapchat – because the consequences aren't enough of a deterrent, or they'll likely be walked back if they get too harsh, and too many owners are fine to go along with the ride out of some sense of loyalty, even if it drags them down with it.

It keeps happening because the people in a position to do something let it happen. It keeps hurting because we know it'll happen again.

More than ever, the world outside our sphere is watching and learning, and they're figuring out that Gordon Elliott wasn't the only one sitting on that dead horse.

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