MGSW Eye of the Tiger (American Chance) was found dead in his paddock early March 18 at Old Friends in Georgetown, Ky. Necropsy results of the 23-year-old are pending.
Following his racing career, Eye of the Tiger stood at John Gunther's Glennwood Farm in Versailles, Ky. until he was pensioned and retired to Old Friends in 2016.
“Eye of the Tiger was the Garbo of Old Friends,” said Michael Blowen at Old Friends. “Give me what I need and get lost. Handsome, self-reliant, and, now, missed.”
GISW Any Given Saturday (Distorted Humor) has been repatriated to the United States from South Korea to spend his retirement at Old Friends, the Thoroughbred Retirement Farm in Georgetown, Ky., said founder and president of Old Friends, Michael Blowen.
Purchased by the Korea Thoroughbred Breeders Association in 2014, he was relocated to South Korea where he has been for the last nine years.
The 19-year-old recently flew home and underwent the standard quarantine procedure at Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital before arriving at Old Friends Monday afternoon.
Any Given Saturday retired from racing with six wins, two seconds, one third, and $1,083,533 in earnings in 11 career starts and began his stud career in 2008 at Darley, before going to Pin Oak Lane Farm in Pennsylvania for the 2014 season. He was then purchased in 2017 by the Korea Thoroughbred Breeders Association (KTBA) and was relocated to South Korea for the 2015 breeding season.
In 2023, Any Given Saturday was pensioned and, following discussions with Blowen, he was returned to the United States to live out his retirement at Old Friends.
Jun Park, Bloodstock Agent for the Korea Thoroughbred Breeders Association, who was not only responsible for working out the details of getting Any Given Saturday sent to South Korea, but was also instrumental in helping bring the horse home to the United States and to Old Friends, visited the horse at Rood & Riddle, and is very happy to see him back in the United States.
“I was so excited to see him at the stall at the clinic,” he said. “I mean, he went to Korea a long time ago, and he came back here and it's good to see him back.”
When asked why he helped retire the horse at Old Friends, he said, “(Michael) has been (doing an) excellent job since he founded the farm. I mean, the horses are happy out there, (and) racing fans are still able to see the horses. And, that's great.”
“We are very grateful to the KTBA for donating Any Given Saturday to Old Friends,” said Blowen. “It's a great example of how we can all work together for the betterment of these invaluable athletes. I can't wait to feed him a Mrs. Pastures' horse cookie.”
The world we share with these amazing animals may be an ever-changing one, but its mysteries abide. We consider ourselves ever more knowledgeable, ever more certain, riding the slipstream of science. Yet how much do we truly know, when Afternoon Deelites holds out for all those years and then waits just six days before following his owner to whatever shore may (or may not) lie beyond the horizon of life?
The same journey was made this week by the trainer of Alydar. John Veitch laid the ground for the greatest Triple Crown campaign of any horse that never won a Triple Crown race by giving him 10 starts as a juvenile. Curiously, however, trainers of the succeeding generation appear to have decided either that they have found a better way; or at least that the materials provided, since breeding became an almost exclusively commercial enterprise, are no longer equal to the same kind of treatment.
Trainers today map out the road to the Derby with two priorities: minimize gas consumption, and avoid traffic. That way, they feel, their charges can reach Churchill with a relatively full tank and pristine engine. But the fact is that you always feel able to drive a car more aggressively once it has taken a few bumps and scratches. And you also learn far more about its capacity and response if you have repeatedly had to accelerate or brake to get out of trouble, as compared with cruising along an open road and every six weeks overtaking a laboring truck while barely changing gear.
In the prevailing environment, then, we must give credit to the people at Fair Grounds for redressing the shortfall in conditioning by extending the distance of all three legs of their trials program. If horses can no longer get the kind of mental and physical foundation they once derived from sheer volume of racing, then at least they can have a little more aggregate. With a field of 14, moreover, the GII Risen Star S. is meanwhile guaranteed to steepen the learning curve.
(To listen to this article as a podcast, click the arrow above.)
Saturday will be only the fourth time the race has been run over this extra 1/16th, yet its last two winners have both gone on to finish second in the Derby. One, of course, was actually promoted to first place; while much the same was done for the other by voters at the recent Eclipse Awards.
To be fair, the Risen Star was already on a roll, having lately produced a GI Preakness winner, the phenomenal Gun Runner and the promising stallion Girvin. Between here and Oaklawn, then, you won't find many handicappers nowadays still reducing the quest for the Derby winner to the two dimensions of East and West Coasts. Paradoxically, however, I feel that a still better way to regenerate the Triple Crown trail lurks right at the other end of the spectrum.
Alydar started his Classic campaign over seven furlongs; so too, as it happens, did Afternoon Deelites. With Diana Firestone also among the week's obituaries, we might mention Honest Pleasure and Genuine Risk, who both resumed in sprints as well. That had long been standard procedure, for the old school, as a way of sharpening a horse without penetrating to a vulnerable margin of fitness.
I've often remarked on the dilution of the Derby since the willful exclusion of sprinters under the starting points system. Okay, so they finally managed a meltdown last year and so set up a historic aberration in every way. But otherwise the race has lately been dominated by those setting or sharing a pace shorn of raw sprint competition. And I do think that the Derby's status as the definitive test of the American Thoroughbred, identifying the kind of genes we should want to replicate, is suffering as a result.
Between trainers' dread of running horses at all, and the imperative to bank points when they actually do, we're ending up with the worst of both worlds. Remember that it was as recently as 2015 that Nyquist and Exaggerator cranked each other up over seven in the GII San Vicente S., in 1:20.7, and that didn't work out too badly on Derby day.
I really do think that loading a few points into the San Vicente and the GIII Swale S. would be a smart move by Churchill. Because it doesn't feel as though the model nowadays favored by trainers is working on too many levels. It certainly doesn't work for fans, who get a woefully condensed narrative and reduced engagement; it arguably doesn't help the horses, sent straight into the red zone when they can't be fully fit; and I'm not sure it's working for the Derby, either as a spectacle or as a signpost to genes that can carry meaningful speed.
In the meantime, aptitudes of more obvious pertinence to the Derby scenario will at least be examined in this crowd scene for the Risen Star. And wait, look at this: there's actually a horse in the field with eight starts to his name already. Determinedly (Cairo Prince) is followed here by the pair of Tapits he held off in an allowance last month, a performance rather too faintly praised because everyone had written a different script in advance. Actually this horse's own part keeps being rewritten, having started out on turf and apparently flirted with a return to sprinting. But maybe he can keep some of these flashier types honest, and help to measure the kind of talent Victory Formation (Tapwrit) will need to maintain his unbeaten record from a post out near Baton Rouge.
From a European perspective, it's always surprising that people should be so specific, almost dogmatic, about the optimality of dirt horses operating within so narrow a range. The way people talk, you would think that the poor creatures will drop clean off the edge of the world if venturing that crucial 1/16th too far.
That's why I like to see them given the chance to work on their all-around game, and develop different strengths. Because, if the oldest of Old Friends can be so susceptible even in the span of his years, then what limits might we be putting on the things they do in their prime?
Just six days after the passing of his owner Burt Bacharach, Afternoon Deelites, a six-time graded-stakes winner, was euthanized Feb. 14 at Old Friends, the Kentucky-based Thoroughbred retirement farm, due to complications from colic. He was 31.
Old Friends President and Founder Michael Blowen announced his passing Wednesday morning.
The dark bay stallion, who was the farm's oldest resident, was just two weeks shy of his 31st birth date.
Bred by Blue Seas Music Inc., the son of Private Terms–Intimate Girl, by Medaille d'Or, was foaled in West Virginia on Feb. 28, 1992. For his entire racing career he was owned by Bacharach, trained by Richard Mandella, and ridden by Kent Desormeaux. He ran nine of his 12 races at West Coast tracks.
Afternoon Deelites opened his racing career in spectacular fashion, winning his first five races between 1994 and 1995, four of them stakes races.
He broke his maiden as a 2-year old in 1994, winning a maiden special weight race at Santa Anita on Oct. 23. Next out, he won the GIII Hollywood Prevue Breeders' Cup S. to earn his first graded stakes win, and followed that up with a win in the GI Hollywood Futurity, defeating future Kentucky Derby winner Thunder Gulch.
In 1995 as a 3-year old, Afternoon Deelites continued his winning streak with victories in the GIII San Vicente Breeders' Cup S. and the GII San Felipe S. His final win in 1995 was in the GI Malibu S. He was second in the GI Santa Anita Derby, and eighth in the GI Kentucky Derby.
At four, Afternoon Deelites won one of his four races, the GII Commonwealth Breeders' Cup S. at Keeneland. In his final career start, he finished second in the GI Metropolitan H. at Belmont Park on May 27.
Following that race, Afternoon Deelites was retired with seven wins, three seconds, and $1,061,193 in earnings in 12 career starts. He won six of the 11 graded stakes in which he ran..
Afternoon Deelites began his stud career in 1997 at Brereton Jones's Airdrie Stud in Midway, KY, and stood there through 2003. He then moved to Clear Creek Stud, LLC, in Folsom, LA, where he stood the rest of his career.
His top progeny included graded stakes winners Zappa, Three Hour Nap, and Miss Pickums. He also sired recently deceased Old Friends retiree Popcorn Deelites, who starred in the 2003 movie Seabiscuit, based on the best-selling book by Laura Hillenbrand.
Afternoon Deelites was pensioned in 2011, and sent to Old Friends courtesy of Val Murrell of Clear Creek Stud.
“Afternoon Deelites was a beautiful friend,” said Blowen. “I remember Kent Desormeaux standing in front of his stall a few years ago saying 'Michael, I won the Kentucky Derby on Real Quiet, Fusaichi Pegasus, and Big Brown, and this is the fastest horse I ever rode.' And he was one of the best retirees who ever called Old Friends home.
“Thanks to Burt, his ex-wife, Angie Dickinson, and his widow, Jane, for loving Afternoon Deelites as much as we did.”
