Morello Seeks Graded Glory in Gotham

Morello (Classic Empire) looks to take his perfect record to three-for-three and take his first steps down the GI Kentucky Derby trail in Aqueduct's GIII Gotham S. Saturday. A dominant debut winner going six panels at this oval Nov. 27, the $250,000 EASMAY purchase ran to the money with a five-length score in the Big A's Jimmy Winkfield S. Feb. 6.

“Morello looks like he could potentially be something special,” Dave Lyon of Blue Lion Thoroughbreds said. “I think it's just a perfect race set up for a horse like him, where you're going to take your time and see what he can do. Past the wire, it looks like he can get further out there. Seeing him calm in the winner's circle tells me he has more left in the tank.”

Todd Pletcher also saddles an unbeaten runner in this event in Dean's List (Speightstown). The chestnut drew off to a 5 1/2-length graduation despite some greeness in his Dec. 11 unveiling at Gulfstream and wired an optional claimer there last out Jan. 8. Both races were run over six furlongs. Pletcher also saddles Calumet Farm's Golden Code (Honor Code). Runner-up to Bold Journey (Hard Spun) in a state-bred event here Dec. 18, he crushed his fellow Empire-breds by 10 3/4 lengths next out in the mud at this oval Feb. 5.

“I like the way he's been training and he's put in some gallop outs that suggest he is going to be able to handle a stretch out in distance–that's what we're trying to find out here and I feel the one-turn mile is a good way to do it and gradually stretch him out a little bit,” Pletcher said of Dean's List.

Rockefeller (Medaglia d'Oro) returns to the Big Apple in search of another victory Saturday. Opening his account at Del Mar Aug. 28, the Bob Baffert pupil was fourth to champion stablemate Corniche (Quality Road) in the GI American Pharoah S. at Santa Anita Oct. 1. Wiring the GIII Nashua S. at Belmont last time he visited New York Nov. 7, the $750,000 KEESEP buy checked in second to stablemate Newgrange (Violence) in the GIII Sham S. in Arcadia Jan. 1.

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A New Puncher for Violence

The new year could scarcely have opened in more familiar fashion, with Bob Baffert not only winning the GIII Sham S. for an eighth time but replicating what had meanwhile become a bitterly poignant 1-2 in the race last year.

Hopefully the names of Newgrange (Violence) and Rockefeller (Medaglia d'Oro) will not end 2022 quite so explosively freighted as those of Life Is Good (Into Mischief) and Medina Spirit (Protonico), whose respective transfer and tragedy have meanwhile become so expressive of the travails not only of their trainer, but of our entire industry.

But the levels subsequently achieved by both those colts certainly reiterated the caliber of animal Baffert reserves for this race, which was 12 months earlier chosen to launch a Horse of the Year campaign for Authentic (Into Mischief). Newgrange is duly guaranteed much attention in his quest to become the third consecutive GI Kentucky Derby winner (pending resolution of Medina Spirit's status) to graduate from the Sham.

We won't add, here, to the oceans of ink that will continue to flow on the ineligibility of Newgrange, as a resident of a barn banned by Churchill Downs, for the 10 Derby starting points that are supposed to be bestowed on the Sham winner. Instead let's just take a step back and consider what Newgrange's pedigree tells us about his potential; and what his emergence might do for the profile of his sire.

Violence has had an interesting stud career already, not least with his best horses to this point sharing what might seem an unexpected vocation as sprinters–albeit we should know, by this stage, not to make assumptions about the way his own sire, the beautiful Medaglia d'Oro, has channeled the legacy of an avowed turf influence in El Prado (Ire).

Though confined to just four starts, Violence was able to show a versatility of his own in terms of surface. Having started out on dirt in New York, winning on debut at Saratoga and then following up in the GII Nashua S., he shipped out to Hollywood Park to win the GI Futurity S. on synthetics.

Violence as a 2-year-old winning the Nashua | Jessica Hansen

Collared only by the subsequent Derby winner in the GII Fountain of Youth S., he unfortunately emerged out of that first defeat with a sesamoid fracture. Retired to Hill 'n' Dale at $15,000, Violence soon proved the star of the intake. Though he missed the 2017 freshman title by a few cents–the fortunes of champion Overanalyze, long since exported, stand in cautionary contrast–he was top by winners, and was rewarded by no fewer than 214 mares at a new fee of $25,000 the following spring. His maturing stock promptly elevated him to No. 1 second-crop sire across all indices, with eight stakes winners and 19 stakes performers. His third crop of yearlings borrowed that buzz, at an average $133,600, and his fee was hiked anew to $40,000.

But Violence then suffered a little stage fright. In 2019, he mustered just two stakes winners, and his yearling average sagged to $44,649. With his fee restored to $25,000 for 2020, Violence then steadied the ship with a spectacular, game-saving cluster of Grade I wins by colts from three different crops. The sophomore No Parole gave him a breakout success in the Woody Stephens S.; lightly raced 4-year-old Volatile added the Alfred G. Vanderbilt S.; and, though that colt was soon derailed, juvenile Dr. Schivel kept the conveyor turning in the Del Mar Futurity.

Dr. Schivel proved a crucial ally in 2021, too, ensuring that Violence's solitary graded success of the year came at the highest level in the Bing Crosby S., while only missing the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint by a nose. In the meantime, moreover, Violence had retrieved all his commercial energy. His 2020 yearlings rallied to $72,128, obviously in a challenging market; while his latest crop was right up to $116,352, crowned by a $950,000 colt sold to Repole Stables and St. Elias at the September Sale. (Auspiciously, his previous knockout score at auction, at $850,000, had turned out to be Volatile.)

Dr. Schivel (outside) in this year's Bing Crosby | Benoit

That represents superb consolidation by a horse emerging from a tricky crossroads, and reflects twin factors: one, obviously, is the vogue generated by those three Grade I winners; the other is that his 2021 yearlings graduate from that single season at $40,000, when he covered 171 mares presumably deemed worthy of a raised fee.

The overall momentum of Violence is reflected in the way his book, having slipped to 86 after his tepid racetrack campaign in 2019, rallied last spring to 159. So while he does have a small bump in the road ahead, in terms of his likely juvenile footprint for 2023, the overall “pipeline” is looking pretty good: his sophomores for this year represent his biggest book; and his incoming juveniles, his best.

The big question raised by Newgrange is whether Violence can now add a two-turn, Classic dimension to his most accomplished stock. As we've noted, Medaglia d'Oro has long proved an influence for diversity–in terms of discipline as well as surface, with Astern (Aus), Vancouver (Aus) and Warrior's Reward among his leading sprinters. Besides his sire line, another factor could be the duplication of his sixth dam, Greentree matriarch Sunday Evening, behind his granddam, whose sire is out of one of her daughters. Besides recurring in the pedigree of several fast horses, notably Irish champion sprinter Bluebird (Storm Bird), Sunday Evening is also an ancestress of other luminous turf runners in Indian Skimmer (Storm Bird) and Henrythenavigator (Kingmambo).

Storm Bird, responsible for both Bluebird and Indian Skimmer in this family, obviously gave us a huge “crossover” influence in Storm Cat. And it was Storm Cat's serial matings with Hall of Famer Sky Beauty (Blushing Groom {Fr}) that gave us the second dam of Violence. Sky Beauty's Grade I-winning dam Maplejinsky, in turn, was by the venerable turf/stamina influence Nijinsky, while also being a half-sister to the flying Dayjur (Danzig). (Literally flying, in terms of his unforgettable transition to dirt at the Breeders' Cup.) Their dam Gold Beauty, a champion sprinter by Mr. Prospector, whose son Gone West is sire of Violence's dam–admittedly one of the weaker links in this regal maternal line, with a solitary success in a nine-furlong dirt maiden at four.

Bottom line is that there are strands here that would certainly make it feasible for Violence to stretch out his stock: his own sire has obviously given us some real monsters round two turns, unsurprisingly as a grandson of Sadler's Wells; while Maplejinsky also features behind some pretty sturdy operators (third dam of Point of Entry {Dynaformer}, for example). But the propensity of Violence to throw very fast horses, to this point, is equally coherent on both sides of his pedigree. So while he does have a Grade I winner over 10 furlongs in Argentina, it appears instructive that one of his first stars, Talk Veuve To Me, ended up reverting to sprints despite some pretty stout influences in her family.

Hill 'n' Dale's Violence | Sarah Andrew

Of course, a reputation for speed does Violence no commercial harm at all. But what are the prospects of Newgrange, who won his maiden at six and was not pressured at a mile, stretching out on the Derby trail?

Well, it will certainly help if he keeps getting the same obliging treatment accorded to so many Baffert speed horses. Newgrange was only the latest to be so indulged, setting leisurely fractions in the Sham and duly retaining ample gas to assert in the stretch.

One thing we can say for sure is that he was well found as a yearling, for $125,000 by SF/Starlight/Madaket (subsequently joined on the racecard by several other powerful interests) as deep as Hip 2474 in the Brookdale Sales consignment at the September Sale. He was co-bred with Jack Mandato by Black Rock Stables, who had raced Violence and evidently retain a stake in his stud career despite meanwhile dispersing much other stock.

Newgrange is out of the unraced Empire Maker mare Bella Chianti, herself co-bred with Stone Farm from Mandato's extremely useful and tough racemare Bella Chiarra (Phone Trick), winner of nine of 29 starts (chiefly around 8/9f) including the GII Rampart H. at Gulfstream.

All five of Bella Chianti's foals to have raced have won, albeit only Newgrange at a smart level. More auspicious, perhaps, is the fact that her full-sister, though herself a modest performer, is the dam of the tragic Amalfi Sunrise (Constitution), lost to laminitis after winning her only two starts a couple of years ago, including the GII Sorrento S. by six lengths. We'll never know how far Amalfi Sunrise might have stretched out, but she did look extremely brisk on what we saw. That makes it hard to be adamant that her dam's sister will be putting much of their sire's Belmont-winning stamina into the Newgrange equation. (Be that as it may, Empire Maker certainly has an increasing legacy as a broodmare sire, newly enhanced in 2021 by Silver State {Hard Spun}, Mandaloun {Into Mischief} and Rock Your World {Candy Ride (Arg)}.)

Medaglia d'Oro | Darley

Newgrange's third dam is a stakes-sprinting daughter of the obscure Maryland sire Count Brook out of a modest mare by an unraced son of Nearco (Ity) imported from Britain, River War (GB). Nonetheless she produced a couple of other accomplished performers besides Bella Chiarra: a dual graded stakes winner on turf, David Copperfield (Halo), plus the hardy Young At Heart, twice beaten only narrowly in Grade II dirt sprints–despite being by Ferdinand.

You have to go back quite a long way to find where this trio might have dredged any genetic class: to the 1922 foal Primrose, in fact, as a Jerome H.-winning half-sister to a Travers winner. And, even as one who likes to unpick the deeper mesh of pedigrees, I'm not going to suggest that Newgrange must owe an awful lot to his eighth dam!

The real nugget on Newgrange's page is plainly his granddam Bella Chiarra–and her sire Phone Trick, obviously a very quick horse himself, owes his principal broodmare laurels to two horses, Zensational and Dawn Approach (Ire), who were unusually dashing for sons of Unbridled's Song and New Approach (Ire), respectively.

The onus remains on Violence, then, to show that his glossy physical stamp relays not just speed but speed that can be carried at the highest level. Clearly Newgrange couldn't be in better hands, for those purposes. As such, he looks like an important horse in his sire's developing career.

With that pedigree behind him, and that robust physique out front, Violence is not just positioning himself as an affordable alternative to his sire. Arguably the three premier achievers by Medaglia d'Oro are two females, Rachel Alexandra and Songbird, and a gelding, Golden Sixty (Aus). While he's still reliably coming up with class horses, and Rockefeller may yet become another, Medaglia d'Oro has now turned 23 and his principal male heir has yet to be definitively anointed. Violence does face fresh competition, from the likes of Bolt d'Oro and Higher Power, but Newgrange could be the herald of a decisive new phase in his candidature.

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Jockey Of The Week: Flavien Prat Kicks Off The New Year With Six-Win Day At Santa Anita

Nothing short of outstanding would describe Flavien Prat's day at Santa Anita on Jan. 1. His record for the 10-race card was six wins and four seconds which resulted in being voted Jockey of the Week for Dec. 27 through Jan. 2. The honor, which is voted on by a panel of racing experts, is for jockeys who are members of the Jockeys' Guild, the organization which represents more than 1050 active, retired and permanently disabled jockeys in the United States.

For the third time in his career at Santa Anita, Prat won six races on a single card but on Saturday, he also finished second on his other four mounts. His six wins came for six different trainers.

After finishing second in the first race, he won the second race, a Maiden Special Weight for trainer Peter Eurton aboard Queen of Thorns. For trainer Ruben Alvarado in the third race, Prat was aboard Smuggler's Run for the win in a Maiden Special Weight. He finished second in the 4th race for trainer Doug O'Neill. Prat was back to his winning ways in the 5th, a Maiden Claiming event for trainer Steve Miyadi with Mad Steven.

Two second place finishes in stakes races followed: the Grade 2 Joe Hernandez riding for trainer Mark Glatt on Beer Can Man and in the G3 Sham on Rockefeller for Bob Baffert. The rest of the card belonged to Prat.

Trainer Richard Baltas gave a leg up to Prat on Luck in the G3 Robert J. Frankel. Off as the favorite in the field of seven, Luck rallied to the front in the final furlong to win by 3 1/4 lengths in 1:48.26 for the nine-furlong turf event.

His easiest win came next in the G3 La Canada for Bob Baffert aboard As Time Goes By. Sitting just off the pacesetting Park Avenue, As Time Goes By took command a quarter-mile from the finish and powered home by 13-1/2 lengths in 1:44.31 for the 1 1/16-mile race.

To put an exclamation point on the day, Prat won the 10th and final Allowance Optional Claiming race on Riding with Dino for trainer Bob Hess, Jr.

“I was picked on top in almost every race, so I guess I messed up a few,” Prat said, laughing to the Daily Racing Form. “I was picked so much, I had a lot of pressure.”

To end the weekend, Prat won two races on Sunday including the Blue Norther Stakes on Bellabel (IRE) for trainer Phil D'Amato.

Prat's weekly statistics were 27-10-9-3 with total purse earnings of $651,956 to top all riders.

Prat's competition for Jockey of the Week included Kendrick Carmouche who won three stakes races during the week, Tyler Gaffalione who also won three stakes races, Luis Saez with 12 wins for the week and John Velazquez who won the G3 Sham.

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Newgrange, Rockefeller Give Baffert 1-2 Finish In Sham, But Neither Horse Earns Kentucky Derby Points

Ho hum.

Another year, another bevy of top-shelf 3-year-old colts for trainer Bob Baffert.  That was the storyline at Santa Anita in Arcadia, Calif., on Saturday, as Baffert runners Newgrange and Rockefeller ran one-two throughout in the Grade 3, $100,000 Sham Stakes for 3-year-olds at one mile, giving him three consecutive wins in the Sham and eight overall.  Ridden to victory by John Velazquez, who collected his third stakes win on the fourth day of the meet, Newgrange, who slowed things down nicely, prevailed by 2 ¾ lengths and got the distance in 1:38.32 after fractions of :24.46, :48.94, 1:12.84 and 1:25.27.

With post time favorite Rockefeller drawn to his immediate outside, the Baffert pair were hustled from the gate but quickly settled into nice rhythm, with Newgrange maintaining a one-length advantage leaving the three-furlong pole and he was in complete command turning for home.

The third choice at 5-2, Newgrange, who was a first-out maiden winner going six furlongs under Velazquez Nov. 28 at Del Mar, paid $7.40.

No match for his stablemate late, Rockefeller held off a fast finishing Oviatt Class by a nose for second and paid $2.60 and $2.20 as the 3-2 favorite with Flavien Prat.

“There was one speed, the other Bob Baffert horse (Rockefeller) and I'm pretty sure he didn't want them in a head and head,” Velazquez said. “He told me to put my horse on the lead. Once my horse got to the lead he waited. I took a little hold of him and he kind of started waiting for the horses, so I started waiting for the horses to come to him, by the time we got to the backside I kind of let him do his own thing. I let him get in a comfortable rhythm, after that it was pretty easy though.

“He's so green,” the rider added, “he feels like he got on by himself, he was waiting for horses so, I had to give him a little reminder to keep his mind on running and his gallop out was pretty good so it still seems like he's learning.”

In an encouraging performance, Oviatt Class finished well into slow splits and acts like a colt who could improve with added distance for trainer Keith Desormeaux.  Ridden by his brother Kent, Oviatt Class was off at 4-1 and paid $2.40 to show.

Although any Baffert runners are not now eligible for Kentucky Derby qualifying points – after Baffert-trained Medina Spirit failed a drug test following his first-place finish in the 2021 Kentucky Derby – the conditions of the race state that the winner is to receive 10 points, with four for second, two for third third, and one point for the fourth-place finisher, MacKinnon. Churchill Downs Inc., which runs the Derby at its flagship track in Louisville, Ky., has excluded Baffert horses from participating at any of its tracks through the end of the 2023 spring meeting at Churchill Downs and further stated the horses are not eligible for qualifying points if Baffert is their trainer.

Updated Kentucky Derby Leaderboard

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