Bloodlines Presented By Iowa Thoroughbred Breeders And Owners Association: Saratoga Sprint Stars Trace Back To Seattle Slew

In addition to exceptional speed, Gamine (by Into Mischief) and Yaupon (Uncle Mo) share some other factors. In pedigree most notably, both are male-line representatives of Lord Derby's famed stallion Phalaris through his grandson Nearco, thence through Nearco's sons Nasrullah (Yaupon) and Nearctic (Gamine).

The winners of the Grade 1 Ballerina Handicap and Forego Stakes at Saratoga descend from the epochal 20th century sire Phalaris not only in the male line but also through numerous collateral lines in their pedigrees.

And in the bottom halves of their pedigrees, their dam's half of the pedigree tree, is the name of a Phalaris-line horse who became one of the hottest “secrets” of the 1976 racing season with his morning works at Saratoga. The dark brown, nearly black, son of the first-season sire Bold Reasoning had an unfamiliar name and was trained by a relatively unknown conditioner named Bill Turner.

Seattle Slew, his trainer, and the members of the Slew Crew did not stay unfamiliar.

The burly, dark-coated colt was delighting clockers at Saratoga with works that allegedly included at least one three-furlong move in :33 and change that was reported as a time more expected from an unraced 2-year-old.

Clockers, who are paid something less than brain surgeons, were as reluctant as anyone to let a good thing go by without making the most of it, but Seattle Slew was one of the worst-kept secrets of the Saratoga backside that summer of 1976.

A knock in a stall kept the colt from starting at the Spa, but when he was unveiled at Belmont Park on Sept. 20, Seattle Slew was the favorite at 5-to-2. He won by five lengths.

The colt's next race was a solid allowance victory on Oct. 5, but Seattle Slew's third start came only 11 days later in the Champagne Stakes at a mile. Favored at slightly more than even money, Seattle Slew was quickly away from the gate, made every pole a winning one, and cruised home the victor by 9 3/4 lengths.

That race elevated 'Slew' to a sports celebrity, and even among fans relatively removed from the racetrack, the colt became a focus of great interest to professionals and novices alike.

A champion at two after those three dominating performances, Seattle Slew returned at three to win his prep races and the Triple Crown without defeat, then lost the Swaps Stakes to J.O. Tobin (Never Bend) and did not race again until four.

Horse of the Year and champion 3-year-old in 1977, Seattle Slew returned to racing from a 10-month layoff in May 1978 with a new trainer, Doug Peterson. The dashing colt had lost none of his ability but managed to lose the Paterson Handicap to Dr. Patches (Dr. Fager), who was in receipt of 14 pounds, and as a result, Seattle Slew was not favored in his next start, the Marlboro Cup, where he met 1978 Triple Crown winner Affirmed (Exclusive Native) for the first time.

Although not favorite for the only time in his career, Seattle Slew raced to victory in the Marlboro Cup over nine furlongs in patented style, going to the front and setting quick, steady fractions and maintaining them throughout. The half-mile was :47, the six furlongs in 1:10 1/5, the mile in 1:33 3/5, and the finish at nine furlongs in 1:45 4/5. Affirmed was second by three lengths and simply could not gain on his competitor.

So Harbor View Farm sat out the Woodward Stakes, where Seattle Slew performed the same sort of summary execution, racing in front the whole way and winning by four lengths in 2:00 for the 10 furlongs. The very high-class multi-surface performer Exceller (Vaguely Noble) was second, 6 3/4 lengths ahead of the third horse.

When the champions reconvened in two weeks for the Jockey Club Gold Cup at 12 furlongs, Seattle Slew set off to do the same thing again, but Affirmed's saddle slipped, and Harbor View Farm's chestnut champion raced to the fore (along with stablemate Life's Hope) and challenged Seattle Slew head to head through the first three-quarters of the Gold Cup with fractions of :22 3/5, :45 1/5, and 1:09 2/5.

Those fractions finished both Affirmed and Life's Hope, but Seattle Slew kept on as Exceller closed the gap between, then raced ahead by at least a half-length at one point in the stretch. Seattle Slew, under Angel Cordero, came back and missed winning the race by a nose.

A winner in 14 of 17 starts, Seattle Slew had proved his speed and gameness to fans, historians, and notably to breeders, many of whom supported him well when he went to stud the following spring at Spendthrift Farm.

From the champion's first crop came champions Landaluce and Slew o' Gold, from his second crop came champion and classic winner Swale. A success from the start, Seattle Slew has become an important factor for strong bodies, solid bone, and high speed in the racehorse.

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Body & Soul: Hey Sport, How Ya Doin’?

Your correspondent distinctly remembers interviewing a youngish financial guru over lunch at The Palm Court at the Plaza Hotel on Central Park West. It was in 1977, and it was shortly after Seattle Slew won the Triple Crown, something one doesn't forget.

What sticks in our mind, however, was not the interview. Rather he went on a rave about “Slew” after our chat uncovered a mutual obsession with the sport. We tossed out that he might be judged a “freak” by blue-blooded observers, upon which my tablemate provocatively opined that, “No, he's not a freak, he's a 'sport.'”

That caused an eyebrow to arch. We'd come across the term in biology class in college and while subsequently covering a wide variety of sports as a journalist and statistician. However, in 2021 we found this definition in the Macmillan Dictionary: “A sport is a plant or animal that is different in a noticeable way from other plants or animals of the same type.” Not exactly “part of the in-crowd,” maybe a bit of an outlier.

Rather than get into a spat over semantics, our opinion was exactly the opposite: Seattle Slew was what you might imagine would be the result if you bred his fifth dam Myrtlewood to his great grandsire Bold Ruler–he was a replica and thereby the culmination in the perfection of a physical type. He was “part of the in-crowd,” so to speak. But he was no “sport.”

This all comes to mind because of our continual research into how Thoroughbred functionality as expressed in biomechanics and pedigree research can be combined to produce insights into how the breed has evolved and, perhaps, what we can look forward to in the future. In this respect we adhere to the underlying theses set forth by Dr. Franco Varola, by virtue of the titles of his two books: The Typology of the Racehorse (1974) and The Functional Development of the Thoroughbred (1979).

Varola's development of the Dosage system has been misinterpreted by many as a pedigree tool first and foremost. In fact, he developed the system based on how the offspring of stallions performed, what types they produced, how those types functioned, how they influenced the breed typologically–i.e., biomechanically. Along the way the functionality accrued to the pedigrees, but to date there has really been no detailed research into how the two arts (or, scientific arts) have interacted–or could.

We have no issue with pedigree research or utilizing a Dosage system as a basis or supplement to insight. But what sparked our interest of late is that in going through our biomechanical database, we discovered that in the past 30 years there has been one epochal and three additional extraordinary stallions which when they retired to stud were not considered in any biomechanical or pedigree sense “part of the crowd.” They were considered somewhat like outliers. They are their own crowd phenotypically.

A bit of background here: It is axiomatic that a species has a best chance of survival if the breeding population develops leaders whose physical properties adapt to and survive challenges to their environments–ergo, the strong survive. In Thoroughbreds, one wants a balance of power for speed, stride or extension for flexibility, and body weight that neither runs out of gas sprinting (too heavy) or going long (too light).

Phenotype charts tend to place the most consistent breeders close to the center of a target–the more balanced the phenotype, the more likely it will pass on quality.

Our research has shown this to be extremely consistent–indeed, leading sires were usually very well balanced physically and were usually by excellent stallions and had historically successful family trees. Crucially, however, they were of certain types with one or two biomechanical properties that produced runners who could compete at the top levels within the demands of racing programs and market preferences at the time.

For example, the racing programs through the end of the 1970s were geared toward prepping horses for the Classics and handicap races. One of the key properties that was consistent in stallions in those days was that the combination of gears through the hip, or rump if you will, were almost always of the same lengths.

The congruency of these body parts equals balance and strength. If one of them is longer, the function provided by that part of the gears would more than likely help define the racing aptitude of the horse. Up until the 1980s, the only one of those gears that was most often longer than the others was the tibia–whose function was to provide strong, steady closing power–which was what owners of Classic and handicap horses prized.

Beginning in the 1980s and increasingly with the blending of successful European racehorses into North America we saw something more often associated with horses that excelled on the turf–the tibia was shorter than the ilium and femur. This functionality is the biomechanical explanation behind the word “kick.” The shorter the tibia, the more quickly the horse was likely to move late, more likely on the turf at any distance. The longer the ilium, the more pronounced a horse's downhill motion could be generated. The longer the femur, the stronger the thrust toward flexible speed.

Rarely, if ever, had we seen a major commercial sire prospect enter the stud with either the ilium or femur longer or shorter than the tibia–and, more importantly, few of them ever appeared among the leading sires. However, the demands of the marketplace caused breeders to alter their selection processes and, even if they were unaware of biomechanical implications, what happened is that half of the leading lifetime sires of 2020 had “mixed” rear triangles. However, they are almost all completely different from each other phenotypically and most of them are backed by extremely commercial pedigrees.

Then two in 2005 and another in 2012 with completely different pedigrees showed up with rear triangles that were completely different than what we were used to–and they were almost identical to each other phenotypically. Even more remarkable was the fact that they are virtually identical phenotypically to the qualities a previous “sport” brought to the breeding shed in the 1980s. His name was Storm Cat: his rear triangles were evenly balanced but, wow, did they deliver.

Remarkably, none of them look like you would have expected based on their sires or their broodmare sires. None comes from a distaff family that until they came along could have wedged close relatives into select portions of yearling or mixed sales. Functionally as racehorses they were brilliant miler-middle distance types–brilliance accentuated by one or more rear triangle lengths being longer or shorter than the tibia.

Does Medaglia d'Oro remind you of El Prado (Ire) or his broodmare sire Bailjumper?

Does Candy Ride (Arg) remind you of his rangy paternal grandsire Cryptoclearance or his blocky broodmare sire Candy Stripes?

Does Uncle Mo remind you of Indian Charlie or Arch?

Each is his own man, and each reproduces a replica often enough so that he has become an influencer.

Looks like they are making “sports history.”

   Bob Fierro is a partner with Jay Kilgore and Frank Mitchell in DataTrack International, biomechanical consultants and developers of BreezeFigs. He can be reached at bbfq@earthlink.net.

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Bargain Buy Medina Spirit More Than Paying His Way Thus Far

Medina Spirit could become one of racing's all-time bargains.

Whether he will someday rank with the likes of Carry Back and Seattle Slew in that category, only time will tell, but at this early point, he is moving in the right direction.

For the record, Carry Back, who won the Kentucky Derby in 1961, was obtained for tip money, a $700 investment, $400 of it a stud fee to a nondescript stallion named Saggy, whose solitary moment of racing glory came in an upset of 1948 Triple Crown king Citation in the Chesapeake Trial Stakes that year.

Carry Back raced an incredible 21 times as a two-year-old. A stone closer, the plain brown colt retired with 21 wins, 11 seconds and 11 thirds from 61 starts. He earned $1,241,165 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1975.

Seattle Slew was purchased for $17,500, became the first undefeated Triple Crown winner in 1977 when he was Horse of the Year and earned $1,208,726 from a career record of 14 wins and two seconds in 17 starts. Going on half a century later, he remains a gold standard among Thoroughbred greats both as a race horse and a stallion.

Although he has already earned more than three times his purchase price of $35,000, Medina Spirit has miles to run before reaching the lofty pinnacles of Carry Back and Seattle Slew.

His connections are optimistic, however. One is private clocker and bloodstock agent Gary Young, who purchased the Florida-bred son of the Giant's Causeway stallion Protonico for owner Amr Zedan as a two-year-old in training at last year's Ocala Breeders' Sale.

“Mr. Zedan had given me $2 million to spend and I had exceeded the budget,” said Young, 59, a clocker since he was 18 and an agent for more than 30 years. His best buy to date was 1993 Breeders' Cup Juvenile champion Brocco, who raced for the late Albert and Dana Broccoli, producers of the iconic James Bond movies.

“Because of Covid and because it was July, the sale did not have as much depth as usual,” Young said. “At the end of six days with six-hour daily previews I would usually have looked at 50 to 80 horses; I saw 10.

“After the previews, Mr. Zedan called me and asked if I remembered seeing a horse by Protonico and I told him, yes, that horse made my list. He asked me to look at the horse again, and I did. He was OK, but he wasn't going to be the sales topper or anything.

“Protonico raced about 10 years ago when trained by Todd Pletcher, and was owned by Mr. Zedan's friend, Oussama Aboughazale, who has a breeding operation called International Equities Holding in Kentucky where Princess Noor was bred.”

Both men are from a city in Saudi Arabia called Medina, which as a girl's name is of Arabic origin meaning “city of the Prophet,” and is where Muhammad began his campaign to establish Islam.

“Protonico had a very small crop and Medina Spirit was the only one of his progeny at the sale,” Young said. “He had worked three-eighths in 33 flat which was decent time, but he had a nice rhythm and a stride like a route horse. Mr. Zedan asked what I thought and I said, 'Buy him.'

“We did the barn check, did the vet check with my doctor, Pug Hart, everything was in order and we bought him for $35,000, which is 2.5 percent of what we paid for Princess Noor (now retired due to a soft tissue injury after a brief but sensational racing career for Bob Baffert).

“Medina Spirit went to Baffert's assistant Mike Marlow at Los Alamitos, and Mike is brutally honest, and he has to be because he's preparing these horses for Baffert.

“Mike said the horse kept surprising him because he was outworking more expensive and better-bred horses and definitely holding his own.

“They brought him to Santa Anita, Bob worked him out of the gate with Life Is Good a couple of times, and he got beat as expected, but he didn't get disgraced, and I kind of thought to myself, this might make a man out of him. After that, Bob worked him with a couple other horses and he handled them, didn't get discouraged or anything.

“When he ran at Los Alamitos (winning his debut race by three lengths at 5 ½ furlongs last Dec. 11), we thought he'd be even-money and he was 3-1. He won pretty easy, but his second (by three-quarters of a length behind Life Is Good) in the Sham at one mile is what really opened our eyes as to how good he was.

“He was stretching out after one 5 ½ furlong race with one five-eighths work in between at 1:02 to go a mile against Life Is Good, and he ran his butt off. Whether he would have passed him or not is open to debate, but you can't deny he did run unbelievably considering he didn't have a whole lot of preparation for the race.

“We didn't want him in front (in the Lewis). When they hung a 46 and three (46.61 for a half mile), I thought he was finished, because 46 and three on that track was like 45 and change.

“He was about a length in front from the one hole in the Sham with a really easy run to the turn. In the Lewis, he broke half a step slow and Abel (Cedillo) kind of punched him a little and he was gone. He wasn't a runoff, but he definitely had his mind on running.

“When they went 46 and three, I didn't think we had much chance, and when the two horses (late-running Roman Centurian, second by a neck, and Hot Rod Charlie, a nose further back in third) came to him at the eighth pole, I didn't think we had much chance, either.

“But the horse obviously has a lot of fight in him. He showed an amazing amount of heart. He had every right the next day to be lying down in his stall and sleeping the way he ran, but he wasn't.

“Whether we'll go one start or two starts before the Kentucky Derby, we'll figure that out. I'd prefer to have him running at a horse like he did in the Sham as opposed how he ran in the Lewis, but that's how the race came up. Still, they weren't even passing him after the wire, either, and the two horses behind him are OK.

“Roman Centurian can definitely make some noise down the road.”

That might be true, but he won't be any bargain.

He cost $550,000.

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Doug Peterson’s Son Wins in MLB Debut

David Peterson, the son of Doug Peterson, who trained Seattle Slew during his 4-year-old year, had a night to remember Tuesday as he was the winning pitcher in his MLB debut.

Peterson, 24, led the Mets to an 8-3 win over the lowly Boston Red Sox.

“This is one of the greatest days of my life,” Peterson said. “This is something I’ve wanted to do since I was a little kid, and to go out there and make my first major league start, we got the win and I couldn’t have asked for much more.”

Doug Peterson, just 26 at the time, was a little known trainer when Seattle Slew’s owners called on him to take over for the fired Billy Turner. Peterson guided Slew to wins in the GI Marlboro Cup, the GI Woodward and the GIII Stuyvesant H. He was named champion older male of 1978.

Peterson’s story ended in tragedy in 2004 when he died of an accidental drug overdose. David, his only child, was nine at the time. David subsequently moved to Colorado, where he was raised by his grandmother.

Peterson, who is 6′ foot 6″, two inches taller than his father, was taken in the first round of the draft by the Mets in 2017. He was a standout pitcher at the University of Oregon.

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