Shared News | Horse Racing Free Tips

Sunday Insights: $1-Million Keeneland Grad Debuts at Gulfstream

Sponsored by Alex Nichols Agency

6th-GP, $55K, Msw, 3yo, f, 1m, post time: 3:41 p.m. EDT

Hall of Famer Bill Mott will unveil a big ticket in ZURI (Union Rags), a $1 million graduate of the 2019 Keeneland September sale who is looking to add to the monumental success already achieved by her dam, Zayanna (Bernardini). The mare's previous four foals are all stakes performers and include GISW Wicked Whisper (Liam's Map), as well as GSW & MGISP Point of Honor (Curlin). Zuri goes to post in the Godolphin colors as the co-highest priced yearling ever by her Classic-winning sire. Zayanna herself is a half-sister to three graded winners, including MGSW & MGISP Mr Freeze (To Honor and Serve). Zuri will face a trio of well-bred second timers, led by Burning Daylight Farms and Rebecca Galbraith's Dream About Me (Medaglia d'Oro)–a $450,000 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga yearling whose granddam and great-granddam are GISWs Mi Sueno (Pulpit) and Madcap Escapade (Hennessy), respectively; Humphrey/Farish homebred Skybox (Quality Road), a direct descendant of Canadian Horse of the Year and U.S. champion Dance Smartly (Danzig); and Repole Stable's Iced Latte (Pioneerof the Nile), a $250,000 Keeneland September buy who is the first foal to make it to the races out of GISW Malibu Prayer (Malibu Moon).

The post Sunday Insights: $1-Million Keeneland Grad Debuts at Gulfstream appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Saturday’s Insights: Code of Honor Sibling Returns Off Strong Debut

7th-GP, $55K, Msw, 3yo, 7f, 3:10 p.m. ET

BEARS WATCHING (Karakontie {Jpn}), a half-brother to MGISW Code of Honor (Noble Mission {GB}), looks to earn his diploma at second asking following a very good closing third on debut in the Gulfstream slop Feb. 6. The William S. Farish homebred, trained by Hall of Famer Shug McGaughey, finished two spots ahead of subsequent 'TDN Rising Star' Collaborate (Into Mischief) that day, who returned with a daylight maiden victory Feb. 27.

The field of 12 also includes $510,000 KEESEP graduate Stainless Steel (Quality Road), who makes his debut for WinStar Farm LLC and CHC INC., and trainer Rodolphe Brisset. TJCIS PPs

4th-OP, $93K, Msw, 3yo, 6f, 2:32 p.m. ET

A full field of 3-year-olds will line up in this deep contest.

CRYO (Frosted), a half-brother to MGSW and GI Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Sprint runner-up Dust and Diamonds (Vindication), debuts for Flurry Racing Stables LLC and David Flannigan, and trainer Brad Cox. He brought $185,000 as an OBS April juvenile (:21 3/5).

Fox Hill Farm's Battle Hymn (Tapit), a $500,000 KEESEP yearling produced by millionaire Gold Mover (Gold Fever), kicks off his career for Larry Jones.

The field also includes additional firsters of note: Cronus (Constitution) ($175,000 EASMAY); Golden Flash (Into Mischief) ($300,000 OBSAPR); and Title Shot (Union Rags) ($360,000 KEESEEP). TJCIS PPs

The post Saturday’s Insights: Code of Honor Sibling Returns Off Strong Debut appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Is Triple Tap the Next Heir to the Throne?

Littleprincessemma (Yankee Gentleman) may not have done much on the racetrack, but she has proven to be quite a blue hen in her broodmare career. All five of her foals to race are winners and four of them are graded stakes performers, topped by her second foal, Triple Crown winner and three-time champion American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile).

The mare affectionately known as “Emma” followed American Pharoah with his GISP full-sister American Cleopatra; a GSP full-brother named St. Patrick's Day; his Grade I-winning half-sister Chasing Yesterday (Tapit); and an unraced full-brother named Theprinceofthebes. Next in line is Emma's 3-year-old colt Triple Tap (Tapit), who looks to kick his career off on the right hoof in the second race at Santa Anita Saturday for owner/breeder Jane Lyon of Summer Wind Farm and Hall of Fame conditioner Bob Baffert, who trained all of his aforementioned siblings.

“I'm a nervous wreck,” said Lyon. “I did not know Bob [Baffert] was going to run him this quickly. He had said not that long ago that he was taking his time and it would be another month or more. Then he sent me a text the other day that said he was going to crack down on him a bit, which was just before his last work [5f :59 flat (1/68) at Santa Anita Mar. 7] (XBTV video). From what I could see with his work, it looked like [jockey] Flavien [Prat] never touched him.”

Saturday's race is a seven-furlong event for 3-year-olds and up. Triple Tap drew the outside post in this five-horse affair with Prat in the irons.

“I would have preferred to run him six furlongs, but that is the only race that was available, so I think he will be up for it,” Baffert said. “He drew well and it is a short field. He should be ready to run. He still needs racing luck and needs to break well. We should find out a lot about him, but he should be up for the task.”

Triple Tap–who received that name because he shares his Feb. 27 birthday with both his dam and sire–is making what many would consider a belated debut being it is March of his 3-year-old season. Lyon is known for being exceptionally patient and cautious with her horses, tending to them as a loving mother in no hurry to have her children leave the nest. She took her time before sending him to both Eddie Woods and Baffert and gave him extra time when he incurred a minor setback.

“He is late [making it to the races] because he got a minor injury–some bone bruising and a pulled ligament–when he was with Eddie Woods,” Lyon said. “We brought him home and gave him all the time he needed. We very slowly got him back going and sent him down to Bob's team at Los Al [in November].”

It has been all systems go since Triple Tap arrived in Baffert's barn. The strapping chestnut has posted a steady string of works, breezing alongside the likes of GSW Medina Spirit (Protonico) and GSP Freedom Fighter (Violence), among others.

“I have been breezing him with some nice horses and he has been right there,” Baffert said. “He was working heads up with Medina Spirit before Medina ran [second in the GII San Felipe S.] the other day and was holding his own.”

Baffert conditioned Triple Tap's aforementioned siblings for all or part of their careers, including, most recently, his full-sister Chasing Yesterday, who became the first Grade I winner to carry the Summer Wind colors in the GI Starlet S.

When asked how Triple Tap compared to his illustrious siblings, Baffert said, “They are all different. I had Chasing Yesterday, who was nice, but he has more body. I have seen him since he was a baby and he has always been a beautiful horse.”

It was more than his handsome physique that convinced Lyon to keep Triple Tap. As a breeder, the Arkansas native typically keeps well-bred fillies to add to her broodmare band as opposed to colts. But she has been making an exception to that practice recently, starting with Triple Tap, who, in addition to being out of a Lyon's most prized mare, proved to be exceptional right from the start.

“He was very special from day one,” Lyon said. “I thought I would just take a chance with him. He has been a very, very special horse to me. I entertained selling half of him, so I could hang on to him. I had a lot of interest and several offers, but in the end I decided to just keep him myself. If he can run, I can entertain people wanting in on him then.”

The horsewoman continued, “There was a picture that came up on my Facebook just a couple of days ago after his work, it was a memory of Triple Tap as just a little foal. He was standing all by himself in a paddock and you can't see Emma anywhere. He was just standing there looking at the camera and it reminded me of why I kept him. He always had this aura about him and this confidence, like he knew he was somebody. So, I guess we are going to find out if he is.”

Lyon purchased Littleprincessemma for $2.1-million at the 2014 Fasig-Tipton November Sale. She was carrying a full-brother to American Pharoah, who had just been forced to miss the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile with a foot issue, but had already done enough to clinch the Eclipse award for top 2-year-old male.

The resulting foal was St. Patrick's Day, who is the only one of Emma's foals that Lyon has parted with since purchasing her, selling the colt privately to Coolmore. Next came Lyon's beloved Chasing Yesterday, who recently produced her first foal, a Curlin filly. She was followed by Theprinceofthebes, another full-brother to American Pharoah, who is now 4-years-old.

“I ended up keeping the full-brother to American Pharoah, kind of by default, because he crushed a growth plate in a front ankle,” Lyon said. “We hoped that he could make it [to the races] and he showed us a lot of promise [in his training], but he got another injury and we just brought him home, so he will be here. I keep hoping maybe somebody will want to breed to him.”

Following Triple Tap, Emma produced a pair of Tapit fillies, the 2-year-old Lasting Tribute and the yearling Sunrise Service. Both will remain with Lyon and Lasting Tribute is currently in Ocala, beginning her training with Woods. Emma is expecting a full-brother to Triple Tap in April.

“I have only bred Emma to Tapit since she produced Triple Tap because the foals have just been so beautiful, athletic and basically problem free,” Lyon said. “If in fact, Triple Tap can live up to even what his sister [Chasing Yesterday] did, I think that it would be very hard for me to go anywhere else with the mare. It seems to be a cross that–at least physically–is working with Emma.”

Lyon will be in attendance at Santa Anita Saturday to see for herself if Triple Tap can follow in his beloved sister's–or maybe even half-brother's–hoofprints. With those bloodlines and Baffert at the helm, anything is possible. Let's not forget, Justify did not make his debut until Feb. 18 of his sophomore season and Arrogate made his first racetrack appearance Apr. 17 of his 3-year-old year. As Lyon said, “There is always hope.”

The post Is Triple Tap the Next Heir to the Throne? appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

This Side Up: River Levels Rising

They used to say that when you think you have two Epsom colts in your stable, you don't have any. The axiom has long since been decommissioned, however, by the skills of Aidan O'Brien and his patrons, albeit with the inane complicity of a commercial market that is disastrously diluting competition. And it looks as though it no longer transfers to the GI Kentucky Derby, either.

Having (eventually) landed running with champion Essential Quality (Tapit), and with Caddo River (Hard Spun) and Mandaloun (Into Mischief) testing their own credentials over the next eight days, Brad Cox is hoping to win three trials across four weekends. As such, the middle leg of this sequence has the potential to weigh quite significantly in the shifting balance of power at the top of the North American training profession.

Because the man who continues to set the standards, for Cox and everyone else, awaits Caddo River in the GII Rebel S. with a staggering record of seven winners, three seconds and a third from 13 starters since he first shipped here in 2010. And a week after producing an Authentic (Into Mischief) imitation, as it were, here comes Bob Baffert with a doppelganger for Nadal (Blame).

In fact, the evolution of Life Is Good (Into Mischief) and Concert Tour (Street Sense) seems so closely aligned to their predecessors in the barn–November maiden at Del Mar/GIII Sham/GII San Felipe for one; January maiden at Santa Anita/GII San Vicente/GII Rebel for the other–that we have to remind ourselves that these are different individuals, setting their trainer fresh challenges.

That said, when Baffert sticks to a formula it's because he has made it work. Certainly he has changed the way trainers think about the Triple Crown trail, having proved that his adolescent racehorses don't need the kind of grounding once considered essential. No doubt that reflects the experience his horses instead derive from the aggressive, speed-oriented works he imported from Quarter Horse training, often giving his better horses the chance to hone their velocity and confidence with a “punchbag.” That's exactly what Baffert arranged for Concert Tour the other morning–i.e. an inferior workmate released as a target to run down–and the response was electric.

Baffert has a genius for the fast horse that keeps going: precisely the challenge awaiting Cox with Caddo River on Saturday. The signs are promising, so fluidly has this guy maintained his cruising speed in different scenarios for his last two starts; and remember how his sire held out for second to Street Sense in the Derby, nearly six lengths clear of the third (horse called Curlin) after blazing away early. Street Sense and Hard Spun, of course, have long since shared the same stallion barn so it'll be fun for the Jonabell team to see them carry on their rivalry by proxy here.

Effortless speed is also the trademark of Life Is Good, just as it was with Authentic. And while the Horse of the Year has definitively confirmed their sire's eligibility as a Classic influence, in tandem with the upgrading of his mares, Life Is Good has also shown something of the mental immaturity we saw this time last year. Authentic, crucially, was indulged with a September Derby but this time round the race will, we trust, be run at its customary date. Life Is Good was conspicuously granted a clear run last week and, while he took freakish advantage, we'll have to see whether he will know how to respond when stretching out against 19 hostile rivals.

Life Is Good, who was sold as a yearling, and the homebred Concert Tour are both graduates of a program that notoriously has unfinished business with the GI Kentucky Derby.

In returning to Oaklawn, Gary and Mary West will remember the day their whole Turf adventure hit a different key, 28 years ago, with the 108-1 rock-your-world success of Rockamundo (Key to the Mint) in the Arkansas Derby. That horse was saddled by Ben Glass, who was fortunately persuaded to stay on as racing manager when deciding to quit training a couple of years later. When this team started out, they were claiming horses for $2,500 at places like Grand Island, Nebraska; and, in the convincing testimony of Glass, their experiences on a long road since have cultivated in his patrons exemplary standards of stoicism and attention to welfare.

He remembers when they went to the barns at 5 a.m. to see Buddha (Unbridled's Song) on the eve of the 2002 Derby. This was after the Wests had begun to raise the stakes: Glass had picked him out as a $250,000 yearling, and he had beaten Medaglia d'Oro in the GI Wood Memorial. And here was the second favorite for the Derby emerging from his stall, the morning before the race, holding off his left fore. An immediate scratch. Glass couldn't believe how Gary West took it on the chin. He just shrugged and said: “Well, I'm going back to bed.”

Ben Glass with Gary West | Sid Fernando photo

So the Wests and Glass had seen it all by the time they took Maximum Security (New Year's Day) to Churchill a couple of years ago. Or so they thought. No need, here, to reprise everything that happened then, and subsequently. Suffice to say that a) Thoroughbreds never cease schooling us in adversity; and b) whatever the rights and wrongs of Maximum Security's Derby, and indeed of his trainer at the time, we can all be grateful to the Wests for the priorities driving their program. Because the two races they most covet are the Derby and the Travers, and their investment in the type of Thoroughbred best adapted to those historic measures of the two-turn sophomore will only serve the breed well.

That's why it's always so edifying to review the purchases made by Glass at the September Sale. You won't see him joining the witless stampede for rookie sires whose averages will almost invariably never be so high again. Last year, he bought 15 colts catalogued from 29 to 2186, for between $65,000 and $360,000: two apiece by Blame, Distorted Humor, Flatter, Street Sense and Union Rags; plus one by Candy Ride (Arg), Empire Maker, Ghostzapper, Quality Road and Uncle Mo.

'TDN Rising Star' Concert Tour upon arrival at Oaklawn this week | Coady

Concert Tour is out of a Tapit mare, giving the Gainesway phenomenon yet another foothold in this year's Derby quest. So, again like Nadal, he looks bred to relish this second turn after showing his raw class sprinting. Certainly the Wests will be hoping to efface that nose defeat for their reappearing champion Game Winner (Candy Ride {Arg}) in this race two years ago.

Game Winner subsequently passed the post sixth in the Derby, after a messy trip. That kind of thing rather goes with the territory, you would say, and let's hope nobody congratulated his owners on his promotion to fifth. Unfortunately Game Winner only managed one more start, though kept in training at four; but even that was one more than Buddha, after he was found to be lame that Friday morning. To that extent, we must hope that Concert Tour ceases to impersonate Nadal after the Arkansas Derby. Because you can safely say that this would be a Rebel winner with a cause.

The post This Side Up: River Levels Rising appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post