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TDN International Editor Kelsey Riley Talks Arc On Writers’ Room

In addition to all the Stateside action this weekend–the final leg of the Triple Crown, Fall Stars Weekend at Keeneland and 11 Breeders’ Cup “Win and You’re In” events–the biggest race of the year in Europe will also be run with Sunday’s G1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp in Paris. Wednesday on the TDN Writers’ Room podcast presented by Keeneland, TDN International Editor Kelsey Riley joined the crew as the Green Group Guest of the Week to talk about the much-anticipated showdown between Enable (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire}) and Love (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), how heavy rains may impact the running and much more.

Asked whether or not the Arc is a two-horse affair as the bettors have surmised, Riley said, “Oh no. It’s very much an open race, and the major development this week has been the rain that’s falling in Paris. Right now, the course at Longchamp is listed as ‘very soft’, which is the same as what it was last year when Enable ran second, and there’s more rain still forecast to come … So you have a horse like Stradivarius (Ire) (Sea The Stars {Ire}), who’s been the best stayer in Europe the past couple seasons. I think that the soft going will help his chances a bit. It’ll turn the race into a bit more of a stamina contest.”

Stradivarius, currently a distant third choice for the bettors behind Enable and Love, is not the only potential upsetter on Riley’s radar.

“Sottsass (Fr) (Siyouni {Fr}) was third in last year’s Arc over this same soft going and ran a very game race there,” she said. “He won a Group 1 race [the Prix Ganay] in France earlier this year. His trainer, Jean-Claude Rouget has spoken very highly of him this week coming into it, saying this is the best he’s ever had him, and that they’ve had this as their key target ever since he finished third last year. Another horse that I find a little interesting is Rouget’s ‘other’ horse, the only other 3-year-old filly in the race besides Love, Raabihah (Sea The Stars {Ire}). She was very impressive winning her first two starts this spring, and Jean-Claude, right from that point, was saying, ‘This is our Arc filly.'”

The success of fillies and mares has been a consistent theme throughout Arc history. Riley was asked about why they’ve competed so frequently and done so well against males in the race.

“With the weight scale in France this time of year, the 3-year-old fillies get a big weight break for the Arc,” she said. “They carry 121 pounds, which is what Enable carried when she won her first Arc. Three-year-old colts carry 125, older mares 128 and older horses 131 pounds. It’s also down to the fact that, especially at this time of year in Europe, there are fewer opportunities at the Group 1 level for [fillies and mares] over the mile and a quarter to a mile and a half. In both Britain and France, there are only two Group 1 races for fillies and mares from the summer onward.”

Elsewhere on the show, the writers discussed the Horseracing Safety Integrity Act passing the U.S. House of Representatives, broke down the 11-horse GI Preakness S. and reacted to Improbable (City Zip) taking charge in the older male division. Then, in the West Point Thoroughbreds news segment, they analyzed the Kentucky Supreme Court decision that puts the future of historical horse racing machines in doubt and tried to figure out why alternative forms of gaming continue to grow while racing’s handle declines. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version.

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Kevin Attard Joins TDN Writers’ Room

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more successful claim in the past decade than Blue Heaven Farm’s Starship Jubilee (Indy Wind). Plucked for $16,000 from Jorge Navarro of all people in February of 2017 at Gulfstream, the now 7-year-old mare has taken trainer Kevin Attard on the ride of a lifetime, and scored her greatest triumph yet with a victory in Saturday’s GI Woodbine Mile S., becoming a multimillionaire in the process. Wednesday, Attard joined the TDN Writers’ Room podcast presented by Keeneland as the Green Group Guest of the Week to tell he and Starship Jubilee’s rags-to-riches story.

“We were just looking for horses to bring back to Woodbine at the time,” Attard recalled of he and dad Tino Attard’s thought process back in 2017. “At Gulfstream, it’s really tough to claim, you’re always kind of shaking for horses that look legit on paper and have good form to them. So we had gotten out-shook a lot of times with a couple of claims we had put in. She had come across on form like she had some potential, had run some decent enough races, seemed like she was appreciating stretching out a bit. So we took a chance and we were lucky enough to win the shake that day. And the rest is history.”

Now with 19 wins in 38 starts and hardly any duds in her past performances, it’s clear that Starship Jubilee has something special about her. Attard tried to pinpoint what it is that makes the mare so consistent.

“She’s just a very competitive horse,” he said. “Even in the morning, she’s not an easy filly to train in the sense that when she wants to go, you have to have a good exercise rider on her. And Ricardo Pilgrim, who’s been galloping her, has done a great job with her here at Woodbine. So we’ve been fortunate with that. She’s very feisty, has a lot of sass and attitude about her, and is not a typical mare that you can just hug or cuddle up to. She’s got some fire and if you’re not on your toes, she’ll bite you. She could kick you. She’s really a handful when she wants to be, and I think that translates onto the racetrack. She just brings that attitude with her to the track. Whether it’s competing against the fillies and mares or the boys, she’s just ready to lay it down and give her best.”

Elsewhere on the show, the writers reacted to the development of the first guilty pleas stemming from March’s FBI indictments and debated the wisdom of restrictive new whip rules. Then, in the West Point Thoroughbreds news segment, they discussed Tiz the Law (Constitution) skipping the GI Preakness S. to train up to the GI Longines Breeders’ Cup Classic. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version.

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Keeneland Sales Director Geoffrey Russell Joins TDN Writers’ Room

The world-renowned Keeneland September Sale has been a long time coming this year. With the coronavirus pandemic canceling and postponing much of the sales season, all eyes are on Lexington this week as Keeneland hosts its first live in-person auction since COVID-19 first hit American shores. Director of Sales Operations Geoffrey Russell joined the TDN Writers’ Room podcast presented by Keeneland Wednesday as the Green Group Guest of the Week to discuss the obstacles faced by the company in conducting the sale and his early impressions of the trading.

“We’ve been fortunate that we are pretty much the only sales company in the world that has conducted the sale on the calendar that we set in January, which we actually find quite amazing,” Russell said. “We’ve been planning for it since we went into lockdown Mar. 16 and each plan changed monthly. We didn’t know what we were allowed to do, what we weren’t allowed to do. At one stage, we were told we couldn’t use the sales pavilion. Now we’re allowed to use it at 40%. It has been a moving target all the way along. We joked back in the early part of the pandemic, our internal Zoom calls were called the ‘what if?’ meetings. What if this happens, what if that happens, what can we do here?”

The sale has gone off without a hitch through the first several hundred hips, however, and considering the circumstances, results have been robust, with 14 seven-figure horses changing hands in the first two days.

“The top of the market has been very strong,” Russell said. “We’ve had 14 individual horses bring in excess of $1 million and, most interestingly, to 13 different buyers. So the buying group has spread out a bit and the numbers at the top end are staying the same.”

Keeneland has been proactive about instating strict COVID-19 protocols for both its sales and racing seasons, which Russell admits has gotten some mixed responses but says is necessary to get through this extraordinarily busy couple of months for the company and the business as a whole.

“COVID has been a very polarizing situation, but we are very concerned about this time of year,” he said. “We have September, we have our October race meet, we have the Breeders’ Cup in November and we have our November Breeding Stock Sale. It’s a very important three months for us and for the Thorougbred industry. We wanted to make sure that we could conduct all of those and we work very diligently with our state government and local health departments. We have pushback form several people about masks, about the fact that we ask for testing on our consignors. But when you explain to them why we want it, for the safety of everybody, everybody understands it. While they’re not happy about it, they’re at least fulfilling our requests.”

Elsewhere on the show, in the West Point Thoroughbreds news segment, the writers lamented the fall of the Betfair exchange in America and analyze why it didn’t work out. Plus, they discuss the scary situation of wildfires raging near Santa Anita, react to the announcement of no fans being allowed at the Breeders’ Cup and pay tribute to the late Pat Smullen. Click here to watch the podcast, click here for the audio-only version.

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MyRacehorse Founder Michael Behrens Joins TDN Writers’ Room

As far as marketing for a nascent, unorthodox racehorse ownership venture goes, you couldn’t do much better than a horse carrying your silks into the Churchill Downs infield as the GI Kentucky Derby winner. That’s what Michael Behrens experienced Saturday, as Authentic (Into Mischief), bought into by his MyRacehorse microshare partnership in June, fought off favored Tiz the Law (Constitution) past the Twin Spires to earn the garland of roses. Wednesday, Behrens joined the TDN Writers’ Room podcast presented by Keeneland as the Green Group Guest of the Week to explain MyRacehorse’s business model and how the startup came to own one-eighth of a Derby winner.

“I am not from the racing world, I’ve been in ad tech and marketing my whole career,” Behrens said of his background. “Growing up in Southern California, Santa Anita was 15 minutes away and that’s where we went to decompress after crazy stressful weeks. Go out there with friends, have a couple of drinks and bet a few races. I just loved it as a sport, but was always very intrigued about how we can get more fan engagement. I started looking around and [found that] people who really were energized and excited about our sport were those that had some kind of interest in ownership, either through friends or a partnership, whatever it may be. And I just left that was where we could scale, where we could get mass adoption to appreciate the sport.”

MyRacehorse, which started as a pilot program in California, went national only last July. The company sells .001% microshares in Thoroughbreds with multiple shares available and returns that are deposited into owners’ accounts and can be withdrawn via its app. Previously acquiring stakes in Grade I winner Street Band (Istan) and graded stakes winner Lazy Daisy (Paynter), MyRacehorse stepped into the deep end when buying 12.5% of Authentic after the colt finished second in the GI Runhappy Santa Anita Derby. Behrens credits co-owner Spendthrift Farm’s B. Wayne Hughes with opening the door to that partnership.

“When I wrote the original business plan for this, I looked at the industry to try to figure out who had the personality, the DNA [for the idea],” he said. “B. Wayne Hughes, with his success in business and his innovation with breeding, I just loved his disruptive nature. I actually used to do marketing for Public Storage, one of his companies. I came out and took [Spendthrift General Manager] Ned [Toffey] through the idea. The next day, Mr. Hughes called me back in and we started talking. He wants the sport to continue to thrive and grow, so he loved the concept. We started partnering on a couple of deals and that relationship has only gotten stronger and stronger over time. Now he’s come in as one of our partners. Our relationship with Spendthrift and Mr. Hughes has been critical.”

Elsewhere on the show, the writers reacted to all angles of the Derby, GI Kentucky Oaks and the many impressive undercard and juvenile performances we saw this week. Plus, in the West Point Thoroughbreds news segment, they discuss the bankruptcy filing of Ahmed Zayat and wonder how it went south so quickly for the owner of the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version.

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