Tag: The Paddock

I was very interested to read Frank Mitchell's piece on the pedigree of Two Phil's and the story of the Man o' War mare War Feathers, his 10th dam. I found this family is even richer in magnificent racehorses and unique stories that are truly fascinating for horse lovers and breeders.

War Plumage, the champion daughter of War Feathers mentioned in the article, produced to the cover of champion and classic winner Alsab the filly Plumed, a winner of just two races for her breeders James Cox Brady and Harold Oots. It is through Plumed that the direct female line of War Feathers and her daughter War Plumage reaches Two Phil's.

But there was another daughter of War Plumage that has touched modern racing history. Her 1945 daughter by King Cole named Gold Crest was a winner of just one race. At stud, Gold Crest produced the stakes-winning gelding Vantage and her daughter Sweeping Beauty produced four stakes winner. But it was her unraced daughter by the unheralded stallion Burg-el-Arab, who kept the line going. That was the 1952 filly Goldarette, also bred by Brady and Oots. The best stallion Goldarette was ever bred to was the English import Djeddah. By this time, Goldarette was under different ownership, and she dropped her Djeddah filly Silver Abbey for breeder Mrs. Anderson Fowler in New Jersey.

Also, by this time, this branch of the family of War Feathers had been very quiescent, with the only high caliber stakes winner being War Plumage. The Fowlers nursed this branch for the next couple of generations, until they bred the minor stakes-winning filly La Reine Rouge, whose stakes-placed daughter by Carson City named La Ville Rouge produced the brilliant but ill-fated Kentucky Derby hero Barbaro plus four other stakes performers.

Following Mr. Mitchell's wave illustration, the family was at the tip of the wave with the championship of War Plumage and then sunk to the lows of the wave with minor stakes winners at best for several generations until the wave crested again with the rise of Barbaro. The Grade 1- winning sprinting filly Emma's Encore also hails from this family, her second dam being a half-sister to the dam of Barbaro.

However, there is yet another branch of the family, going back to the dam of War Feathers, an unraced daughter of William Rufus who was imported to the United States to serve in the broodmare band of Admiral Cary T. Grayson. Five years prior to the birth of her Man o' War filly War Feathers, Tuscan Red, in 1919, foaled a daughter of the Commando stallion Celt. Named Leghorn, this filly was only a minor stakes winner. As a broodmare, she was average, with a small stakes winner to her credit. But through her daughter Tophorn, by Bull Dog, there came the good filly Athene, a winner of the Selima Stakes. Tophorn also produced the durable filly Dinner Horn, by Pot au Feu.

Tophorn became the second dam of the full-siblings and champions Primonetta and Chateaugay. The latter won the 1963 Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes enroute to champion 3-year-old honors. The former, Primonetta, was a special favorite of mine.

I learned she was alive at the age of 32 back in the summer of 1990. I contacted Darby Dan Farm and found she was at their Ohio division near Columbus in retirement. I was allowed to visit her and found a mare in beautiful shape for being as old as she was. She shared her retirement with her close companion, the stakes producer Queen's Paradise.

Over the next two and a half years, I visited Primonetta and Queen's Paradise several times. The staff of Darby Dan gave Primonetta a birthday party every year on her actual birthday on Feb. 14. I was invited to her party in 1991. She had a carrot cake and a film of her Alabama Stakes victory was shown on a sheet hung from a wall of her barn. She died in January 1993 at the age of 35. The little pink and red hearts I had decorated her stall with were buried with her, which touched my heart so much, and she rests beneath a white boulder headstone on the Darby Dan Ohio property. Primonetta was the 1978 Broodmare of the Year and the dam of three major stakes winners.

There again, there had been a wave; the nice filly Athene and then quiet until the emergence of the dual champion siblings Primonetta and Chateaugay. Then a lull until the 1970s, when a half-sister to Primonetta and Chateaugay, the My Babu mare Luiana, produced Little Current, 1974 winner of the Preakness and Belmont Stakes and champion 3-year-old. Another lull until the 2000s, and there came Hard Spun, second in the Kentucky Derby to Street Sense, a Grade 1 winner, and very successful stallion, and sire of Two Phil's. Champion older horse Improbable also hailed from this family, as his fourth dam is none other than Luiana.

One final observation on the pedigree of Two Phil's. He is line bred in the female line to Tuscan Red. His sire, Hard Spun, as we have seen, goes back to her via her daughter Leghorn, and his dam traces directly to her via her daughter War Feathers. This type of line breeding has produced a number of top caliber performers, including two fillies from my youth I absolutely loved, Numbered Account and Relaxing. Tough, honest, and talented on the racetrack, Two Phil's should make a very interesting addition to the stallion ranks.

Elizabeth Martiniak, horse lover and free-lance racing writer

Janesville, Wisconsin

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We are at the halfway point of the racing year, with the Triple Crown in the rear-view mirror and the Breeders' Cup on the horizon.

So far this year, the closest thing we have to an emerging superstar is Cody's Wish, a 5-year-old son of Curlin who has built a six-race winning streak, including two races this year, both of them Grade 1, most recently the Met Mile. Four others have won a pair of North American G1 races in 2023 – Clairiere, In Italian, Pretty Mischievous, and Up to the Mark – but none in the high-profile ranks of 3-year-old colts prepping for and competing in the Triple Crown. There are no three-time G1 winners yet this year.

Among owners, Godolphin has won five of the 35 G1 races run so far this year with three different runners, including the aforementioned Kentucky Oaks winner Pretty Mischievous. And so far this year, there is no one dominant trainer winning at this elite level. Chad Brown, Brad Cox, and Todd Pletcher each have four G1 wins, Cox with four different horses and Brown and Pletcher with three. Bob Baffert and Bill Mott round out the top five with three G1 wins each, Baffert with three horses and Mott with two, including Cody's Wish.

Combined, these five trainers have won 18 of the 35 G1 races (51 percent) run thus far in North America, leaving the 17 other G1 stakes to the hundreds of other trainers playing the role of David to these Goliaths.

There are 62 G1 races yet to be run this year in the United States and another five in Canada. Will we see more of the same, with a handful of trainers dominating these races, or will smaller barns get their share of the pie? I wouldn't bet on the latter.

The wealth inequality among trainers appears to mirror society in general, where the rich are getting richer and the poor are poorer. The current year figures suggest that this gap has widened over the last decade, and why wouldn't it? Success begets success. Those barns have attracted the owners with the deepest pockets and a strategic mission to dominate the game at the highest level.

From 2013 through 2022, the top five trainers by G1 wins (see table below) won 404 of the 1,105 G1 races contested. That's 37 percent of the total. The top 10 won 564 races, or 51 percent. If the current year trend continues, just five trainers will win half of the top-tier races in 2023.

The ascendancy of two trainers in the last decade is particularly noteworthy.

Chad Brown formerly worked for Robert Frankel, who in 2003 set the all-time single-season mark of 25 G1 victories of the 99 run. Brown went out on his own in 2007, won his first career G1 race in 2011 and led all trainers in G1 wins from 2013-'22. He has shrewd owners who are looking at various divisions and are not averse to focusing on fillies and mares or turf racing, unlike some of the other top stables whose business models are driven almost exclusively by potential stallion deals for colts running on dirt.

Brad Cox has been training longer than Brown, having saddled his first runner in 2004. He kicked around the claiming ranks for a decade before winning his first graded stakes in 2014. Two-time champion Monomoy Girl gave Cox his first G1 victory in 2018, and it's been lights out ever since. He won back-t0-back Eclipse Awards as outstanding trainer in 2020 and '21, has gained the confidence and support of some of the world's leading owners, currently sits atop the North American earnings list for 2023, and has a stable loaded with talent.

Both Brown and Cox are just hitting their prime.

The others at the top of the list – all members of the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame – aren't going away any time soon. Bob Baffert, now 70 years old, is the all-time leader with 241 career G1 wins. He continues to excel in the 2- and 3-year-old divisions and has owners who re-stock his shedrow on a regular basis with high-end auction purchases. Todd Pletcher and Steve Asmussen are 1-2 in all-time earnings (both are above $400 million), have massive operations that are well-run, are in their mid-50s and show no signs of slowing down. William Mott, who joins Baffert in the septuagenarian club on July 29, is coming off his best year ever in earnings, and obviously knows what to do when he has a good horse in his care.

If the Davids wants to beat these Goliaths, they'll need more than a sling.

That's my view from the eighth pole.

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