Because these are the dozen sires responsible for mares that made seven figures at the Keeneland November Sale. And their overall complexion suggests a curious disconnect between this auction, and the one staged in the same ring back in September.

You can judge as much from a couple who have been through both sales. Proud Emma (Include) made $9,000 as a yearling, while sale-topper Midnight Bisou (Midnight Lute) notoriously failed to reach her reserve at $19,000. That's hardly typical, obviously, in that most of the yearlings trading for that kind of money struggle to pay their way; but we all know how few of the most expensive ones fare any better.

Admittedly we have just seen Flightline (Tapit) and Malathaat (Curlin) standing up for the seven-figure yearling. And the whole viability of our business hinges on enough of those investments working out, to keep the rich guy in the game, in equilibrium with enough stories like Rich Strike (Keen Ice) to give everyone else a chance.

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In the case of these valuable broodmare prospects, they have generally disclosed something–not blatant in their pedigree and conformation as adolescents–to secure elite caliber as runners. But while performance is demonstrably a critical indicator for their recruitment, their purchasers will often have contrived some retrospective discovery of genetic depth.

To be fair, we're all guilty of that. Once a horse demands attention on the racetrack, we will generally turn up some satisfactory, latent distinction in its family tree, especially one that flatters our prejudices. Rich Strike is a good example. His dam had been discarded for $1,700, and his half-sister was claimed for $5,000 the month before he won the Derby. Yet he turned out to have such an interesting background–by a grandson of Smart Strike out of a Smart Strike mare, for instance, and a third dam by a forgotten full-brother to Smart Strike's sire–that people like me could rationalize his emergence as a wholesome rebuke to the flimsiness of many commercial pedigrees.

We could hail his sire, similarly, as just the type that “should” be siring Derby winners–even if his only other stakes winner, at that stage, had come in Puerto Rico. Keen Ice's pedigree is saturated by old-fashioned influences, which sustained him to be better than ever in his fourth campaign. He soaked up nine races as a sophomore, rounding off with a strong-finishing fourth in the GI Clark H., and I'm duly delighted to see that Rich Strike is himself likely to make his own ninth appearance of the year in the same race. And don't forget that his campaign really began in the Gun Runner S., in the last week of 2021.

That race was won by Epicenter (Not This Time), who remained at Fair Grounds for all three of the local Derby rehearsals. In the process he emulated Mandaloun (Into Mischief) the previous year, when other local protagonists included Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow) and the lamented Midnight Bourbon (Tiznow).

New Orleans appears to be an increasingly important staging post on the Triple Crown trail since its trials were extended. I suspect that's because the extra distance redresses a loss of conditioning opportunity in the lighter schedule nowadays favored by so many trainers. As a result, the opening of the meet this weekend feels very much like the start of the next cycle in our community narrative. It will be interesting to see whether the traditional winter haven of Florida can respond to this squeeze.

Be all that as it may, producing a Kentucky Derby winner at the first attempt did not rescue Keen Ice's latest yearlings from neglect at the sales. But while he plainly owes fourth position in the second-crop table to a single earner, the fact remains that his maturing stock has included 70 other winners, equating to 58% of starters. That handsomely outranks all relevant competition, including the three feted names above him: Gun Runner (40%), Arrogate (46%) and Practical Joke (50%).

Keen Ice | Sarah Andrew

So while some of his farm's strategies are hardly aligned with commercial convention, I certainly wouldn't mind a daughter of a stallion who carries Deputy Minister 3×3 and Chic Shirine (Mr. Prospector) as fourth dam. That's because I believe that all matings should aim at a saturation of genetic quality, three or four generations back, as the best insurance against the unpredictability of inheritance. If you can't even be certain what color your foal's coat will be, then you must surely strive to make it a matter of indifference which strand comes through, in terms of ability, simply because it's all good stuff.

Yet the yearling market seems to be massively predicated on sire power. This, to a degree, is self-fulfilling: in order to warrant an expensive cover, a mare needs to bring commensurate performance or pedigree into the equation. Naturally there are stallions that have had to earn their stripes, and come up the hard way. Yet even Into Mischief reiterates the folly of disregarding 50% of a horse's genetic contribution, his dam Leslie's Lady famously having then come up with Beholder (Henny Hughes) and Mendelssohn (Scat Daddy).

Leslie's Lady had been an $8,000 short yearling by Tricky Creek out of a Stop the Music mare. Interestingly, though he ended up standing in New Mexico for $2,500, Tricky Creek was a source of exactly the kind of soundness breeders can expect from Keen Ice (and Rich Strike, when his time comes). Late in his stud career, a survey ranked Tricky Creek fifth among active sires by percentage of starters-to-foals; and seventh, by starts-per-starter. (You really shouldn't overlook this, when reflecting on the way his daughter produced Beholder to win Grade I races every year from two through six.)

Moreover Tricky Creek's dam was a half-sister to the dam of Soaring Softly (Kris S.) and in all produced 15 winners, six at stakes level. At one stage, Sheikh Mohammed gave $5.3 million for a Kingmambo half-brother to Tricky Creek at the yearling sales. So while Tricky Creek himself couldn't even muster 20 stakes winners, there was ample quality percolating that might be stoked back to life by the right alchemy.

Into Mischief | Sarah Andrew

Without getting too bogged down, the mother of Leslie's Lady was out of a half-sister to a Grade I winner, and the next dam won races like the Alcibiades S. and Schuylerville S. The point is that Leslie's Lady had nearly seamless quality from top to bottom in her fourth generation. Yet that stuff, for your average yearling speculator, is quite literally off the page.

The best breeders, however, know that it's a long and winding road to the summit. That's why the market for broodmares is far less beholden to nervous fads than the one for their offspring.

So I want to finish off with a tribute to two horses who attest to the merit of the long game. One is Tempesti (Ity) (Albert Dock {Jpn}), co-owned by the Razza Dormello Olgiata synonymous with the breed-transforming partnership of Federico Tesio and Mario Incisa della Rocchetta. In Milan last Sunday he became the first horse carrying the iconic red crossbelts to win the Group 2 prize that honors Tesio's memory.

As a coincidental snapshot of an immeasurable legacy, Tricky Creek represented just one of countless sire lines tracing to Nearco (Ity); while his damsire His Majesty, whose legacy as a broodmare sire also includes Danehill, was by another Dormello graduate in Ribot (GB). But you can equally find those names on either side of the pedigrees of, say, Frankel (GB) or Flightline.

Less cheerfully, this week marked the end of the road for Cambiocorsa (Avenue of Flags), once feted as “queen of the hill” at Santa Anita; and subsequently dam of five stakes winners, and second dam of European champion Roaring Lion (Kitten's Joy). Tragically, she had outlived both her celebrated grandson, when barely embarked on a stud career, and his dam Vionnet (Street Sense), who was also prematurely cut down.

Jan Vandebos with Cambiocorsa and Vionnet | Courtesy Jan Vandebos

Nobody cares for her horses more lavishly than Jan Vandebos, and this loss will doubtless poignantly renew the memory of others. But she should be proud of Cambiocorsa's contribution to the remarkable legacy of her dam Ultrafleet (Alfeet)–who also produced millionaire sprinter California Flag (Avenue of Flags) and the dam of GI Preakness winner Rombauer (Twirling Candy).

Ultrafleet was a $10,500 yearling at the September Sale, and made that look expensive on the racetrack. But she then founded a dynasty so regal that even her unraced daughter by Cowboy Cal could produce a Classic winner.

That won't surprise those who have been scouting the breeding stock sales not just for the past couple of weeks, but for many decades. It had been a similar story to Keeneland at Fasig-Tipton, after all: sires with seven-figure mares there included Awesome Patriot, Brody's Cause, Daredevil, Flower Alley, Karakontie (Jpn), Mucho Macho Man, Street Boss, Tale of the Cat (twice) and Wilko.

In the end, I think the obsession with sire power is often little more than a gesture–whether a practical gesture, or a merely irritated one–against the overwhelming complexity of this game. With their huge modern books, sires invite the illusion that you can get all the answers by having a more sophisticated software program than the next guy. That's always going to appeal to investors who come into this business expecting it to behave as coherently as those in which they made their money. A mare, with one foal a year at most, is little or no help to that way of thinking. But good luck to you, if you only bother seriously with one face of the coin–and need it to land that side up, every single time.

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For those of you whose conduct has more complex influences, however, apparently there's a handy publication out there called The Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. And you thought horse pedigrees were a niche interest.

In a recent edition, researchers from the universities of East Finland and Liverpool crunched data from 15,000 Finnish men commencing national service. I hope we will be indulged for cutting to the chase, as they conveniently reduce all their analysis to a couple of sentences of conclusion.

“This paper,” they declare, “demonstrates that a person's IQ predicts his engagement with horse betting.”

Now you know where this is going, right? It's another example of wasting a lot of time and effort to demonstrate something we know to be quite obvious already.

But wait. “Our results show that IQ… is positively correlated with participation in and expenditure on horse betting.” In other the words, the smarter your Finn, the more likely he is to bet the ponies. The puzzles of horse racing, the researchers suggest, will appeal most to a sophisticated, inquiring mind.

Just think of all those generations of stern parents who have sat down errant sons (the survey did not include females) to rebuke their dissipation on the racetrack. Turns out that they should actually have been instructing them in exotics strategy, and how to turn Ragozins to riches. Go west, young man, but be sure you don't miss Arapahoe Park on the way.

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For many of us, a stake in the breeding, raising or trading of Thoroughbreds is gamble enough. But it is good to be reminded of the stimulation available in the constant variables of our business, and to consider the different factors that govern our decisions.

To what extent, after all, are those decisions truly our own? How much do we act according to our innate or inherited nature–the stuff, in other words that we bring into the world with us–and how much are we simply conditioned by learned experience; by patterns of conduct absorbed from the environment?

Why is it, for instance, that modern horsemen are so much more reluctant to ask questions of the Thoroughbred as demanding as those routinely set by their predecessors? Trainers today may think that they are simply making a rational judgement on a developing body of evidence; whether because they view the breed as less robust, or their own methods as more sensitive. But the chances are that they have, to a large degree, simply responded to the evolving habits of mentors and peers.

Take, for instance, nothing less than the two best horses in the world. One is set to bow out at Ascot on Saturday; the other will quite possibly do the same at Keeneland in three weeks' time. Both, it should be stressed, have had their talent drawn out with consummate skill. But while both are routinely compared with specters past, they won't actually explore their utmost capacities even against such horses as happen to be alive and well.

Okay, so the fact that they operate in different disciplines means that a direct showdown between Baaeed (GB) (Sea The Stars {Ire}) and Flightline (Tapit) would nearly always, even in bolder epochs, have been a bridge too far. But the fact is that Flightline has entered the pantheon in no more than 431 seconds; while Baaeed, though slower to blossom than Frankel (GB), has like that champion been confined to home soil and a pool of competition in which his supremacy has long been apparent.

To be fair, Flightline has tested the cramped parameters of his career with as much ambition as they permit: from Del Mar to Belmont, from six furlongs to 10. Baaeed, for his part, has followed precisely in the footsteps of Frankel at the age of four, running in the same five races and therefore only stepping up from a mile on his penultimate start. (Something that may well end up being true of Flightline.)

America's best, Flightline | Sarah Andrew

Baaeed's response to that new challenge hinted that he may only just have found his true metier. For a while, connections entertained the idea of probing a still deeper seam of stamina in Paris. In the event, they will have felt thoroughly vindicated, in having backed off, when the Arc was contested in such gruelling conditions. For some of us, however, even now there remains one stubborn question. If Baaeed were to win the G1 Qipco Champion S. with his customary leisure, then why on earth should he not proceed to the Breeders' Cup as well?

Remember that he began his career last year by winning four races between June 7 and July 30. Obviously he was a class apart, at that level, but he went about each assignment with equal gusto and has since often appeared the sort that keeps something in reserve. And this year, crucially, a three-week interval makes the Breeders' Cup far more feasible for any of the Ascot protagonists than when the card has been staged, with deplorable parochialism, just a fortnight beforehand.

Given the relative emphasis on speed between Keeneland and his race at York, the extra 300 yards of the GI Breeders' Cup Turf, if technically uncharted, would only play to Baaeed's strengths. There's obviously a degree of presumption, given that he has a serious job to do at Ascot, but I can only think of one reason why the question shouldn't at least be asked once safely making the winner's circle–and that's a reluctance to go looking for unnecessary trouble with so precious and cherished a champion.

But if that is indeed the case, then it just shows how inimical are the instincts of modern horsemen both to the genetic proving of the breed, and to the promotion of the sport. Baaeed wouldn't lose a cent in his stud value, if the gamble happened to backfire; and nor would he be remotely diminished in the estimation of posterity. He would have nothing to lose, and much to gain–in terms both of his own stature, and our communal hopes of reaching a wider audience.

In principle, exactly the same was true of Frankel. As it was, however, the Breeders' Cup was never a realistic option. For one thing, it was staged only two weeks after he ran on bad ground at Ascot; and his trainer, of course, then had heartbreaking mitigation for his conservative instincts. But I've always said he ran like a dirt horse, and would have lapped them in a GI Breeders' Cup Classic instead won by Fort Larned (E Dubai).

In both cases, then, we are left with the same suspicion: that an immaculate record increasingly becomes an impediment to maximum fulfilment. There's no need to reprise a list of the great champions, from Secretariat down, that ran (and risked) enough to forfeit the formal veneer of invincibility. But let's just remind ourselves that an unbeaten horse is very different from an unbeatable one.

As we've said, the kind of thinking that shapes decision-making–our priorities, our assumptions–will typically embed prevailing norms. And these do change, radically if gradually, from generation to generation. In its earliest days, the Thoroughbred was asked to run three heats of four miles in a single day. Nobody would suggest doing that now; and nor would anyone seriously expect Baaeed to take on Flightline at his own game.

Nobody? Actually, that's not quite true. But if he were mine, I guess that wouldn't be the only time I came down in the morning to find that bottle waiting reproachfully on the table.

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So, to give one example, I shouldn't be at all surprised if the most expensive yearling transaction of 2022 has yet to take place, despite that booming market at Keeneland over the past few days. American investment at the Tattersalls October Sale has been soaring in recent years, and the environment this time round could not be more congenial. Even the biggest domestic investors will be bringing a penknife to a gunfight. Sterling has hit a 37-year low against the dollar and, with the fiscal helm in Britain seized by navigators unorthodox to the point of eccentricity, you couldn't rule out outright parity between the two currencies by the time Tattersalls raises a hammer over several yearlings from the penultimate crop of Galileo (Ire).

And here's another calculation for the rich; specifically, for those prosperous partners privileged to share Flightline (Tapit). If all goes well at the Breeders' Cup, somebody in their decision-making huddle will surely point out that nowadays he has the option of banking the equivalent of around 50 covers, even at his likely fee, with a 110-second gallop in Saudi Arabia. (Conceivably it might even be muttered that the race is scheduled just 11 days into the breeding season.)

From the sidelines, we're all fondly anticipating mass public engagement for our sport if Flightline is permitted to extend his career beyond a sixth start. Even if his owners were to give us what we want, however, there's a scenario in which we might seem impossible to satisfy. What if they ask us to settle for a couple of breakfast broadcasts from the desert, before he rests up and takes in maybe a single prep before the Breeders' Cup? I think our gratitude might soon obtain a rather peevish note.

On some level, those imploring his owners to keep him in training are suggesting some implicit duty to the sport. That feels a little unfair. At the same time, if we are asked to believe that their strategy really won't be governed simply by dollars and cents, then it does at least become a question of the kind of legacy they wish to create from a generational opportunity.

Flightline's stud career is emphatically part of that, too, though let's not forget that even an authentic racetrack phenomenon must start over and prove himself in his second career. For now, it's not as though Flightline could be sensibly proposed as an equivalent wager, in terms of what a breeder should be expected to pay, to Into Mischief.

At 126, Flightline has authored one of just eight Beyers ever recorded at 125 or more. The only horse to hit a higher mark, Ghostzapper (128), is also the only one with any pretension to having maintained his elite status at stud. More typical are the fortunes of the horse with the unique distinction of clocking two of those eight Himalayan Beyers.

In his three final starts, Formal Gold ran 126, 124 (smashing a 40-year Monmouth track record) and 125; he was going into the Breeders' Cup on an irresistible roll when derailed by injury. Yet he would prove a thoroughly anonymous stallion, best redeemed by Semaphore Man, who annually contested the GIII Count Fleet H., aged four through seven, for finishes of 3-2-1-1. After failing to get any of three Saskatchewan mares in foal in 2017, Formal Gold was retired into the best of care but nobody noticed when he quietly slipped away two or three years back.

Now obviously Flightline is a radically different proposition. And not just because Formal Gold, expertly handled by the unsung Bill Perry and thriving on the attentions of Skip Away and Will's Way, stood up to 16 starts in 15 months. Formal Gold cost $62,000 as Hip 1657 at the September Sale; Flightline made seven figures at Saratoga. Alongside his freakish performances, then, he evidently has the genetic and physical wherewithal to make a better fist of his next career.

But even Secretariat notoriously failed to find a male heir. All Thoroughbreds tend to keep us guessing, in some respect or other, and that's never going to change. Certainly I can't buy into the notion that Flightline has fueled the market boom by showing that even really big numbers can be made to make sense. The year he was sold was no different from any other, in terms of the spectrum of outcomes.

It was that September, for instance, that the daughter of Leslie's Lady and American Pharoah made $8.2 million, and there's no need to remind anyone of the tragedy that ensued. That kind of thing can happen to any horse, but it's pretty sobering to scroll down the other top prices paid at that auction. They were obviously well assessed, physically, because most have made the racetrack. But while Malathaat (Curlin) has proved a million bucks very well spent, and there have been moments of excitement for the likes of Spielberg (Union Rags) and Overtook (Curlin), suffice to say that there are some pretty expensive geldings pottering around out there.

The late Cezanne in March | Horsephotos

Another of the headline scores of the 2019 bloodstock market was the $3.65-million Curlin colt that topped Fasig-Tipton's 2-year-old sale at Gulfstream. I was extremely sorry, this week, to read that Cezanne's various travails since had reached a fatal nadir in a fungal infection. He will duly remain an unfinished masterpiece, albeit even he managed two more starts than Flightline to this point. Cezanne's whole story has proved a very poignant one: most obviously, as the parting bow of Jimmy Crupi, but also given the premature loss (through colic) of a dam from one of the most brilliantly curated families in the book.

Cezanne had shown sufficient flashes of brilliance to merit a chance at stud and, this business being what it is, he would have started with the same blank slate as will Flightline. So we can never know, from one day to the next, quite when a Thoroughbred has achieved its definitive value.

As such, in enjoying a loaded GI Pennsylvania Derby on Saturday, perhaps we should cast our minds back to the 1996 running when Formal Gold was turned over at short odds. In the event, it proved that he had barely started. Maybe that can still prove true of Zandon (Upstart), in which hope I'm clinging stubbornly to the wreckage after his championship credentials took a battering in the GI Travers.

To me, he looked like a horse in some kind of discomfort that day, the way he carried his head turning in, and I refuse to forget the way he glided into contention on the first Saturday in May. For such a baffling Derby, it is turning out to be a pretty good one, and yet there was a moment when Zandon looked in a class of his own.

His equation still has that 'x' element, and maybe his new jockey will discover its true value. You know, I might even stake a dollar or two out of my grocery budget.

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Whereas we knew that her great age was finally catching up with the monarch, James Delahooke's abrupt departure for a grouse moor in the sky has come as a ghastly shock. Returning to Lexington for the September Sale suddenly feels a dismally different prospect. Who, now, will tell us like it really is? Who else will entertain and educate us with that unerring, twin-edged blade of knowledge and mischief–both honed by a deep seasoning in the ups and downs of life, in general, and life with horses in particular.

His career as a bloodstock agent made James as familiar as any with those twin impostors, triumph and disaster. And the man who had come out the other side was not just a brilliant judge of horseflesh, but a no less acute observer of human nature.

James knew his mind, and how to speak his mind. And while he could be hilariously acerbic, in the end his sagacity was based–as it always must be–in a humility and compassion that he found wanting, on typically candid reflection, in his younger self.

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He deplored the phonies and smooth talkers, many of whom thrived in the years of his unjust neglect. Being himself unfettered by any posture or pretense, however, he became a fount of insight and enthusiasm to refresh any who deserved to share them, whatever their age or station in life.

He was a fine raconteur albeit, as a compatriot who has accompanied him through airports, I'm not sure immigration officers were always so appreciative of this talent. But in a walk of life where too many say only what they imagine a rich person might want to hear, it became an instructive badge of merit to see those who did remain loyally in his camp; or, better yet, those who joined it when he was out of fashion.

Certainly it's unsurprising that James should have forged such a lasting bond with Arthur Hancock, another who knew both the solitariness and satisfactions of genius that has been separated, not without pain, from the heart of the Establishment.

James's judgement, ever priceless if sometimes inadequately prized, was reliably independent of the market herd. And he could, indeed, be memorably withering about the craven, venal or simply fatuous ways in which he saw others wasting their patrons' money.

In someday trying to replace the irreplaceable, we can trust those who have lost not just a friend but an inspired professional advisor to rely on the same instincts that served them so well, in first seeking James's services. You can almost hear his caustic bark of laughter at those “tyre-kickers”, as he called them, who may now amplify their unworthiness by crassly volunteering to fill his shoes. I remember him once discussing a couple of agents then enjoying conspicuous patronage. One, he declared, was a very nice person but “buying meatballs–and terribly expensive meatballs”; while the other, almost universally disparaged as an opportunist and adventurer, actually had an extremely good eye.

Both pronouncements were typical of James. The pity was that neither of these people could be truly described as rivals or peers. They were not strictly his rivals, because Bobby Flay was just about the only person smart enough to be giving James adequate resources to compete for the same stock. And they weren't peers because–well, because that was a distinction available to very few of his generation.

Danehill | Arrowfield

What an honor it was, to sit in his study and be shown his catalogue notes on Hip 154 at Saratoga in 1982. A single caveat: “Toes out slightly”. And two numbers scrawled: 1.6 and 350. The first was what he told Prince Khalid Abdullah he should expect to pay, because someone would surely have a million and a half for a daughter of His Majesty out of a Buckpasser half-sister to Northern Dancer. And the second was for the $350,000 actually required to buy the filly who became the dam of Danehill.

James had met the Prince three or four years previously, after dining with Guy Harwood in Deauville. When they asked for the bill, the waiter said it had been taken care of–indicating an elegant Arabian gentleman across the restaurant. This turned out to be the man who had relegated them to underbidders for a yearling earlier that day. Invited soon afterwards to sow the seeds of what has become one of the great programs in Turf history, within five years James had bought both the sire and dam of two Epsom Derby winners. He leaves an indelible legacy in the Juddmonte empire; in the breed itself; and, above all, in the knowledge and memories of so many friends.

James would not want misplaced sentiment in our bereavement, any more than a true horsewoman like Queen Elizabeth II would desire the final Classic of the British season to be postponed (as “a mark of respect”) when the trainers involved have fine-tuned their charges to the minute. Those of us who lament James's absence in Lexington this week know perfectly well that he would far rather we just raised a glass to his memory–and then, very shortly afterwards, another glass–before sharing a few of the stories that will long preserve the vivacity and sheer authenticity of his character.

Meanwhile I'm pretty sure he would hope that Arklow can grab the weekend headlines, as an 8-year-old son of Arch running 12 furlongs on grass. That way, perhaps, it won't just be his own example that encourages us to keep seeking the right stuff in the Thoroughbred.

I am grateful to know a few others of comparable stamp, from whom an approving email or text steels your resolve against any orthodoxy; while even a mild hint of dissent, equally, prompts you urgently to revisit the premises of your argument. But there's no denying that neither our business nor our community can easily absorb the sudden loss of a man like James.

Okay, perhaps so unconstrained a personality might not have made a monarch quite as successful as the one whose reign spanned almost his whole life. But I will certainly not be alone in missing the wit and wisdom guaranteed, from Yorkshire to Lexington, whenever King James was holding court.

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Of course, those of us outraged by renewed proposals to desecrate the Triple Crown heritage will be hoping, far ahead of Happy Jack, either to see Epicenter (Not This Time) show that he has soaked up his remarkably generous exertions in the Derby; or Secret Oath (Arrogate) make it equally plain that this kind of Classic schedule remains within the compass even of modern Thoroughbreds, if only they are bred and/or trained the right way.

As things stand, it feels an affront to both these splendid creatures that their showdown on Saturday, one wholly worthy of the 147th GI Preakness S., should have been so unceremoniously displaced from the top of the week's news agenda. Regardless of whether Rich Strike (Keen Ice) can ever again remotely approach what he did at Churchill, a single, freakish performance should not qualify him, overnight, to subvert the legacy of so many generations of horsemen.

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In fairness, it's not as though his connections set out to start some national debate. They just made a decision about their own horse, and what they figured might work best for him. True, if weighing their decision on bigger scales, they might perhaps have been a little more cognisant of the broader responsibilities–to their sport, with a rare opportunity of engaging the attention of the world beyond–that arguably accompany such a literally fantastic gift from the racing gods. As it is, we have to conclude that they were concentrating on one horse, standing there in his stall. And that's absolutely their prerogative.

But when other people start using that decision as a pretext to review the whole future of the Triple Crown, then you have to ask yourself whether the challenge to all logic, when Rich Strike suddenly materialized along that rail at Churchill, has incidentally prompted us to discard all sanity as well. Because while Eric Reed and Rick Dawson certainly had a pretty interesting start to their month, I am not sure how far they have advanced up the line of horsemen eligible to turn so much of our history on its head.

Sure, there are a whole bunch of other Derby participants sitting out the Preakness. By this stage, however, that feels wholly consistent with the prejudices of modern trainers, in either observing or merely perceiving some inadequacy in the kind of animals we're breeding today. Some of these guys are either automatons themselves, or think that their horses are. As with every question asked by a Thoroughbred, targets should be determined by the flesh-and-blood differences between individuals–and not reduced to a formula, according to the number a horse might have run, or the date on a calendar.

What a drab convention of the faint-hearted, if the schedulers were to yield meekly to such timidity! Thank goodness for D. Wayne Lukas, who has reliably redeemed both the caliber and the narrative of this race. The real torment–for those grateful to him for this, the latest of so many services to our sport–is that we might actually have had a filly on the Triple Crown trail but for the ride that blunted her blade when she tested the Derby waters.

As I've remarked before, the Triple Crown schedule doesn't just maintain the historic integrity of the way we measure the breed. It's how horsemen of the past keep us honest. And while this may not be the most truthful age in the story of civilisation, we have no excuse for lowering our own standards when our livelihoods depend upon a creature as transparent and trusting as the Thoroughbred.

Which, as it happens, is exactly why we can't let training be all about pharmacy–and why people also have to be honest about why they might be trying to emasculate the policing of medication. There's a virtuous circle here. For one thing, a horse is never going to be in greater need of time between races than when a rival has called on artificial reserves. Conversely, it's the horse bred and raised and trained with a clean conscience that will ultimately give us a genetic package worth replicating.

And that conscience comes into play long before the appointment of a scrupulous trainer. It is also required of those whose spending and/or advice at ringside currently, somehow, makes commercial poison of the most wholesome paternity. Calumet may have let a Derby winner slip through their grasp but at least they are prepared to stand against the tide. And that's another reason to hope that Happy Jack can disclose something of the quality that for now remains no more evident than it was in Rich Strike this time two weeks ago.

Kenny McPeek | Coady

This, after all, is an unpredictable game. Who could have imagined that Kenny McPeek, having last winter looked as though he might come up with a Derby trifecta of his own, would roll up here with none of those horses–instead buying a $150,000 wild card for a horse that won, you guessed it, two weeks ago at Churchill?

Obviously Creative Minister (Creative Cause) is unlikely to have endured as taxing a race then as the three who do accompany him here from the Derby. As such, he arrives as a kind of compromise between those making a quick turnaround and the ambush party headed by Early Voting (Gun Runner). Whether that proves the best or worst of both worlds remains to be seen, but I do know one thing. We gain nothing by trying to make things “easier”. In the old axiom, it's when the going gets tough that the tough get going. We need to find out who those horses are, and reward the horsemen who produce them.

The post This Side Up: The Tough Get Going appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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In the excitement of his success, under one of the most remarkable rides in GI Kentucky Derby history, connections of Rich Strike (Keen Ice) told everyone that they had the previous morning been reconciled to instead contesting the GIII Peter Pan S. at Belmont this weekend. But they are now claiming that they were actually targeting the GI Preakness S.–and that spacing out his races was always their priority.

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Their strategies and pretexts for ultimately missing the Preakness are entirely their own business. Nonetheless it's vexing that those who want to spread out the Triple Crown series, having been effectively muted by American Pharoah and Justify, now feel emboldened to put their heads back over the parapet. Colleague Bill Finley masterfully disposed of this myopic and really rather decadent lobby in Friday's edition, and I would merely add that the Rich Strike decision is particularly disappointing in view of the miles he has on the clock. Because however little else he brought to the Derby, he did have more “bottom” (eight starts) than any other runner bar the obvious herbivore Tiz the Bomb (Hit It a Bomb) (nine).

By modern standards, runner-up Epicenter (Not This Time) had also laid fairly solid foundations, especially compared with the raw Zandon (Upstart) who seemed to hit a wall after the race had set up perfectly. True, he graduated from a race that nowadays serves the prejudices of modern trainers to the extent of granting them an extra week, but remember the GII Louisiana Derby also trades that concession for extra distance. The race produced four of the first six past the post last year, and once again it has proved a major bonus to have run a mile and three-sixteenths before the first Saturday in May.

Rich Strike was nowhere near the Derby's hot pace | Coady

Epicenter's perseverance, after contributing to the pace meltdown, indicates courage as exceptional as talent. Whether he can himself absorb such an exacting effort inside two weeks remains to be seen. Here, after all my complaints about the two-dimensional nature of the modern Derby, was a horse ideally equipped to boss the kind of procession we have seen so often since the points system eliminated sprint speed–only to hit the first pace implosion since Orb in 2013 (paradoxically, the first year of gate points).

Be all that as it may, we can't pretend that Rich Strike would have been an especially obvious fancy had he instead rolled up for the Peter Pan. Just try to restore his spectral presence, from that parallel world he fleetingly inhabited eight days ago, into the field that does assemble at Belmont on Saturday–potentially, in some cases, with a view to instead beating him back at the same track next month. Really, the exercise doesn't feel so different from the moment he suddenly appeared along the rail at Churchill: the ghost runner, the puzzling silks in the post parade, the impostor who seemed merely a ceremonial, three-dimensional representation of the horse scratched by D. Wayne Lukas.

So much for my hunch that the Coach might yet have a say in the Derby, despite having reserved what may yet prove the best sophomore of the crop to the company of her own sex. In the event, it became a tale of two substitutes, his brilliant filly's proxy Ethereal Road (Quality Road) crucially ceding his spot to this interloper.

Nobody in the modern era has put more “bottom” into a horse than Lukas, and the taxing race she endured under a fairly witless ride in that GI Arkansas Derby experiment not only set up Secret Oath (Arrogate) to dominate a vintage field for the GI Longines Kentucky Oaks but will also, surely, steel her for her imminent next encounter with colts.

The 2022 Kentucky Derby winner | Coady

The defection from that showdown of a fairytale Derby winner does deprive our sport of an opportunity to redeem much of the public distaste we have collectively invited over the past two or three years. The Preakness had offered to bring together two very different phoenixes: one rising from the pyre of age and fashion, his genius gleaming bright as ever; the other literally from the flames, an inferno having consumed 23 horses in as harrowing a nightmare as any horseman could imagine.

But the Rich Strike team are clearly going to follow their own narrative. Everybody else presumed that he didn't really belong in the Derby; and now they have decided, contrary to the outside consensus, that he doesn't belong in the Preakness. Again, it's their prerogative to do as they please. But the Triple Crown gods had cast them in pretty compelling roles, and I'm not sure anyone should want to start meddling with a plot of such momentum and coherence. They can flatter themselves that he was only primed to seize his moment last weekend because of their own calculation, but they do have to credit somebody up there with an assist.

Everything we do with horses, of course, combines luck as well as judgement. That's certainly true of breeding, and it may be no more than a striking coincidence that both Secret Oath and Rich Strike appear to have hewn their physical competence for the Classics, these most demanding examinations of the adolescent Thoroughbred, from genetic foundations assembled with an exceptional eye on reinforcement.

Secret Oath is pegged down at every corner by the great Aspidistra. Damsire Quiet American is famously inbred as close as 3×2 to Aspidistra's son Dr. Fager, in both cases moreover through a mating with a daughter of another matriarch in Cequillo. Secret Oath's second dam is by Great Above, a son of Aspidistra's Hall of Fame daughter Ta Wee. And Arrogate's grandsire Unbridled also brings in Aspidistra, as fourth dam; besides being (like Quiet American) a son of Fappiano, himself out of a Dr. Fager mare.

As we discussed in Tuesday's edition, Rich Strike's pedigree is also conspicuous for doubling down on venerable influences. His sire is a grandson of his own damsire, Smart Strike, while his third dam is by a full-brother to Smart Strike's sire Mr. Prospector. Keen Ice himself, meanwhile, duplicates the broodmare sire legend Deputy Minister 3×3. And his fourth dam Chic Shirine is by Mr. Prospector.

Keen Ice at Calumet | Sarah Andrew

Keen Ice's family–tracing to the 1962 Epsom Oaks winner Monade (Fr), imported by King Ranch–was developed through five generations by Emory Hamilton. We would have no Rich Strike, then, without the parallel human and equine dynasties going through her mother Helen Groves, that wonderfully vital connection to the Old West whose unique spark was finally extinguished this week at 94. They simply don't make them like “Helenita” anymore. In fact, I'm not sure they can have done previously, either.

I doubt that the fearless cowgirl would be terribly impressed by anyone turning down the opportunity to emulate Assault, who won the Triple Crown for King Ranch in 1946. She never forgot that Preakness Ball, full of demobbed servicemen and an infectious optimism, as a 19-year-old college student.

Assault, incidentally, won the Dwyer S. two weeks after the Belmont. That was his sixth win in nine weeks. (Nothing compared to Citation, of course, who two years later also landed the Triple Crown in winning 19 of 20 sophomore starts.) Sadly, infertility prevented Assault passing on that constitution, but that's what we're looking for in Triple Crown horses, and that's why it is set up as it is. It's how their predecessors keep the horsemen of today honest.

Last year not one horse lined up for all three legs. That may reflect on modern breeding, or merely the perceptions of modern trainers. Either way, it's obvious what needs reform–and, even more obviously, it isn't the Triple Crown.

The post This Side Up: Don’t Make Them Like That Anymore appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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