Her reward? Later that year, somebody claiming to represent a movie star approached Riley offering to buy into the horse, in the same breath mentioning the gentleman whose barn Casual Lies would then be joining. Naturally, the horse stayed where he was. And, whatever the progress meanwhile made by wider society, so did horse racing.

As has been pretty universally recognized, our community could not have been more fortunate in where fate finally found a female trainer to win a Triple Crown race. Jena Antonucci knows that her gender should be as irrelevant to everyone else as it is to Arcangelo (Arrogate), and it feels somewhat disrespectful that she should be constantly required to interpret such a momentous personal milestone as though she has arrived in our midst as some kind of gender token. But she has generously reconciled herself to that particular indignity, in order to help articulate and address those shared by all women.

And while it's embarrassing that the American sport had to wait until 2023 for this moment, actually the situation is still more flagrant in my homeland. With the likes of Criquette Head-Maarek and Jessica Harrington having won so many big races in Europe, guess how many women currently feature among the top 30 of the British trainers' championship? Two, maybe? (As is the case, thanks to Linda Rice and Brittany Russell, in the American standings.) Surely not just one?

Well, close, but the answer is one fewer than that.

That deplorable state of affairs suggests that the people investing in British stables, along with their management teams, are an even more stubborn crew than the handicappers. For the latter have grasped that Rachel Blackmore, who has raised the bar so high in jump racing, is not just the best female jockey but the best jockey, period.

If I had to confess to a candidly sexist generalization, simply from the demographics prevailing in a particular culture in a particular time, it would be that women, if anything, might have a more natural engagement with horses. Be that as it may, it would plainly be impossible for anyone to maintain the slightest coherence in proposing that they might, in any way, be less qualified to train racehorses.

Historically, admittedly, women trainers may have had to meet additional challenges, in terms of asserting the kind of authority they were chronically denied in so many other workplaces. And it is not as though those battles have been definitively won elsewhere, for instance in politics or business. But their current profile in this profession suggests a culpable failure, in our community, to match even such progress as has been painfully achieved in other walks of life.

Jena Antonucci with Arcangelo the day before the Belmont S. | Sarah Andrew

So much so, that arguably it should be incumbent on those in a position to influence behaviors to exercise some positive discrimination. Given the gender ratio among licensees, after all, that's nothing like as tough as it should be. But perhaps these billionaires should be saying to themselves: “Right, my team is about to hit the sales. At the end, I'm going to ensure that at least [for instance] two of my eight new yearlings go to female trainers.” Is that so much to ask in a world containing, say, Josie Carroll and Cherie DeVaux?

We know the chicken-and-egg element in any trainer's reputation: get some good material, win some good races, get better material. Of course, I'm not saying that all trainers would do equally well with the same material. But if we truly believe in merit, then the only way for the training profession to become a true meritocracy-and to achieve the requisite volume of female entry-is for the role models to have proper respect and opportunity. As it is, Antonucci had to seize her moment with a $35,000 yearling, hardly an exponential leap from the $7,500 Casual Lies.

Out of nowhere, and in its hour of need, Antonucci has stepped up to the plate not just for her sex but also for her sport. This is a person who had already shown exemplary ambition in terms of a more holistic, acorn-to-oak approach to the Thoroughbred's career. But even her uninhibited exhibition of excitement and joy, during the race last Saturday, offered us something valuable. This was not female joy; it was human joy. It was something that anybody would aspire to share.

A year before a woman named Jena found her platform in the Belmont, the same race had allowed one named Jana to share her experiences in a world dominated by men. Jana Barbe and her husband Roy had raised a Belmont contender, We the People (Constitution), despite being relative newcomers to the game.

She acknowledged the Turf to have proved a conservative environment, in need of more diversity in every way. But this is a corporate highflier who used to come home from work “picking shards out of my head” from that notorious glass ceiling. When she graduated law school, in 1987, the percentage of female equity partners at big law firms was 15 to 18 percent, and the goal was 20 percent. The goal today? Still 20 percent.

So, what Jena did last Saturday was what Jana urged last year, when discussing the only way to achieve change. “One person at a time, one foot in front of the other, and being really smart in how we go about it,” she said. “We will get there. Because we have to. In the end the sport will become integrated because it can't not.”

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Hopefully a reprieve of the GI Belmont S. might yet be extended to some other elements in what has become too relentlessly apocalyptic a narrative. In terms of what has been definitively established, our sport's macabre run of misfortune in recent weeks may owe as much to sulphurs exhaled from hell as to the difference between dirt and synthetic surfaces.

As a community, we obviously have a major challenge on our hands. But that's precisely why we need to avoid panicked, impulsive solutions in favor of calmly diligent, far-sighted leadership. Just because social media has empowered some pretty deranged minorities, we can't allow their disproportionate reach to pervert whole societal agendas.

It would seem pretty unarguable that American racing can benefit from a greater role for synthetics but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Horsemen and handicappers alike have a legitimate stake in dirt racing–and, to be clear, that stake is not just financial but a matter of cultural identity–and there its long history can surely be extended by discovering and addressing any practices that undermine its sustainability. I suspect there's probably quite a crossover between those who are resisting HISA and those who can't abide synthetics–and these are the guys who really need to smell the coffee. If you want to keep dirt racing, then call your dogs off HISA.

Tapit | Sarah Andrew

You couldn't ask for a better context to ponder these issues than the 155th running of a race designed to showcase precisely those genetic assets that equip the Thoroughbred to deal safely with tasks set before an increasingly (and, for the most part, properly) vigilant audience. And that's not just because it asks for the robustness to carry speed for a distance that is nearly freakish, in the American theatre, but also because historically many runners would already have contested two demanding races in the preceding five weeks.

Though it is the trainers who are driving corrosion of the Triple Crown, they implicitly transfer the culpability to the breeders. Hopefully our collective endeavors to identify and resolve vulnerabilities in the Thoroughbred will include analysis of the relative incidence of breakdowns (and not just catastrophic ones) in the stock of different stallions. If so, we might learn whether there's any scientific substance to our nervousness about horses today being “too fast to last.”  For now, however, we can only follow our instincts and conscience. But it's certainly striking that Germany should have achieved such a sensational impact with its bloodlines–far outrunning its troubles as a racing economy–by paternalist strictures in favor of soundness and competitive longevity. And even the most stubborn commercial breeders in Europe and America must acknowledge that Japan isn't doing too badly, either, in prizing the same assets.

Happily, the 50th anniversary of Secretariat's Belmont has drawn a perfectly presentable field in both quality and intrigue. With four other Kentucky Derby graduates meanwhile siphoned to the GIII Matt Winn S., it's clear that the Classic taking all the punishment from trainers right now is the Preakness. But how edifying that the Belmont–such an outlier, in the numbly repeating wheelhouse of most American trainers–should retain sufficient prestige to tempt a juvenile champion who'd be well within his rights to find a more obviously congenial way of regrouping from his recent vexations.

Quite a leap of imagination is required to picture a speed brand like Violence siring a Belmont winner, but his grandsire El Prado (Ire) sits comfortingly opposite Arch (behind damsire Blame) in the pedigree of Forte. So you never know, and clearly the runner-up has meanwhile upgraded his white-knuckle GI Florida Derby.

But his second dam was fast (stakes winner at 6f) and will need to have smuggled through some stamina from her own mother. That's by no means impossible, as she was by Seattle Slew and her half-sister by a speedier agency (Storm Cat) unites the pedigrees of 12-furlong Classic winners Contrail (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn}) and Essential Quality (Tapit), as third and second dam respectively.

Essential Quality, of course, was his sire's fourth Belmont winner, a unique distinction in the modern era. The only precedent, Lexington, had emerged from a forgotten era of four-mile heats and matches to prove an ideal influence for what was then a newfangled type of sprinting in a single, congested dash. The dial has since turned so far that the Belmont stands out as a curio, a positive marathon. Breeders of the 21st Century must count themselves blessed, then, to retain access to such a wholesome influence in the evening of his career.

Forte | Coady Photography

Astoundingly, this time Tapit himself accounts for two of the nine runners, while no fewer than FOUR others are out of his daughters.

The Gainesway patriarch's Belmont record, including in a couple of desperate finishes, is all about the ability to carry speed under duress. That is supposed to be a dirt hallmark, though it was exported to revolutionary effect by Northern Dancer's sons in Europe, where the dynasty's principal heir Frankel (GB)-having himself always run just like a dirt horse-is now siring stock that similarly just keep going.

Actually, there's a case for saying that Tapit is a far more effective turf sire than his stats might imply, given that only his most disappointing foals would even try the weeds. He's certainly been disgracefully untested in Europe. Of just nine Tapits started by British trainers over the last decade, seven are winners and three stakes performers. But whatever the future may hold, in terms of racing surfaces, it looks as though he will just have to settle for being the richest sire in the history of the American sport.

Into Mischief is almost certainly going to run him down, in time, but Tapit started Belmont weekend on a statistical brink–$198 million in progeny earnings, from 999 winners and 99 graded stakes winners–that surely beckons him towards another date with Belmont destiny. And if he's going to make history, then he's also the type of horse that can give us a future.

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Of course, as some powerful evocations of the time have lately reminded us, Secretariat arrived as a sunbeam into a wider world darkened by Vietnam and civic unrest. And nor should we deceive ourselves that even our own, notoriously insular community was back then immune to some of the things that vex us in 2023.

For instance, without reprising what have doubtless become tiresomely familiar objections to tinkering with the Classic schedule, let's not forget that Secretariat faced down a Triple Crown drought stretching to Citation in 1948. Obviously a still longer wait followed Seattle Slew and Affirmed, but we've found two horses equal to the task in the last eight years. Even so, the trainers are somehow trying to bully us into reconciling the paradox that they want more time between the races and therefore (assuming this indeed renders those races more competitive) to extend the intervals between precisely those Triple Crown winners that supposedly represent our best route to wider engagement.

Well, the world moves on. And it's not as though the Thoroughbred has ever permitted hard and fast rules anyway.

On the one hand, it's pretty unarguable that the old school, by exposing their horses more, helped the public to develop a rooting interest. If Flightline (Tapit) was perhaps as talented as we've seen since Secretariat, in making just six starts he barely scratched the surfaced of national attention.
And I do like to think there were other, incidental gains in the aggressive campaigning of horses, whether in terms of educating the animal or showcasing the type of genes that breeders should wish to replicate. But if Mage (Good Magic) is only the latest proof that modern trainers can prepare a raw horse even for a challenge as notoriously exacting as the Kentucky Derby, then let's roll back to that summer of '73.

Okay, so Secretariat himself had made nine juvenile starts from July 4. But if you would presume experience to be an asset at Churchill on the first Saturday in May, then how much more crucial should it be for the template itself, the most venerable race of all: the Derby at Epsom, that crazy rollercoaster with its twisting hill? Yet half a century ago, in a field of 25, the race was won on only his second career start by Morston (GB).

He was bred for Classic stamina, at any rate: by St Leger winner Ragusa (Ire) out of an Oaks runner-up (herself by a St Leger runner-up) who had already produced the 1969 Derby winner Blakeney (GB). Ragusa, incidentally, was out of a mare imported from a very old American family that had earlier produced Hard Tack, the sire of Seabiscuit. The St Leger, remember, is run over 14 furlongs. As the Japanese have reminded us, the lifeblood of the Thoroughbred is not brute speed but class: the ability not just to go fast, but to keep going fast.

That is certainly the hallmark of Galileo (Ire), whose legacy saturates the 244th running of the Derby on Saturday. With 93 juveniles and just a dozen yearlings still to come, he is represented by a single son, Artistic Star (Ire), unbeaten for one of the outstanding trainers in Europe yet available at tempting odds. Of the remaining 13 starters, eight are by sons of Galileo (including two by principal heir Frankel {GB}); two are out of his daughters; and one is out of a mare by another of his sons. That leaves just two runners to have bobbed to the surface of a European bloodstock industry that squanders mares, by the thousand, on stallions that cannot remotely satisfy the definition of class given above.

But, yes, the world moves on. Sometimes it just moves on in the wrong direction. It's a pretty dismal reflection on where our sport stands today that its greatest race has been shoehorned into the middle of lunch to avoid the F.A. Cup Final. Because what American readers may not realize is that this particular soccer match, in its heyday, also once brought England to a standstill—but has in recent years, even as the game has boomed, also lost much of its popular traction. With many managers resting star players for this tournament, you might even say that the F.A. Cup has shared the same decline in popular culture as the Derby (for which Parliament itself used to take the day off).

Fixed television schedules are also a thing of the past, with the young especially expecting to do most of their viewing “on demand.” That puts live events at a premium. In Britain, however, broadcasting rights for the most prestigious sporting events—including both the F.A. Cup Final and the Derby—are ringfenced for free channels. (Which obviously invites the paradox that the most coveted events, with no competition from channels with subscription revenue, are least likely to achieve their true market value.) Unusually, the F.A. Cup Final is broadcast simultaneously by both the BBC and ITV. And since the latter also has the rights to the Derby, racing has been unceremoniously shown its place.

By an unmissable irony, the match that has elbowed the Derby aside is being contested by Manchester City and Manchester United. As such, it is what the soccer world knows as a “derby” match between local rivals. The origin of this usage is tenuous, but some have ascribed it to the Epsom race. Horseracing, after all, long precedes football (in all its variations) in popular culture.
Yet now we find the Jockey Club taking out injunctions in anticipation of animal rights protests, even for a race in such innocuous contrast to, for instance, the Grand National. And that is without the current traumas of Churchill Downs having remotely penetrated wider consciousness on that side of the pond.

But let's resist adding another “basso profundo” to the prevailing chorus of miserabilism. Let's hope for another infectiously exciting chapter in the Epsom epic: maybe a final Derby for Dettori, who has already won two of three British Classics on his farewell tour; or perhaps one more for another old master, Sir Michael Stoute.

His runner hadn't even seen a racetrack before Apr. 20. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mage! Passenger (Ulysses {Ire}) is actually out of a War Front mare. Fifty years on from Morston, then, perhaps Passenger would be an apt reminder that the more the world changes, the more it stays the same.

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True, Velazquez wouldn't last the first week if he were to lead a funeral at the same kind of lick as he did the GI Kentucky Derby field on Reincarnate (Good Magic), quite a contrast to the way he has previously hypnotized his pursuers in that race. But Johnny V. amply redressed that aberration with a masterly ride in the GI Preakness S. to confirm himself, for our community, as apt a companion as might be found for a horse bearing a name like National Treasure (Quality Road).

But we won't dwell on the cortege analogy, which will be far too morbid for some tastes in the prevailing atmosphere. This I must admit to viewing with some ambivalence. Because however troubled our relationship with Main Street, unrelieved “sackcloth and ashes” may yet cause us additionally to fail in the more straightforward priority of retaining our existing audience.

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Alongside a wholesome determination to keep improving, I do feel that we should stand up for the many glories of our sport with rather more pride than we seem able to find in our hearts just now. (It's like the old joke. Horse walks into a bar. Barman says, “Why the long face?”) We have so much to celebrate, so many stories to discourage mainstream complicity in the kind of extremist agenda that will tolerate zero risk; that would candidly prefer no horses at all, rather than expose them even to the most conscionable and scrupulously-managed risk. That position is invulnerable to the reminder that Thoroughbreds don't make terribly good house pets, so really, we need to concentrate on the far larger numbers who might share the aspiration of giving these noble creatures not just life but the best life possible.

John Velazquez wins the GI Preakness S. | Horsephotos

As Californian horsemen, veterinarians and administrators will confirm, that can raise the bar to challenging levels. But their collective efforts have produced such spectacular dividends, turning round an existential crisis virtually overnight, that I feel that the wider community has been inadequately grateful. Major investors in the industry have abandoned the Californian circuit to a pretty vicious circle: small fields, which diminish handle, which restricts purses, which reduces fields. Yet still it keeps coming up with champions, developed by some of the most accomplished horsemen of our time-regardless of where you happen to stand on the one who has just consolidated an incredible resumé with yet another Preakness.

Views of Bob Baffert, in fact, are a good example of all this wringing of hands. It sometimes feels as though you're only allowed to say one of two things: either he exemplifies everything that's wrong, or he's a maligned genius. And whichever camp you find yourself in, get ready for the invective.

All genius is flawed, because all genius is human. We certainly saw a human being last Saturday, but only in circumstances that maintained the bitter polemics. So much of our discourse, above all regarding HISA, is infected with venom; much of it is conveyed, at calamitous expense, by lawyers. But who wants to be invited to a civil war, instead of a garden party?

I do understand that parts of our community will only stir from their complacency if adequately alarmed by the costs of inaction. And yes, too much naïve enthusiasm might blind us to real dangers. It's even arguable that the way the geographical heart of the industry is thriving, in Kentucky, may insulate too much opinion against societal fissures that feel a world away.

Certainly, professional horsemen have their share of culpability in the loss of public traction. As I suggested last week, we're either breeding horses that aren't up to the task; or hiring trainers who won't properly explore the genetic attributes we may wish to replicate. In either scenario, a solution is absolutely within our hands.

But one other thing also needs to be understood by horsemen. You can't have it both ways: you can't refuse synthetic tracks, which are demonstrably safer, and also refuse more exacting regulation. If you won't accept the kind of strictures that redeemed dirt racing in California, then you'll just have to make do with synthetics.

And actually, that whole area is yet another that only tends to disclose division and misunderstanding. One of the main reasons for the perceived failure of the initial synthetics experiment was a prescriptive view of bloodlines, as adapted only to one type of surface. So, whatever our grievances with Churchill Downs, especially regarding Arlington, I'm glad to see them putting their shoulder to the Turfway wheel. Having loaded Turfway with starting points, they were rewarded with a trial winner who ran a brilliant second in the Derby. In the process, remember, Two Phil's precisely emulated his sire Hard Spun. Are we any more likely to take heed, this time round?

National Treasure at Pimlico | Jim McCue

While we're on the subject, I'm intrigued that the sire of the Preakness winner has lately surfaced among those extraneous speed influences sampled by Coolmore for their plethora of staying mares by Galileo (Ire). Quality Road's own track career was all about carrying speed on dirt. But his dam was by Strawberry Road (Aus), out of a half-sister to the dam of Bahri (Riverman); and of course, his sire Elusive Quality adapted very well to the European theater. Quality Road has had a couple of Royal Ascot winners, while his daughter Bleecker Street last year emerged as one of the elite grass talents in America. So, it's unsurprising that he should be looking like a promising experiment for Coolmore, not least through his son Cairo (Ire) who runs in a Classic at the Curragh on Saturday.

Actually, National Treasure himself has plenty of chlorophyll in his maternal family, while his first two dams are respectively by sons of El Prado (Ire) and Blushing Groom (Fr). But he's presumably never going to risk grass, when he's not getting anything like enough respect as it is.

The world outside is understandably aghast at our horrible run of breakdowns. But even those turning their gaze inwards just want to tell us what a terrible Preakness it was, and how we're clinging to the wreckage of an antediluvian Triple Crown. It evidently wasn't a “terrible” enough race for the Derby winner to swat aside horses that finished third and fourth in the crop championship at the Breeders' Cup. Sure, that was largely the work of Johnny V.–and emphatically nothing to do with a two-week turnaround-but if these races are so soft, please feel free to go and win one.

So, let's offer due congratulations to this very game animal; to the people who bred and raised him; and to those who found him, and have now brought out his potential. It was a difficult day, for sure, but life is full of ups and downs and horseracing is no different. In fact, that's exactly why its stories are so compelling; and why we must share not just our grief and guilt, but also our joy and pride.

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We all know that anything can happen in a horse race, but some imaginative contortions are required to see any of his rivals bridging the abyss dividing them from the champion juvenile. After all, the most competent among them are keeping him company out wide anyway. There has to be every chance, then, that the GI Kentucky Derby favorite will arrive at Churchill without having been put under any meaningful pressure in five months since having to deal with Cave Rock (Arrogate) in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile at Keeneland in November.

This, as we know, is the modern way. If his Hall of Fame trainer is satisfied that Forte's best shot of winning the Derby is not even to run until March, and then only to outclass two fields of inferiors in his backyard, then we must respectfully stand aside. It's a different race, nowadays, and contested by a different kind of horse; and it is hardly Forte's fault that so few credible contenders have been tempted to slipstream their way to 40 starting points for the runner-up.

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Nor is he vulnerable to the way a similarly light schedule has backfired for Instant Coffee (Bolt d'Oro), who was deliberately kept under wraps between Jan. 21 and last weekend. It looked a safe enough gamble, in that the starting points awarded down to fifth place in the GII Louisiana Derby gave the hot favorite plenty of margin for error. In the event, however, he missed out altogether after trying to make up ground into a quickening pace and running a tepid finish.

There may be dozens of different reasons for that, so we can't assume that another race in between might have sustained him better through that mile and three-sixteenths. But what I do know is that horsemen of the old school, finding themselves in this kind of pickle, would certainly not be panicking. And that's because they would know that there are still 40 points available in the GIII Stonestreet Lexington S. on Apr. 15.

Now obviously if you decide that the model Derby prep today comprises races on Jan. 21 and Mar. 25, then I can't imagine that you'll suddenly be willing to salvage the situation with a race at the modern equivalent of five to midnight. That's a shame, because a lot of people involved in this talented colt deserve their shot at an experience that owes much of its mystique precisely to the fact that a) no horse gets a second chance; and b) as a result, nor do very many horsemen.

I can think of one man who wouldn't be squeamish about a three-week interval between the Lexington S. and the Derby. In fact, D. Wayne Lukas was probably disappointed in 1982 when Churchill moved the old Derby Trial from the Tuesday before the race back to the Saturday. The couple of Trial winners he had that decade were doubtless a little rusty by the time they ran midfield in the Derby, a full week later.

At 87, and 40 years after his first winner in Hot Springs, Lukas is already enjoying the most lucrative Oaklawn meet of his career and he's a long way from finished. Besides upcoming engagements for barn leaders Secret Oath (Arrogate) and Last Samurai (Malibu Moon), Lukas has seven declared on Saturday's card including 'TDN Rising Star' Caddo River (Hard Spun) in the GIII Oaklawn Mile.

Until recently a barnmate of Instant Coffee, Caddo River ran second in the GI Arkansas Derby two years ago. And actually Lukas has a candidate for the latest running with, I suspect, a rather better chance than odds that may yet extend past the 20-1 of the “hangover” line. Bourbon Bash (City of Light) broke his maiden by eight lengths at Saratoga last summer but then bombed out in consecutive Grade Is and was then given a chance to start piecing things quietly back together in sprints. He hadn't quite learned to settle when runner-up to a talented rival around a second turn last month, but then caught the eye with the way he handled a poor trip when fifth as rank outsider for the GII Rebel S.

Lukas evidently believes that Bourbon Bash can stretch out effectively and, if he's right, his revival could yet open up a final fairytale. But we must note that this colt is out of a sister to Volatile (Violence), who has helped to make the sire of Forte primarily, to this point at least, a speed brand. That duly also remains a caveat about the crop leader, who will probably be depending heavily on damsire Blame on the first Saturday in May, when he'll be facing a 10th furlong in much more exacting company.

Ironically this will actually be only Bourbon Bash's third sophomore start, scarcely the standard Lukas treatment. Lukas has said that the horse doesn't need mental seasoning, but has needed time to strengthen. He's certainly fired some bullet works over the past month or so but, who knows, maybe he'll end up having to complete his preparations in the Lexington S.- the last port of call now that the old race-week Trial has been absorbed into the Derby undercard as the GII Pat Day Mile.

Tim Tam, the last horse to double up the Trial and the Derby, had previously won both the races chosen for Forte's own road to Churchill: the Fountain Of Youth S. and Florida Derby. In fact, the Kentucky Derby was his 10th sophomore start. So where would Jimmy Jones have learned a fool thing like that, running a future Hall of Famer four days before the Derby? Well, I can't quote chapter and verse–but I can give you a Citation.

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So on a weekend when we temporarily suspend our search for the adolescent Thoroughbred maturing sufficiently to beat his peers on the first Saturday in May, let's celebrate the fulfilments that remain available later in life–whether on two legs or four.

The GIII Essex H. is the kind of race that warms the cockles of my heart. Last year it retrieved graded status, and deservedly so after increasing its purse fivefold between 2016 and 2021–a telling snapshot of the thriving Oaklawn program. And this time round it throws together a couple of evergreen veterans who show that whether age turns us into vinegar or vintage wine is largely up to us.

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In the case of D. Wayne Lukas, it actually stands to reason that he should still maintain the standards of his heyday even with a much smaller barn. True, he does seem as blessed in indefatigability as in the genius he always brought to his vocation, and harnessing one to the other has simply given a fresh dimension to his unique status in our community. A wider application, however, surely applies to the principle that any decline in the physical powers even of lesser mortals is compensated, and amply so, by experience.

It's not as though anyone sends an expensive Thoroughbred to a given trainer because he might otherwise have made a cage-fighter or lumberjack. I've never understood why “ageing” trainers (an alarmingly elastic concept) should have become unfashionable as they certainly are in my homeland. Some of the biggest yards in Newmarket these days seem to be supervised as a perk accompanying appointment as head boy at various prep schools. As I have frequently remarked, if I owned the Derby favourite, and he had a foot in a bucket of ice the evening before the race, I would rather my trainer was dealing with the problem for an umpteenth time, and not the first.

It would be nice to think that a few people pondered this after the longest-serving trainer in Newmarket won the Arc last autumn, and I was delighted to learn that Sir Mark Prescott will be training for the new monarch this year. On the other side of the water, meanwhile, Lukas himself offered a similar prompt to reflection with Secret Oath (Arrogate) in the GI Kentucky Oaks last year. Though he was now closer to 90 than 80, perhaps one or two people recognized that the guy might finally be getting the hang of the game.

Admittedly it was hard, after Rich Strike (Keen Ice) emerged from nowhere (both figuratively and literally) the next day, to resist a wistful sense that Secret Oath in that form might well have cut down the boys in the Derby after all. While her form then tapered off, last weekend she looked as rejuvenated as her trainer when resurfacing at the track where she first made her name.

That was a gratifying sight, after her breeders had resisted all blandishments to keep her in the Briland family. And Last Samurai, who represents Lukas in the Essex, similarly looked better than ever when taking his earnings past $1.6 million in the GIII Razorback H. Even in his fourth campaign, however, he remains a relative greenhorn compared to the horse who closed for fourth that day.

Rated R Superstar (Kodiak Kowboy) won this race last year, as he had back in 2019 when a callow 6-year-old, and now bids to retain the trophy on his 68th career start. Here's a horse, then, to renew the perennial question: who do we blame for the fact that the modern Thoroughbred is treated like porcelain? Is it the trainers themselves? Or do they only treat horses this way because of the raw materials they're nowadays given by breeders?

One trainer who sets himself apart in that respect is Kenny McPeek, who actually trained Rated R Superstar through his first 30 starts, including when third in the GI Breeders' Futurity. And on Saturday McPeek takes on his old buddy with another who exactly matched that effort as a juvenile, in Classic Causeway.

This time last year, this horse had just won the GII Tampa Bay Derby and was sketching out an apt memorial as one of just three colts in the final crop of Giant's Causeway. True to that legacy of toughness and versatility, in the summer Classic Causeway reinvented himself in startling fashion, winning a Grade I on turf just two weeks after finishing third in the GIII Ohio Derby. Few American trainers today would dare attempt anything like that, so who can presume to anticipate what he might yet achieve back on dirt?

This week McPeek has already dusted off another of last year's sophomores to make a really heartening return. It certainly seems a long time since Smile Happy (Runhappy) beat Classic Causeway (then in another barn) in the GII Kentucky Jockey Club S., not having been seen since his midfield finish in the Derby. But his rehearsals last spring had confirmed him among the best of the crop, and it's very wholesome to be reminded that there is life after the Triple Crown trail. Three years ago, after all, Last Samurai himself trailed in a distant fifth of six in the GI Arkansas Derby; while his rivals Saturday also include Silver Prospector (Declaration Of War), who had bombed out in the previous running of that race.

So let's hope that Litigate (Blame) can likewise return to build a career commensurate with his talent and potential after the hugely disappointing news that he's out of the Derby. All of us have some kind of stake in this horse doing enough to earn a place at stud, given that he has Numbered Account (Buckpasser) facing Thong (Nantallah) on either side of his pedigree. As that indicates, he has been in the best of hands throughout and hopefully his time will still come.

Even without him, the GII Louisiana Derby next week looks deep enough for horses to show that they could have a legitimate shot at Churchill but without banking enough points to prise open a gate. If that happens, however, nobody should despair. You might yet end up with a millionaire contesting the Essex H. in 2025. There are worse fates. Because what they say of people is probably just as true of many a horse: youth is wasted on the young.

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Now there are perfectly coherent grounds within his own game plan for evicting Litigate (Blame) to New Orleans, where he can open the final cycle of higher-graded qualifiers by contesting more starting points, and more money, over more real estate. Litigate having already sampled stakes competition, it's Tapit Trice who would seem more likely to remain in need of experience before the first Saturday in May. (Four of Todd Pletcher's five previous Tampa Bay Derby winners took in either the Wood Memorial or Blue Grass en route to Churchill.)

Even as things stand, however, a lot of people feel that the gray has the potential to wind in the geographical spread that typically makes the Kentucky Derby what it is–a showdown, on neutral ground, between the emerging leaders of their various local packs. While the center of gravity for the hibernating crop has arguably tilted away from Florida in recent times, with Oaklawn and the Fair Grounds offering a strengthening foil to the Californian talent pool, this time the two key protagonists could conceivably be strolling the same shedrow at Palm Meadows.

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Tapit Trice has explored different dimensions of his talent despite a brief career to date, having set up his flamboyant allowance display with a gutsy maiden defeat of a colt who underscored his own talent when second in the GIII Gotham S. last week.

In that context, I can't omit to complain that Raise Cain (Violence) surely merits rather more respect than he has been receiving for a visually quite staggering exhibition at Aqueduct. You only have to think back to last year's Derby to see what can sometimes happen when a horse switches from synthetics to dirt, while hindsight discloses in Raise Cain's earlier races a pretty cogent foundation for what he did last Saturday.

Even switching from grass to synthetic prompted a barely less revelatory performance from Congruent (Tapit) in the John Battaglia Memorial S. (Both Raise Cain and Congruent, incidentally, graduate from the mystery tour that gave us Rich Strike (Keen Ice) last year). For now, however, Congruent is primarily a reinforcement for a sire whose admirers are rooting for Tapit Trice largely because it would be a travesty for the Derby to remain the single glaring omission on a glorious resume.

At 22, Tapit is in the evening of his career and his books will increasingly be curated with all the prudence you would expect of the Gainesway team who have managed his career so superbly. (And who also, by the way, bred and co-own Tapit Trice.) As such, his remaining shots at the Derby are clearly finite. It was looking pretty promising two winters ago, when he had Essential Quality playing the Forte hand, with Greatest Honour and Proxy coming through pianissimo. In the event, Essential Quality instead made Tapit the only modern stallion to produce four winners of the GI Belmont S.

Essential Quality | Sarah Andrew

To put that record in its epoch-making context, it is shared with a 19th century stallion whose stock was adapting exceptionally well to the novel demands of what–relative to the punishing four-mile heats contested by Lexington himself–was almost a form of sprint racing. (For instance, Lexington also produced nine of the first 15 winners of the Travers, then over 14 furlongs.) The idea of showcasing the speed of younger horses, in a single dash, had gained prestige through the Classics introduced in Britain the previous century. For many of us, however, that arc has since been followed too steeply–to the point that the Belmont is now a unique test of the American sophomore's stamina.

I've often remarked on the dilution of the Kentucky Derby tempo since the willful exclusion of sprint speed by the points system, and conceivably this has also contributed Tapit's wait for the winner he so deserves. Setting aside last year's aberration, the race is no longer making the same demands that formerly identified the kind of speed-carrying genes we should be looking to replicate. Essential Quality, for instance, found himself in a procession of a race, the protagonists maintaining their relative positions virtually throughout.

Unluckily, moreover, the colossus who bestrides even all Tapit's other work was only able to explore a second turn as an older horse. Otherwise, of course, Flightline offers the perfect template for anyone who spends seven figures on a Tapit yearling, such as the one now hot favorite for the Tampa Bay Derby. Whether Flightline should command a higher fee than his sire is another matter: it will be 2026 before he can sire the winner of a maiden claimer, while Tapit has 30 Grade I winners and counting.

Flightline | Horsephotos

Not that we can ever neglect the bottom half of the equation. The Fappiano mare Jeano, for instance, appears not only as third dam of Essential Quality but also as fourth dam of none other than Forte. This branch of the La Troienne dynasty has already produced a Derby winner in Smarty Jones. But while Tapit finished midfield that day, covered in slop, he now stands on the brink of a fresh series of landmarks in his second career.

Tapit Trice is bidding to become Tapit's 99th graded stakes scorer and (through Thursday, at any rate) his 991st individual winner. The earnings of his stock, already unprecedented, have just tipped $195 million. Moreover these tallies have been achieved at an exceptional clip, underpinned by equally outstanding ratios for starters (84 percent of named foals) and winners (63 percent).

And that's what I adore about the legacy he has been putting together: Tapit has not allowed the huge books of the commercial age to distort his efficacy, instead maintaining a dependability poignantly at odds with the extraneous frustrations that hindered his own fulfilment on the racetrack. How apt that Tapit claimed the earnings record from one whose ferrous qualities earned him celebrity as “The Iron Horse”. Of what, then, must he be made? Tungsten? Whatever it may be, he's worth his weight in it–no less than that first Derby, as and when it finally comes, will absolutely feel worth the wait.

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The only small increment of wisdom I can detect, meanwhile, is perhaps a rather unexpected one. Because while conforming to a dismal stereotype in becoming ever less flexible with age, in most of my habits and beliefs, I did at least sense some improvement in my levels of tolerance when considering the racing this Saturday.

In the past, I would have worn a coast-to-coast scowl. Looking east, we have a champion juvenile deliberately reserving until March the first of what will presumably be only two public appearances before the Derby. Looking west, we find the race that began its glorious history with the eye-watering status of “the Hundred Grander” offering 1/40th of a purse contested in Riyadh last week.

But you know what, I'm learning to live with all that. The world changes, and even on the Pacific shore the water can get pretty cold round your waist if you just stand there trying to turn back the tide. After all, while a couple of horses that would historically have been tailor-made for the Big 'Cap instead went to the desert, the race has still drawn a deep and competitive field. And if modern trainers want to renounce the old school in preparing their Derby horses, then that's their prerogative. The beauty of this game is that whoever's right, or wrong, we have a proving ground where we can settle all differences without rancor. With racehorses, the only rule is that there are no rules.

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Except one. Which is that whatever we ask any animal to do, we must always retain a clear conscience. With that in mind, then, allow me to recommend a way to refresh our sense of what is really meant, when diametrically opposed positions on HISA both claim to represent the best interests of the horse.

This week I was fortunate to catch Jerzy Skolimowski's movie EO, which has deservedly won an Oscar nomination for best foreign film. If you haven't yet seen it, you should. Unusually, the central character does not have a single line. He is, in fact, a Polish donkey. Actually, as with Seabiscuit–a Big 'Cap winner, don't forget!–the role is shared by half a dozen animals. But the true diversity sampled through his odyssey is found in ourselves: in our power over animals, and the ways we exercise it.

The film charts the full spectrum, from devotion to brutality. (Though, be warned, the most lurid moment of butchery actually occurs among human beings). Throughout, aside from occasional braying, the donkey naturally remains mute and inscrutable. And while Skolimowski brilliantly stretches the medium to offer him feasible perspectives, ultimately even the most lingering close-up of the donkey's eye cannot penetrate the mysteries lurking in that dark pool. Even so, he achieves an irresistible accretion of dignity simply in the stoical absorption of serial crises in his journey through life.

Interestingly, for our community, he spends an early chapter of his career in a stable housing expensive, lovingly groomed sport horses (whose beauty, by the way, is captured in haunting fashion). Few of us would hesitate to use the adjective “noble” in contrasting our Thoroughbreds with a stumpy, stubborn donkey. But this film transcends such castes, disclosing a fragile sublimity in all life, and demands scrupulous attention to the margin dividing use and abuse of animals. EO won't necessarily make you vegetarian, but it should definitely make you prepared to pay extra to know that your sirloin has a biography that squares with your conscience.

Most people working in our industry can be proudly credited with the same loving engagement that EO encounters, through human charity, in a donkey sanctuary and a veterinary hospital. But while HISA has caused virulent polarization in the interpretation of “welfare,” you would very soon know what truly animates a person if you were to sit down together and watch this film. In fact, maybe we should say that nobody gets a license unless tears are perceptibly welling as the credits roll.

And that's where I draw the line; that's where I retain all possible intolerance. You want to dope your horse so that it doesn't hurt? That is NOT humane. That just means you want to drive him past his red lights.

But make no mistake, that kind of specious logic also shows why our collective responsibility actually starts with the breeders. When we mate horses, our priority should be to produce foals that will be comfortable with the tasks awaiting them.

And that, in turn, is why we cannot permit physical vulnerabilities to be masked on the racetrack. Obviously such regulation has a more immediate purpose, simply in protecting horses from imminent peril. But unless and until we get the pharmacists out of the shedrow, the market will keep rewarding the production of horses that lack such notoriously “uncommercial” attributes as durability (and its ancillary, stamina).

A guy with a needle at the racetrack may be at one extreme, but complicities extend even to that point where good-hearted people who wouldn't harm a fly, never mind a donkey, are right now choosing a mate for their beautiful Thoroughbred mares.

It's chicken-and-egg. People will breed sturdy, robust horses if other people will pay for them. And people will do that if regulation makes such horses essential. Who knows, maybe they will turn out to be exactly the kind of horses that Kentucky has for a generation or so been wilfully discarding to Japan. (And we saw once again, in the desert last weekend, how that is working out).

Producing and preparing a Thoroughbred naturally competent for its vocation is a humane duty–and one that we all share, stubborn as a mule. Because if our industry can't get wise, it can forget any ideas it may have about becoming much older.

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The big bucks are obviously at Gulfstream. But it tells you plenty about the inside-out values of this business that even a prize exceeded in the U.S. by a single other race would not quite fund the docket signed on behalf of Zedan Racing Stables, up the road at OBS last April, for a son of Uncle Mo. And it's in Hot Springs that we'll start to find out whether even those giddy stakes might yet yield a dividend.

Now, anyone who spends as much as $2.3 million on a colt that has clocked :9 4/5 under tack will typically do so in the hope of putting him right where we find 'TDN Rising Star' Arabian Knight now–as the current No. 1 in colleague T.D. Thornton's GI Kentucky Derby “Top 12”. As things stand, however, his trainer remains ineligible to bank the 20 starting points available to the winner of this race. And there's a curveball, this time, in that any Derby candidate in the Bob Baffert barn must move out by the end of February. That's over a month earlier than when Baffert had to send out his refugees last year.

With his lawyers trying to break those chains next week, we can leave for another day what has for everyone become a rather wearisome sub-plot. For now, it will be compelling simply to see how Arabian Knight responds to some talented and rather more seasoned opposition, having presumably learned little in outclassing a field of maidens at Keeneland. It's obviously encouraging that his closest pursuer that day has done so well since; and we saw, last year, how adeptly Baffert educated another expensive 2-year-old purchase for the same owners, Taiba (Gun Runner), so that he could win the GI Santa Anita Derby for his new trainer, with only a similarly undemanding debut behind him.

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True, the first Saturday in May still came too soon for Taiba. Arabian Knight, however, is miles ahead of that curve and he's going to learn plenty from this whole experience, however it plays out, after boarding a plane to run a second turn for the first time. Unsurprisingly, he has been laying a foundation of powerful works back in California, but he must square up to a rival in Corona Bolt (Bolt d'Oro) who has, despite a rather upright head carriage, looked extremely fast and professional in two sprints.

If these two instinctive talents are likely to resemble sparkling new sabres, sending sparks flying until one is finally forced clattering onto the floor, then they need to keep Corona Bolt's barnmate Jace's Road (Quality Road) in the corner of their eye. For here is a rival who knows the difference between a mere duel and a pitched battle; one who's been learning self-defense and strategy at the marine training camp.

Yes, he too flashed raw talent with a 'Rising Star' sprint debut. But it was as long ago as September that he started on the kind of life lessons that still await Arabian Knight. Sampling the Derby surface in the GIII Iroquois S., he got drawn into pursuit of a couple that turned out merely to be hauling each other to the ground. But whereas they dropped out accordingly, Jace's Road bravely renewed battle with the closers and grabbed a place.

After that chastening rite of passage, his next start made it possible to wonder which way Jace's Road was going: his whole demeanor was irritable, and his mood cannot have improved as he trailed home splattered in slop. But then came the Gun Runner S., over the same course as this race, and suddenly he had it all figured out. He broke sharply, went bounding along in the lead and opened up late for a decisive score.

Brad Cox, who additionally saddles Hit Show (Candy Ride {Arg}) here, has an absolute cavalry to sieve down on the Classic trail. Last weekend he saddled Instant Coffee (Bolt d'Oro) for that efficient score in the GIII Lecomte S., as well as two fillies that finished over a dozen lengths clear of the rest in the Oaks trial. It feels very much as though Cox has now entered upon an even more potent cycle, after his four winners at the 2020 Breeders' Cup invited all the top programs to conclude that if they couldn't beat him, they may as well join him.

Instant Coffee runs in the same silks as Cyberknife, who gets the chance to stage his very own, flesh-and-blood stallion promotion in the Pegasus. Knowing Spendthrift, he's likely to enjoy a heroically lascivious lifestyle over the coming months. If only somebody could get him to understand the situation, he'd be the bet of all time.

Actually, I suppose the chances are that he's already operating on some primal sense of the benefits reserved for the herd leader. Anyway, be that as it may, this will be Cyberknife's 11th start in 13 months since he broke his maiden, so he evidently has the hardware to have sustained another campaign on the track. But we all recognize that he stands to make much more in his second career than in his first, even if he tops up an account already through $2 million by winning the Pegasus.

Certainly Cyberknife has achieved as much as anyone could dare to hope in spending $400,000 for a Saratoga yearling. But while everyone involved will thank him for his sterling service, and will miss him once he has moved on, the reality is that Instant Coffee–while not yet half the racehorse–has already supplanted Cyberknife in the attention of most.

For the Eclipse Awards are all on the mantlepiece now, and even Flightline's only job is to nourish a new dream. And, actually, that's great. Because it's the next dream that will always refresh our appetite for the game; that will have all those mares waiting in line at Spendthrift.

It's this mutual stimulus between racing and breeding, between track and field, that maintains human passion as the driver of the billions invested, not just in our industry, but in our sport. That's why someone will give $2.3 million for a horse bought a few months earlier for $250,000; and also why a fellow can get it into his head, after a fairly random visit to the Bluegrass, to buy himself a horse farm and populate it with a few mares. That's how Corser Thoroughbreds came to buy a young mare by Astrology at the 2019 Keeneland November Sale, carrying a first foal by Uncle Mo, for $285,000. That foal is Arabian Knight.

So the end of one chapter for Cyberknife will only open a new one. Who knows? Perhaps there's another novice breeder out there, who will end up putting a colt by Cyberknife on the 2027 Derby trail. And if we'll all be older then, and probably no wiser, then those are the kind of dreams–endlessly repeated, ever revitalized–that also keep us young.

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In trees, each new cycle is nourished by past decay: by roots extending into soil enriched by the leaves discarded at the end of the previous one. And actually it's not dissimilar with selective breeding, so that each generation can recycle its speed, stamina, beauty, bravery.

The world may be a very different place, on and off the track, from the days when Lecomte, the 1850s Louisiana legend honored by this race, was defying the great Lexington in four-mile heats at the old Metairie racecourse in New Orleans. Lecomte, indeed, was both trained and ridden by African Americans who had been purchasable chattels, as you can read in this marvelous story by Kellie Reilly of Brisnet.

Listen to Chris McGrath read this edition of This Side Up.

But if the demands made of modern racehorses are wildly different, I still find it apt that if you go far enough back in the pedigree of the colt to beat on Saturday, Instant Coffee (Bolt d'Oro), you come to the principal legacy of Lecomte himself.

Louisiana plantation owner Thomas Jefferson Wells had bred Lecomte from a mare named Reel, whose importance to the evolving American breed was only one instance of the transatlantic distaff influence of her exported British sire Glencoe.

Though Lecomte died in a failed adventure to Britain, luckily Wells had first had him cover a handful of mares. One of his daughters was registered, in a fashion that had once been very common, simply as “Lecomte Mare.” Remarkably, she was mated with Lecomte's half-brother by his old rival Lexington. Bear in mind that Lecomte and Lexington were both sons of Boston; that the mare's second dam was by Reel's sire Glencoe; and that her fourth was Reel's mother! Few modern breeders, it is safe to say, would dare to entertain such genetic saturation.

Yet the result of this match, Lizzie G., ties together the ancestry of many great horses. One of her daughters, for instance, produced the iconic Domino; a rather longer line would eventually lead to Affirmed; and, yes, a still more attenuated one brings us to Follow No One (Uncle Mo), the dam of Instant Coffee.

These are clearly all scrolls of parchment, too faded to have the remotest bearing on Instant Coffee's competence for the tasks he could face this spring. But these are the old leaves that nourish the genetic subsoil–and, to me, this little tangent just adds a piquant extra flavor to Instant Coffee happening to line up for the Lecomte.

After all, each of these horses entwine so many different strands: through a trainer or owner or breeding program, for instance, and the things we feel they stand for; or through more peripheral associations, such as the fact that Follow No One was named by Alpine ski racer Lindsey Vonn. She had a commercial partnership with Under Armour, the sportswear company founded by Kevin Plank–whose noble attempt to revive Sagamore Farm as a force on the Turf encompassed Follow No One's racing career. And, now that the mare is on the Upson Downs Farm of Churchill chairman Alex Rankin, there's scope for another colorful thread to be woven into the great Derby tapestry.

And that's just one horse, in one trial. There are 23 futures options entered across five tracks just on Saturday, and so many others to be sieved down over the coming weeks to that final field of 20. Each will have a sentimental cargo of its own, associations that will inspire (or discourage) the allegiance of neutrals.

Down in Louisiana, meanwhile, they can claim a collective stake in the entire Lecomte field, as potential heirs to the 2019 Derby and Preakness winners, the 2021 Derby winner and the 2022 Derby runner-up, who all contested this race, GII Risen Star and GII Louisiana Derby–with the exception of Country House (Lookin At Lucky), who missed this first leg (in order to break his maiden at Gulfstream).

The Fair Grounds rehearsals have been achieving edifying new relevance since their extension in distance. To me, that represents a small but useful redress of the renunciation by modern trainers of the way their predecessors put such a deep foundation of experience and condition into their Classic horses. The old school never minded seeing two-turn horses beaten in sprints, early in the year, because they would gain in fitness and seasoning without ever forcing the engine anywhere near its maximum revs. But now that horses have to tiptoe to Churchill in May, the least they can do is get some mileage. Last year, remember, both Epicenter (Not This Time) and Cyberknife (Gun Runner) were beaten in the Lecomte, but each used that reverse as a springboard to reach the elite of the crop.

There will, no doubt, be other local horses entering the picture. Banishing (Ghostzapper), for instance, will have a spectral presence in the Lecomte, on the clock, after an excursion over the same distance earlier on the card. In breaking his maiden here by eight and a half lengths on Boxing Day, he clocked a marginally faster time than did the winner of the Gun Runner S. With Loggins yet to return to the worktab, it would be heartening if Ghostzapper could reinforce his quest for the Classic success that for now feels like an incongruous omission in the resumé of one of the greats.

The people standing Bolt d'Oro, meanwhile, are similarly not dependent solely on Instant Coffee to maintain his flying start. The champion freshman also has Itzos, half-brother to none other than Rachel Alexandra (Medaglia d'Oro), heading to Turfway after scratching from the Lecomte. He contests a race in which a horse named Rich Strike (Keen Ice) ran a negligible third last year.

So Saturday is only one early step on a long road. Instant Coffee's barnmate Zozos (Munnings) could certainly tell him a thing or two as they're being groomed for their respective races. He chased home Epicenter in the Louisiana Derby last year, before helping to set up the meltdown for Rich Strike at Churchill. But he then disappeared until a stylish resumption last month, and now explores his remaining potential against the thriving Happy American (Runhappy) in the GIII Louisiana S.

The latter represents the same team as Bell's The One (Majesticperfection), brilliantly trained by Neil Pessin to win $2 million before her retirement last fall. She has left a tough void in a barn that mustered no more than 88 starters in 2022, but in this era of “super trainers” with cavalries spread across time zones, a seasoned horseman like Pessin–reliably undiminished in endeavor, skill and passion–still only needs an adequate stone for his sling to cut those Goliaths down to size.

To be fair, that's pretty much what happened in the last Derby. True, I doubt whether a single handicapper would have come up with the right exacta if told by a time traveler, this weekend last year, that they had just seen both the required horses beaten. But we know that the next ones will be out there somewhere, once again; that on those cold stark trees, it's time to look for the first buds.

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