Tag: This Side Up

This Side Up: A Warning Flare Illuminates Empress Bid

Nobody in our community is more eligible than Ted Bassett to say that he has seen it all before, but something will be attempted Saturday that falls outside even the long experience encompassed by his 100th birthday in just a few days' time. For a Keeneland showpiece that Mr. Bassett helped to inaugurate in 1984, as host to the lady for whom it was named, could well present one of her subjects with the opportunity to complete a unique double.

First, in the backyard of Windsor Castle, William Haggas saddles the unbeaten star of his Newmarket stable, Baaeed (GB) (Sea The Stars {Ire}), in the G1 Queen Elizabeth II S. at Ascot. Then, just a few hours later, he will see whether Cloudy Dawn (Ire) (Kodiac {GB}) can export the GI Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup.

Be in no doubt, an elite prize on either side of the ocean–both honoring one of the patrons of his own yard–is a day's work well within the reach of one of the premier English trainers of his generation. Two weeks ago, Haggas sent out eight winners at five different tracks in one afternoon. That might seem a relatively feasible endeavor in the American system, Jeff Runco having saddled seven state-bred winners on a single card at Charles Town only last week, but it is thought to be unprecedented in Britain. Regardless, you can judge the precision with which Haggas places his horses from the last time he sent Cloudy Dawn into action, at Deauville in August. She was first of four winners either side of the English Channel within 40 minutes, three at Group level, at cumulative odds of 4,252-to-1.

This upgrade for Cloudy Dawn duly implies that her progress must be ongoing. But a race so hospitable to the strengths of European raiders, true to the diplomatic spirit of its creation, also features one whose campaigning invites horsemen on both sides of the water to ponder their collective management of the breed.

For it was only last Saturday that Empress Josephine (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) finished strongly for third in the GI First Lady S. This same formula worked for Ballydoyle 10 years ago with another daughter of Galileo, Together (Ire), who similarly finished strongly for a podium against her seniors before wheeling back to beat fellow sophomores the following weekend. (And Together, moreover, had run in a Group 1 at Newmarket just two weeks before the First Lady.)

Empress Josephine (left), third just last week in the First Lady | Coady

Now this kind of thing has long been a familiar trademark of their record-breaking trainer, Aidan O'Brien. Partly, no doubt, that has been a luxury of his status as primarily a private trainer. Federico Tesio, who was similarly in the business of proving stock for breeding, ruthlessly diverted even elite animals to the service of their workmates as soon as he felt he had established their ceiling. And O'Brien has always said that his employers–renouncing the nervous protection of reputations that once inhibited so many commercial operations–urge him to use the Ballydoyle talent pool as a means of drawing out its deepest genetic resources. John Magnier had plainly decided that the cyclical, dynastic nature of breeding made it a better play, in the long term, to be sure what you had.

As a result, O'Brien has been able to produce breeding stock that repeats its brilliance because it's encased in corresponding hardiness. The most celebrated example among stallions he has made is Giant's Causeway, whose ferrous qualities were such that the aggregate winning distance across his last eight starts–five as winner, three times as runner-up, over different distances and surfaces but all at Group 1/Grade I level–was barely a couple of lengths. But O'Brien has frequently hammered wonderful careers out of fillies, too, by plunging them unsparingly into the forge.

That of Peeping Fawn (Danehill), for instance, was compressed between April and August of her sophomore campaign, and included four starts in maidens. Eleven days after the last of those, she ran third in the G1 Irish 1,000 Guineas–and then second in another Classic, over half a mile farther at Epsom, just FIVE days after that. Time for a break? Forget it. Later that month she was launched on a spree of four Group 1 wins, each more impressive than the last, within 54 days.

All horses are different, naturally, and a genius like O'Brien will clearly tailor his methods to their individual needs. And being totally ignorant of what makes Malathaat (Curlin) tick, for instance, it would be invidious to rebuke her Halley's Comet schedule. In broader terms, however, I think we are all entitled to regret those changes in either the breed or training methods, or both, that nowadays inhibit the way racehorses are campaigned.

Flippant brings a three-race win streak to her first GI test | Coady

We owe nearly all the copper-bottomed influences in postwar American pedigrees to an old school testing of their genetic selection for the kind of robust constitution required to carry speed. Hail to Reason's career notoriously derailed in its first September, but he had already made 18 starts. Nashua won a maiden on debut, in May, and was contesting his second stakes 14 days later.

John Williams, such a precious and enlightening conduit of the best old lore, has always said that this horse was his physical paragon. John will tell you that just looking at Nashua's shoe, even as an ageing stallion, would explain how he had sustained a juvenile championship, 2-1-1 finishes in the Triple Crown, and a Jockey Club Gold Cup over four seconds faster than his first. Eddie Arcaro once told John how he was wondering what to say as Nashua returned from one of his occasional dud works, but before he could say a word Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons had sent him straight back out to do it again. This time Nashua put in a bullet, and he won the Wood Memorial three days later.

Now you may say that it would be reckless to train horses like that today. But I'm not sure O'Brien would agree with you and, if the Thoroughbred really is less resilient today, then that may well reflect a far more culpable recklessness among breeders.

Earlier this week colleague Emma Berry broke the story in TDN Europe that G1 2,000 Guineas and G1 St James's Palace S. winner Poetic Flare (Ire) (Dawn Approach {Ire})–who this spring contested three Classics in 22 days–has been acquired to stand in Japan. Poetic Flare, remember, was bred and trained by Jim Bolger, once mentor to the young O'Brien. And you can be sure Bolger approves what his former protégé is doing with Empress Josephine, as another 2021 Classic winner from the same school of Irish horsemanship.

As a stud prospect, Poetic Flare offered precisely what we need to staunch the genetic losses being suffered by the breed today. Unfortunately, however, European commercial breeders have unanimously written off his sire and none of them, despite the evidence before their eyes, appears to accept that worthwhile strains in a pedigree might filter through regardless. (Ironic, really, when Poetic Flare satisfies the Galileo-Danehill blend they hold so sacred.)

Maybe an imaginative farm in Kentucky might have taken a chance with Poetic Flare, but the environment there would have been no less wholesome. Despite the vogue for importing yearlings from Tattersalls, everyone can see how hard it is even for proven turf stallions, never mind extremely credible new ones, to get commercial traction in the domestic yearling market.

Bassett and The Queen before the 1984 inaugural race in her name | Keeneland photo

Once again, then, the Japanese have been able to consolidate a program that will eventually leave the transatlantic gene pools to repent, too late, of their disastrous recent schism. One keen observer of the breed will surely not need reminding of what has been lost as a result. During the war her father bred a filly named Knight's Daughter, who was exported to Claiborne and a couple of years later delivered a Princequillo colt. His name was Round Table, and he won just the 43 of 66 starts.

By the same token, then, perhaps The Queen will also be glad to see a daughter of Tapit in the Keeneland race run in her name. The Gainesway phenomenon has been given mysteriously little opportunity in Europe, despite a dazzling winner of the historic Cambridgeshire H. from a very small sample of runners. Tapit's stock actually has a pretty respectable record on turf in the U.S., bearing in mind that it's an option typically only even tried for horses appearing short of ability on the main track. Certainly Flippant has been thriving on the grass, and we wish her connections well in a race they would prize dearly.

We can't all benefit from the length of perspective shared by Mr. Bassett and The Queen of England, now approaching a combined 195 years. But maybe Empress Josephine or Flippant, between them, can at least get a few people to see a slightly bigger picture.

The post This Side Up: A Warning Flare Illuminates Empress Bid appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

This Side Up: Grounds for Optimism

Surface tensions in our business have run pretty deep in recent years, nowhere more so than at Santa Anita. After a failed revolution, with a synthetic track, they eventually backed into a terrifying breakdowns crisis. Racing in California still has its problems, of course, not least the cloud currently over its premier barn–which, after that curious hesitation last week, instead gives its most controversial resident a home game Saturday in the GI Awesome Again S. But given our community's fury right now with another racetrack proprietor, who this week cashed in a jewel of the global Turf, it's only right that we take a pause and give due credit to The Stronach Group for rising magnificently to what felt absolutely like an existential challenge.

Once again a postal address in Arcadia, named for the Eden of Ancient Greece, can aptly formalize this nostalgic idyll; once again, the dismal confines of the present can be transcended between those art deco stands and timeless mountains. Simultaneously, moreover, across the nation at Gulfstream, The Stronach Group is raising the curtain on another fall meet, and on an intervention in the racing surface that may ultimately prove no less critical to the survival of our sport.

One of the dispiriting things about the schism between turf and dirt, which appears only to have widened since the synthetic experiment at Santa Anita, is the way it mirrors the kind of polarization that has embittered political discourse in the social media age. As the first North American racetrack to offer all three surfaces, side by side, Gulfstream demonstrates that there can literally be a third way. At a time when so many of us just retreat into our echo chambers, deploring those with whom we disagree, it's good to be reminded that tolerance, co-existence and pluralism aren't just high-sounding aspirations but a useful practical framework that enables us all to thrive.

With hindsight, we can all see that an upheaval as radical as the synthetics experiment at Santa Anita should not be forced on people overnight. The kind of flexibility now available at Gulfstream allows horsemen to adapt to evolving demands–whether in the way we breed horses, or train them, or bet on them; or in the terms and conditions laid down for the consent of an ever more urban society.

Gulfstream's new Tapeta surface, shown last week | Ryan Thompson

First and foremost, sure, its new Tapeta option has a supremely practical function. Most obviously it will give the grass track respite, as became essential following the final demise of Calder; and it will very quickly pay for itself, in handle, when tropical weather moves races off the turf. In the longer term, however, it will also give everyone a chance to calibrate their responses to the challenge of training Thoroughbreds in the 21st Century; to explore those gray areas, between our adamant prejudices, with the best interests of the horse in mind; while still granting the industry time to make the serving of those interests commercially sustainable. These, surely, are boons that might be profitably extended to many other racetracks.

A handful of tracks, of course, did manage to bed down synthetics successfully; but hopefully we all learned a lot from factious misadventures elsewhere. For instance, we learned how expertly such surfaces must be manufactured and maintained, especially when exposed to extremes of climate. (And, in that context, its game-changing stats suggest that Tapeta gets a lot closer than some predecessors to meeting the welfare objectives that now feel more vital than ever.) But it proved nearly as important to overcome the misapprehension that synthetics could ever serve as a direct substitute for dirt, or even as a fair compromise between dirt and turf.

Animal Kingdom successfully transferred synthetic form to a Kentucky Derby win | Horsephotos

Yes, even in that brief window we did see protagonists like Animal Kingdom and Pioneerof the Nile achieving a smooth transition between surfaces. Nobody, however, could pretend that a Kentucky Derby run on synthetics would remain seamlessly the same race as the one that has accrued such a venerable history. And I think many of us learned that an equivalent heritage, in many other cherished races, deserves a lot more respect than was shown. At the same time, diehards have since been put on notice that it doesn't matter how valid and noble are the traditions of dirt racing, if tracks don't get their act together after the exemplary fashion of Santa Anita in the past couple of years.

Now nobody, as you may well have noticed, insists more tediously than me on the importance to the breed of integrating the Classic bloodlines of Europe and America; and measuring the transferability of class between their racetrack environments. But that's precisely because different disciplines draw on different genetic assets. For the full package, for the refinement and expansion of the breed's capacities, you require constant exchange.

As it is, there will be European bloodstock agents at Tattersalls next week–spending appalling amounts of other people's money–who disparage American bloodlines as excessively oriented to speed, a laughable misrepresentation of everything except their own ignorance. And there are parallel myopias in commercial breeding over here, of course, as anyone trying to stand a high-class turf stallion in Kentucky will tell you. If they are not careful, then, both camps will end up suddenly trying to salvage something of what they have discarded. Come that day, they may well find themselves sitting side by side on a plane to Japan.

Certainly it's only a matter of time before sustained Japanese investment in the kind of class that will soon dominate the breed is endorsed in Europe's greatest prize, the G1 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. Perhaps that landmark will be aptly achieved in its 100th running, on Sunday, when two Japanese-breds have the chance finally to end an exasperating sequence of near-misses.

Sakhee ran Tiznow to a nose in the 2001 Breeders' Cup Classic off an Arc win | Getty Images

On the face of it, this race is a world apart from the Grade I prizes contested at Belmont this weekend. But don't forget how Sakhee won the Arc, by six lengths in muddy ground, just 20 days before running the dirt monster Tiznow to a nose in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic. Nor that Sakhee's dam was a Royal Ascot winner by Sadler's Wells out of a Ribot mare. Some people explained it to themselves that he had bridged the great divide simply by a congenial climate and those generous turns at Big Sandy. In reality, a track that accommodates the nine furlongs of the GI Woodward S. round a single turn does so as a showcase for the ultimate dirt asset: the ability to carry speed without respite. And that, to me, is exactly why the Woodward roll of honor features so many horses that became important influences at stud.

Gun Runner could not have made a better start, in his bid to consolidate that heritage, and is represented in the GI Champagne S. on the same card by one of his early flagships in Gunite. (No surprise, mind, to see him followed here by Wit {Practical Joke}, whose jockey consumed way too much gas in trying to retrieve a slow start at Saratoga last time.) Gun Runner, of course, is only the latest to promote Candy Ride (Arg) as a sire of sires. So let's not forget that the day John Sikura found him running a mile in 1:31 flat in Argentina, this future patriarch of American dirt was running on… grass.

The post This Side Up: Grounds for Optimism appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

This Side Up: Quit Chasing the Dollar and Try Cruz Control

Assuming that you, too, have by this stage marvelled at the tenacity, balance and athleticism of Alex Cruz in winning a race despite losing both irons leaving the gate, at Emerald Downs last weekend, then perhaps you might also have been prompted to reassess our prejudices against the seat of the 18th Century guardsman.

To the modern eye, the long-shanked equitation of those days appears ludicrous: awkward, stilted and, above all, inimical to the freedom of the horse's movement. We think of the elevation of the modern jockey, as popularized in Edwardian England by the American Tod Sloan, precisely as a withdrawal from interference. Yet seeing how his mount reeled in her rivals, more or less under her own steam, it struck me that the one thing Cruz couldn't be doing, in these rather eye-watering circumstances, was supervise her mechanics. Albeit he did contrive to brandish his whip, it would be a stretch to say that he was in charge of the situation. Yet if he was little more than a passenger, then you have to say that the engine appeared to run very smoothly indeed.

 

Now it would clearly be unwarranted to extrapolate too much from this single sample. But tastes do change–after all, the Turf Establishment in Newmarket was initially scandalized by Sloan's posture, deriding him as a monkey on a stick–and maybe we are too eager to discover efficiency in the style we nowadays find most aesthetically pleasing.

Be that as it may, it would seem that all variations in technique share the same objective, which is to minimize the contribution of the rider. It's very striking, after all, that you hardly ever see a loose steeplechaser even make a mistake, never mind fall, after discarding its jockey.

And I'm afraid that this principle has repeatedly occurred to me, in the days since, as an apt one to pursue in how we present the Thoroughbred to the racing public. Because it does seem that human beings will tend to get involved only to let their own shortcomings–their avarice, their self-interest, their venality–get in the way of the contrasting, captivating nobility of the breed.

Emerald Downs | Reed and Erin Palmer

Now it so happens that Emerald Downs, the setting for Cruz's prodigious feat, filled the poignant gap created by the sale of Longacres to Boeing, resulting in its closure 29 years ago this very week. No such sanctuary, sadly, seems likely for Illinois horsemen after they pay their final respects to a still more storied venue at Arlington on Saturday.

It's going to be a shattering experience for the railbirds of Chicago–among which this Englishman has often been fortunate, over the years, from time to time to infiltrate himself–to watch the curtain come down on one of the most sumptuous facilities, for horse and horseplayer alike, anywhere on planet Turf. Even for those of us who never set foot in the place, the video of the final race at Longacres is extremely moving, with caller Gary Henson doing unforgettable justice to the moment by unexpectedly leaving it to be run in silence. As they galloped toward the clubhouse turn, he solemnly declaimed: “Ladies and gentlemen, these horses belong to you. Listen to their final thunder.”

And, sure enough, there was a sound familiar to our species for centuries before the advent of the horseless carriage, never mind the Boeing jet: the pounding of hooves, against which percussion you hear only the improvisation of 23,358 fans crammed into the stands, crying out and whooping. Some are seen hugging each other in a devastated silence of their own after saluting the winner–ridden, aptly, by Idaho-born Gary Stevens, who began his journey to greatness round this circuit.

Henson's father Harry himself called at Longacres for 14 years but was associated even longer with Hollywood Park–a still more grievous loss to our sport, in the meantime, on the Pacific coast. That track, of course, had passed through the hands of Churchill Downs Inc, whose behavior at Arlington permits little doubt of their unabashed priorities in considering, apparently almost exclusively, the perceived interests of shareholders.

“Perceived” is the key word here, though it's evidently futile to renew the warning that cashing in Arlington tugs fatally at the weakest link in capitalism–namely, that point where a drooling, short-term lust for dividends and bonuses wrenches future profit from its source, in the sustainable engagement of consumers.

Arlington Park | Coady

You really couldn't come up with a more deranged example than putting a wrecking ball through Arlington (Arlington! paragon of racetracks!) in order to corral zombie gaming addicts into a more efficient factory. I can't let this bleak day pass without again quoting Richard Duchossois himself, in a conversation a few years ago. “We're never going to chase the dollar,” he said. “If you have the best services you can, a quality product and a competitive price, then we feel the dollar will catch us… Providing product, that's mechanical. Customer service, people-to-people, is the most valuable thing we have.”

As it is, the track he rebuilt after incineration is this time to be deliberately destroyed–with little prospect, it seems, of a phoenix–by the kind of blindly groping corporate avarice that ultimately injures itself beyond repair.

No doubt others have been culpable, too. I certainly can't claim, if indeed anyone can, to read the inner workings of Illinois politics. But the bottom line is that human beings somehow seem determined, in unspoken but deafening self-interest, always to subvert the glory of the Thoroughbred–stewardship of which is a privilege that should sooner compel us toward a reciprocal beauty, courage and generosity.

I'm not remotely qualified to pronounce on the merit or otherwise of the proliferating litigations that have once again filled the pages of TDN this week, though dismayed to see even the non-racing states of Alaska and Mississippi, presumably on ideological grounds, harnessed to attempts to derail the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA). But one way or another there seem to be plenty of people out there with a personal agenda that can only erode public confidence in the way we handle the breed.

Our industry will only thrive if devoted to the horse, the whole horse and nothing but the horse. Future fans, if they are to emerge, are relying on us to breed a robust animal that thrives on the demands of racing–and not just to paper over the cracks as long as it takes to get them through the ring at Keeneland this past fortnight. It seems quite obvious that the long-term interests of the breed itself coincide with those of the fans.

Life Is Good in Pletcher tack | Susie Raisher

With its gray areas supporting yet more litigation, the Bob Baffert saga has arguably become an unhelpful distraction from operations whose sinister performance appears plainly legible in black and white. Some of these have patrons who purport to be respectable, but who can again be charged with wilful interference, in pursuit of short-term gain, with the natural functioning of the horse.

It must be tough for Baffert to see Life Is Good (Into Mischief), a refugee from his troubled barn, shaping as though he retains the potential to prove the most talented sophomore of all. His debut for Todd Pletcher was simply spectacular, and he will doubtless repay the prudent restraint of his rider that day when set a less exacting task in the GII Kelso H.

Baffert having meanwhile scratched the horse at the center of the storm from the GI Pennsylvania Derby, we welcome back a 3-year-old whose profile could scarcely be more different from Life Is Good in Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow). For all the contrasts between them, these two horses both capture the majesty of the Thoroughbred and its capacity to engage and enchant a mass audience.

So maybe let's all of us try throwing our legs out of the irons, and just leaving the horse to do its thing. That way, in the long run, we all prosper together–life will indeed be good for horses, horsemen and fans. That way, we can daily declare: “Ladies and gentlemen, these horses belong to you.”

The post This Side Up: Quit Chasing the Dollar and Try Cruz Control appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

This Side Up: Market Goes Back to the Future

The cyclical nature of our business, from the foaling shed to the race program, invites a length of perspective that can only be of comfort in times of trouble. This, too, shall pass–even a global pandemic. And if COVID disrupted our routines in 2020 as seldom before, with a September Derby and no Saratoga Sale, we appear determined to make as seamless a resumption as its lingering challenges allow.

Trade at Saratoga last month was eerily close to 2019. Of 180 hips into the ring for Fasig-Tipton's Select Sale, 135 sold for an aggregate $55,155,000 at an average $408,556 and median $350,000. Two years ago, 135 of 182 sold for $55,547,000 at $411,459 and $350,000.

Now, with a dark day at Keeneland on Friday permitting everyone to absorb a breathless start to the September Sale, it is possible to sharpen our sense of how the market is emerging from the crisis.

This, of course, was an auction that they did contrive to stage last year. While demand proved more resilient than many feared, predictably the sale took a big hit overall, rounding out at $249 million turnover for a $100,000 average, down from $360 million and $126,000 the previous year. But more reliable comparisons, to this point of the sale, are complicated by the fact that the one industry cycle that never quite repeats–paradoxically enough, at a place that so prizes tradition–is the format at Keeneland.

In 2019, Book 1 lasted three days before a two-session Book 2, a model last deployed in 2016. In 2018, Book 1 had been stretched to a fourth day. In 2017, conversely, it was compressed into a single session, with a three-day Book 2.

So let's hope that the new Keeneland team, with some extremely acute thinkers aboard, will give their chosen formula a proper chance to bed down. Judging on this week, they have every incentive to do so.

The most pertinent comparisons we can draw, entering the weekend, are with the 2018 and 2017 sales, which similarly presented the sale's best stock over four days, albeit packaged in different catalogs. Now remember that the 2018 sale was a knockout, ending up at $377 million at an average $129,335. This, being a nose ahead of 2019, represented the pinnacle of a bull run sustained through the decade since the banking crisis, thanks to relentless cash doping of the economy (nugatory interest rates, quantitative easing etc). As such, the 2017 sale had also registered a big leap, finishing with $308 million turnover and an average of $120,487, up from $273 million and $97,740 in 2017.

So let's put last year to one side–for what it's worth, the parallel two-day Books 1 and 2 yielded $168,130,000 from 643 sales at an average $261,477–and see how the best four days of stock in this market have performed against those boom years. In 2018, 640 head turned over $224,453,000 for an average $350,708. In 2017, 716 hips realized $200,760,000 at $280,391. In the first four days of this sale, 649 animals have changed hands for $205,754,000 at an average $317,032.

In other words, we are on track to restore the market to just about halfway between its 2017 and 2018 values, when we were approaching the absolute peak of a soaring market.

Now there's obviously still a long way to go. And even as it stands, plenty of individuals will have endured the tough experiences inevitable when you have to roll a sweaty stake to enter what proved an especially selective marketplace in Book 1 (barely half the published catalog both making it into the ring and finding a new home). That said, the hallmark of this week's trade appears to be its solidity and breadth.

One obvious factor is the increasing prevalence of high-end partnerships. Those vendors who resent combination instead of competition are missing the point. Because it's actually far more wholesome, on both sides of the market, for the big spenders to be spreading their risks.

In 2019, seven yearlings made $2 million or more at Keeneland. This year, it looks like we won't have one. But we know that people are spending the same kind of money, and the heart-breaking recent fate of Into Mischief's half-sister by American Pharoah, who topped that sale at $8.2 million, will doubtless comfort investors that they are both reducing their exposure even as they improve their odds of landing an elite runner. Many have evidently decided that to own only a leg in a future stallion represents a worthwhile sacrifice of ego in so precarious a business. And a wider spend, as we've seen this week, can reach very small consignments with life-changing results.

But the real key to this market may be a little simpler. While COVID has been a financial catastrophe for many households, some of the investors who drive our business are more affluent than ever–and they also have a renewed sense that life is for living. They have been piling up the cash, and don't want to sew pockets into a shroud.

That being so, it is vital that we give such people maximum confidence in our industry. And, in reality, the bloodstock market's buoyancy is menaced by many a needle.

The most perilous, of course, is literally that–and found on the end of a syringe. Commercial breeding for the ring, and not the racetrack, is another big problem. Then there's the foal crop, down again; unlike the volume of racing, which threatens a vicious circle via wagering disengagement. Even as Keeneland buzzed through its fourth session, moreover, Shadwell quietly announced the streamlining review feared since the loss of its founder Sheikh Hamdan earlier this year. The same Shadwell, that is, that topped spending at this sale in 2016 and 2017, and finished behind only Godolphin (owned by the late Sheikh's brother) in 2018 and 2019.

So none of us should be complacent in the perennial allure of the Thoroughbred. At the same time, we are entitled to take heart from the impetus behind the latest cycle this week.

How exciting, for instance, to see a 4-year-old Horse of the Year launch such a first crop of such startling precocity. After achieving a higher average this week than Tapit, War Front, Medaglia d'Oro and Uncle Mo, Gun Runner has the chance of a fifth graded stakes winner Saturday when Gun Town contests the GIII Iroquois S.–and the first starting points for the 2022 Derby.

Hope springs eternal! So begins another of those cherished, recurring cycles, by which we both take our bearings and also learn to transcend the narrow outlook of our own time and place. That's one of the reasons I love the statues unveiled at Churchill this week of Colonel Matt Winn, who died in 1949, seated in conversation with the late John Asher, who was born in 1956. Magnificent work as usual by local sculptor Raymond Graf and, in this instance, literally timeless. Good years, bad years, nothing lasts forever. And this, as a moment frozen out of time, might help to remind us that taking the long view actually boils down to living for the day.

The post This Side Up: Market Goes Back to the Future appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Verified by MonsterInsights