This Side Up | Horse Racing Free Tips

This Side Up: ‘Doc’ Was a Tonic to Us All

Three years ago this week, at the September Sale, I was privileged by as powerful a reminder as I'd enjoyed in a long time as to why this is such a great business. Not in the sale ring itself, watching the billionaires puffing out and locking antlers, but just sitting in the pavilion lobby with a guy who had been born in a one-room house to teenage parents–and had spent the intervening seven decades accumulating the kind of riches, being contingent on a mighty intellect and noble heart, that would forever elude most of those flaunting their wealth just a few yards away.

It was supposed to be a quick chat over a coffee, but as each hour ran into the next, the talk became ever more wide-ranging and fascinating. And, of course, he kept being interrupted: every other face that came through the door would light up, “Hey Doc!”, another handshake, often a murmured exchange on the well-being of some relative or neighbor or colleague, and often too, in parting, a warm expression of thanks for everything he had done.

And now, correspondingly, a whole community finds itself reeling at the loss of one who represented us so flatteringly in a wider, less frivolous world.

Dr. J. David Richardson is irreplaceable enough, purely in terms of a contribution formally measurable in his generous service on so many industry bodies over the years. But even that void does not begin to compare with the abrupt effacement from our midst of a friend to all ranks, from hotwalkers to tycoons.

As one of the most decorated surgeons in the land, Doc was always an amateur on the Turf. But he was no dilettante. He took great pride in the way he had honed his eye, wearing out his soles around the barns, of course mentored by none other than Woody Stephens (his “uncle”, actually his father's cousin). Richardson recommended Danzig as a yearling; and a shortlist of four put together for James Mills in 1985 included Gone West, who was purchased, and Alysheba, who was not.

Richardson, left, with longtime racing partner Dr. Hiram Polk | Horsephotos

But “Doc” also knew that the Thoroughbred is primarily a vehicle of humility. That day at Keeneland he derided the agents who would be going round telling clients that such-and-such a yearling “ticked all the boxes”. Because every year at Saratoga he would see horses that had cost a million bucks running down the field, when the winner cost $22,000, and the second $9,000. “And I wonder if they ticked all the boxes, too!” he said with a grin. “But that's what makes it fun.”

As a man of science, equally, he deplored the shortcuts sold to those of sufficient credulity. Data might be legible across the horse population, but individual capacities depended on too many intangibles. Cardiac physiology, for instance, was not a question of heart size but of function and efficiency. And even that, terribly complex as it was, remained only one element in a huge equation of attributes that had to cohere unreadably to meet the pressures of race day.

One apt memorial to Richardson, then, would be for prospectors returning to Keeneland this week to respect the lore and instinct that always governed stockmanship–and Richardson, typically, had been receptive to lessons learned with a friend who bred Hereford cattle–and to reject the “snake oil” or the software programs where it is often found today.

He remembered going out to Hermitage in 1982 with longtime racing partner Dr. Hiram Polk, to see a yearling filly they had entered for a sale. She was probably the smallest of maybe 20 fillies, but they all got out of her way when she wanted the feed tub. Who would perceive this alpha female in such a diminutive filly at the sales? They scratched her, and in their silks Mrs. Revere was a Grade I-placed, 12-time winner, since honored by a Grade II at Churchill.

If hardly any among us can begin to emulate Richardson in terms of professional achievement, then that should not stop us at least aspiring to his example in our family lives, or as donors of time, energy and experience to our community. Because he valued none of his cerebral gifts above the compassion available to the least of us.

The GII Mrs. Revere S. is still run at Churchill in the fall | Coady

Doc always told students that a little bit of you will die with every patient you lose. But their purpose in life was to help people through traumatic situations as best they could; to be confident–not arrogant, but definitely confident–in their skills; and to accept that some unpredictability of the human organism is unalterable. “I think if you are a compassionate person, it never gets easy,” he said. “If it does, then I worry about you. But if you do something out of love, then you never do the wrong thing.”

It is not as though a man who salvaged so many lives from the brink had failed to contemplate his own mortality. A few years ago he had survived a health crisis that allowed him to nurse his wife through her final days; and then, happily, to be consoled by new love and remarriage. But now that unpredictable human organism has pulled a vicious shock on us all, with grief rippling out in widening circles from what has always been a very close family.

Our society has few enough men of this stamp, never mind the narrow walk of sporting life we tread. Doc's passion for Thoroughbreds dignified our whole business. He made you feel that if such a sage and accomplished human being could be equally enthused, then ours could not just be some trivial, dumbass obsession. So if we borrowed something of his human luster, while blessed by his living example, let's now try to honor Doc by preserving it as our own–in how we engage with this business, and with each other.

The post This Side Up: ‘Doc’ Was a Tonic to Us All appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

This Side Up: Seeking the Essence of Travers Quality

In an age that takes such relish in discovering offense where none is intended, I suppose we will eventually have to stop referring to a “Graveyard of Champions”. Never mind that most horsemen would perceive a fairly benign destiny in themselves being laid to rest in Saratoga, with the implicit likelihood of an exit–a Parting Glass, indeed–achieved by some excess of bliss or excitement. For the squeamish tastes of today, the metaphor is doubtless becoming a little too sanguinary.

Be that as it may, there's no denying that Saratoga's long history of the Onions of the breed insolently overturning its Secretariats (as though there could have been more than one of those) looms over a GI Travers S. starkly divided into the camps of Essential Quality (Tapit), on the one hand, and everybody else on the other.

Of course, the only thing about Saratoga truly inimical to a champion is its place in the calendar. So many bandwagons roll into the Spa wobbling and creaking after a long journey toward and then through the Triple Crown series, vulnerable to ambush by a fresh, improving horse like West Coast (Flatter)–who set up his divisional championship by claiming the scalps of all three Classic winners in the 2017 Travers, where they collectively ran about a furlong behind their previous best.

This year, whether because of perceived or actual deficiencies in the modern Thoroughbred, not one trainer dared to run a horse in all three legs of the Triple Crown. Essential Quality himself stood down from the GI Preakness S. after suffering his sole defeat to date at Churchill, before regrouping to win the GI Belmont S.

It was typical of the way the gray has somehow struggled to engage public affection–despite a dependability rare even among elite racehorses–that many reserved their greatest admiration that day for the plucky resistance of Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow) after setting those historic fractions. Essential Quality has been able to meet virtually every challenge, from six furlongs to 12, he's a champion juvenile and a Classic winner–yet somehow he is felt to deploy plutocratic resources with a blue-collar modesty. He goes about his work, not with flamboyance, but with a sturdy air of duty and competence.

In the process he invites us to reflect on quite what it is we expect of our champions; what it might be, in fact, that comprises their essential quality.

2020 Travers winner Tiz the Law | Sarah Andrew

As one whose first idols raced over turf in Europe, it took time for me to understand those who vaunted their brilliance with most flair, quickening away on the bridle. Because while it was routinely asked what such horses might do, if actually asked to explore their full reach, in reality they tended to be right at that limit already. Very often those that appeared to “find” no extra, once pressure was finally applied, would be deprecated for a lack of courage–yet they had already committed all they had, precisely because of an innate competitive generosity.

In tending to resist theatricality, in contrast, metronomic achievers like Sea The Stars (Ire) (Cape Cross {Ire}) and Giant's Causeway (Storm Cat) were assumed to have bottomless reserves.

Part of what made Frankel (GB) (Galileo {Ire}) unique was the way he combined their kind of palpable commitment with an extremely extrovert style. What he showed you was astonishing, but nobody ever came away and said: “Imagine what he could do, if he was ever really asked for everything!” He functioned with a prodigious physicality, uninhibited and assertive.

That was one of the reasons I always thought he would have taken to dirt, if only he had been given the opportunity. But you don't get many Frankels on any surface. So when we consider the Travers favorite, let's not ask for the moon. Let's appreciate Essential Quality the way we did, say, Silver Charm (Silver Buck).

I remember once sitting with John Oxx, trainer of Sea The Stars, as he reflected on what set his champion apart from the herd. He suggested that there was nothing more glamorous to it than sheer constitution: a simple capacity to absorb more work than other horses. He just emptied his manger, every time; whatever his schedule, on the track or at home, he never recoiled. Aidan O'Brien always said much the same about Galileo, who was of course out of the same breed-shaping mare–and that “try” is also agreed to be a hallmark of Essential Quality's own record-breaking sire.

So while a lot of people will only finally salute this horse if he can outclass the Travers field in the swashbuckling manner of last year's winner, then don't forget that Tiz the Law (Constitution) never actually won again. If Essential Quality can just keep on keeping on, in the same undemonstrative way he won the GII Jim Dandy, then perhaps people will slowly begin to marvel at the kind of robustness that should be most prized–more than acceleration, more than swagger–in a future stallion.

After all, as we said at the outset, by the time they reach Saratoga a lot of these horses aren't so much running against each other as against their own erosion. It was ever thus. This is the 50th anniversary of the Travers won by Never Bend's half-brother Bold Reason. Whitney Tower began his report by lamenting: “It could have been a dream field: Hoist the Flag, Canonero II, Jim French, Eastern Fleet, Executioner, Unconscious, His Majesty, Dynastic, Impetuosity, Twist the Axe, Bold Reasoning and Salem… [but none] even got to the starting gate. That left the old race to Bold Reason… the only legitimate survivor of the demanding winter and spring classics.”

Some evocative names in that list! But Bold Reason had not only run third, fifth and third in the Triple Crown series. He had also won five times straight since the Belmont! And by showing breeders such exceptional mettle, he was given the chance to sire the dam of Sadler's Wells.

'TDN Rising Star' Life Is Good returns Saturday | Sarah Andrew

Anyhow, we'll see how the picture pivots from here. John Nerud always said that championships are made in the fall, not the spring. The world already looks very different from the moment Medina Spirit (Protonico) reached the winning post at Churchill. He resurfaces at Del Mar Sunday–but if it's charisma you want, then there has to be a possibility that his former barnmate Life Is Good (Into Mischief), facing a brutal resumption of his own against the Maclean's Music duo in the GI H. Allen Jerkens Memorial S., may yet prove the most significant runner of the whole weekend.

This race was the only one of the five Grade Is supporting the Travers already on the card before 2015. Some of us still aren't convinced by the wisdom of diluting the rest of a meet in favor of showcase days like this one. To a degree, the stated purpose of heightening focus is defeated by blurring into the background a lot of good horses and good races, which end up losing as much attention as the cards from which they have defected.

Be that as it may, there's no denying the dynamic overall impact of Martin Panza at NYRA–most commendably, perhaps, in the inauguration of the Turf Triple. Maybe his successor will prove another author of unmissable deeds, in the style of Life Is Good; or perhaps he or she will be more in the understated mold of Essential Quality. Either way, let's hope for someone equal to the challenges of an industry that has too often, of late–if we can return to the most uncomfortable of analogies–seemed to be pushing at the graveyard gate.

The post This Side Up: Seeking the Essence of Travers Quality appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

This Side Up: Asmussen Poised to Convert Silver to Gold

Could happen, you know. Within the random weavings of the Thoroughbred, after all, it's always tempting to discern some pattern suggestive of a coherent, governing narrative. And if Silver State (Hard Spun) were to win the GI Whitney S., and in the process happened to become the 9,446th winner saddled by his trainer, it might well feel as though 35 years of skill and endeavor, processed daily through random fluctuations of good or bad luck, have all led logically and inexorably to this pinnacle.

The trouble is that whoever came up with that plot should probably never get a job in Hollywood. For if Steve Asmussen is indeed to pass Dale Baird's all-time record Saturday, then any suitably imaginative scriptwriter would surely have contrived that he did so, not in this storied, $1-million race, corroborating his enshrinement five years ago in the adjacent Hall of Fame, but in the somewhat less resonant environs of Mountaineer Casino, Racetrack and Resort.

Sure, it would be apt for such a momentous landmark to evoke one of Asmussen's masterpieces, Gun Runner (Candy Ride {Arg}), who in 2017 became his only Whitney winner (famously carrying a fifth shoe, the “rabbit's foot”, tangled in his tail). Silver State also represents his parents' old clients Winchell Thoroughbreds–in this instance, along with Willis Horton Racing–and the patient development of his potential is similarly exemplary of his trainer's dexterity.

Even so, there would arguably have been a still more pleasing symmetry to Asmussen instead breaking the tape in the GIII West Virginia Derby, a race that has so far contributed five wins (another record) to his overall tally. As it is, the 14 runners eligible to make history Saturday are confined to four other tracks–and Asmussen leaves undisturbed, this time, soil that was for decades the fiefdom of the very man whose place in the annals of the Turf he is about to supplant.

The Baird era here, spanning 20 consecutive training titles, straddled the transition from Waterford Park into pioneer racino; and was only ended by his shocking loss, at 72, in an automobile accident just before Christmas 2007. Just think: his nearest pursuer at the time, Jack Van Berg, was over 3,000 career wins behind.

But Baird never won the local Derby; never won a graded stakes of any description, in fact. He plied his trade in cheap claimers, sometimes rotating as many as 200 horses in a year, the majority in his own silks. Asmussen, in contrast, has given us a Horse of the Year four times in the last 13 years, becoming a paradigm of the “super trainer” elite who have transformed the horizons of their profession. In the process, having once amassed 650 winners in a single year, he has shown how these trainers must count delegation among their key skills.

Silver State training Saturday in Whitney preparation | Sarah Andrew

Sheer volume, as such, might appear to be the only challenge shared by the hometown trainer Baird and the federal power Asmussen. Nor, seemingly, could you obviously conflate their personalities. Baird was evidently a low-key type, reserved and unassuming, given to understated humor; Asmussen, as anyone can see, is a truly “spectacular” specimen. With his flamboyant looks and expressive bearing, he commands attention whether he's grinning or glowering.

But remember that both men honed their intuition in a family of horsemen. Baird's father, brother, son and nephew all embedded their surname in a training dynasty. And I love how the latter first clocked this vivid counterfoil to his uncle, at Presque Isle Downs one day: he saw Asmussen going down the shedrow to discuss a particular horse with one of his team and, as they spoke, instinctively grabbing a brush to groom the animal's opposite side.

Nobody has to tell Asmussen that Silver State represents only the apex of a pyramid with a very wide base. In his first year he won a single race, at Ruidoso Downs, and $2,324. Through his first decade, he started two horses in graded stakes. As he recently told colleague Bill Finley, everything “goes back to my mom and dad showing me that every horse in front of you is important… [that] every single horse was just as important as the next one.”

But this outlook, in turn, complements a voraciously competitive nature. In another of the many interviews to which he has graciously submitted in anticipation of his feat, Asmussen made candid and instructive reference to the intensity of his own character. “Either everything matters,” he said, “or nothing matters.” Not an attitude that will endear everyone, perhaps–but one you have to love, if you're an owner or indeed a racehorse.

Asmussen was joined in the Hall of Fame by a handful of privileged rivals Friday, but its doors have never admitted Baird. He instead had to settle for a Special Eclipse Award, after becoming the first to 9,000 winners. Nonetheless you suspect that he would bestow a posthumous blessing on the man who is about to efface his record; and if it can't happen in the West Virginia Derby, then Baird would certainly settle for destiny instead summoning into the record books the gelding Asmussen fields under a $5,000 claiming tag at Louisiana Downs.

Another fitting memorial could yet be carved in the West Virginia Derby, by one of the latest Hall of Fame inductees–and surely among the most automatic ever. Because Todd Pletcher's runner Bourbonic, as a son of Bernardini, represents what has suddenly become a still more precious genetic resource.

The mighty Maxfield | Sarah Andrew

The silver lining to the loss of this most beautiful of stallions is that his precocious achievements as a broodmare sire already guarantee that his legacy will continue to evolve for many years yet. The Whitney, indeed, could well yield another garland for his daughter Velvety, the dam of Maxfield (Street Sense).

She's a half-sister to Sky Mesa (Pulpit), their Storm Cat dam in turn a sister to Bernstein, and this is the branch of the La Troienne dynasty that goes through Buckpasser's dam Busanda. It has corresponding seeding all the way through–next dams are by Affirmed, Round Table, Nasrullah and War Admiral–and Maxfield's Whitney performance will simply help to determine how affordable he may be as a truly aristocratic stud prospect.

Bernardini himself had suffered the indignity of a fee slide from $100,000 as recently as 2017 to $35,000 for his final spring. Yet his stature as broodmare sire had meanwhile redressed a couple of fallow campaigns for his own foals. To some of us, compounded distaff influences will always provide a sturdier foothold in a pedigree than the putative alchemies between sire lines. His Grade I-winning dam Cara Rafaela, for instance, was one of the markers laid down in a debut crop of just 32 named foals by her sire Quiet American, alongside two other significant females in champion Hidden Lake and the remarkable broodmare Quiet Dance, dam of one Horse of the Year and second dam of another.

Her grandson, of course, was none other than Gun Runner. And it so happens that Asmussen starts this momentous day by saddling a member of that horse's first crop, the Winchell homebred Under the Gun, in the opener at Saratoga. Later he gives a debut to Vodka Mardini, a son of Bernardini, who also features as sire of the barn's final runner on the card, Miner's Queen. So, actually, you know what? Maybe there is a decent scriptwriter up there after all.

The post This Side Up: Asmussen Poised to Convert Silver to Gold appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

This Side Up: Haskell Throwbacks to the Future

So the big question is whether the out-of-town jocks, in the heat of a $1-million battle for the GI TVG.com Haskell S., can master the instinct to reach for the whip?

If any lifelong flagellants are anxious of their self-discipline, then they need only play back the 1988 running and remind themselves how Laffit Pincay, Jr. coaxed Forty Niner home, in withering heat, by a nose from Seeking the Gold. The whip is unsheathed, for sure, but so seamlessly with the horse's own efforts that the overall effect is like watching St. Francis of Assisi helping a fledgling back into its nest.

If only wider standards of horsemanship had maintained similar levels of empathy, then our house might never have become so divided against itself. As it stands, any hope that people might someday look back at Saturday's race after an equivalent interval of years may depend on the outcome of the experiment being boldly embraced this year, in defiance of some aggressive lobbying, by the New Jersey Racing Commission.

Like it or not, a first Grade I race without recourse to the whip feels like a big moment in the story of the American Turf. Our community has to remember two things. One is that we tend to be inured to the shock experienced by the layman who comes fresh to the ugly coercions of cruder riders. And the other, closely related, is that public policy in these matters will always be driven by mass perception, rather than any informed mitigations grasped by those inside the business. As one leading driver has wisely acknowledged of harness racing: “It doesn't matter if it's real or perceived. In our game, once it's perceived, it becomes real.”

Forty Niner prevails in the 1988 Haskell | Equi-Photo

As it happens, pretty much the same might be said of the damage done to our sport by the charges against the Derby winner, which loom over the Haskell even in the absence of a trainer who last year won it for a record ninth time. For these leave the Derby runner-up Mandaloun (Into Mischief) striving awkwardly to live up to his potential promotion, and the burden of the accompanying asterisk; while Following Sea (Runhappy) has meanwhile defected from Bob Baffert's barn after Spendthrift “hit the pause button” on their association.

Whatever the ultimate determination of due process, in this particular instance, overall it seems fair to ask Baffert to understand that you can't push regulatory boundaries without doing the same to public confidence. He would not be the only trainer to view a veterinary toolbox rather as many jockeys do the whip, as somehow combining their own competitive interests with those of the horse. (Precepts of health and safety certainly seem usefully flexible.) But it is a wider failure to deal adequately with more flagrant offenders, whether with the crop or pharmaceuticals, that has only encouraged the wider world in judgements, however superficial, that authentically menace our sport's survival.

Races like this one, as cherished staging posts in our calendar, remind us that we are only ever passing a baton from one hand to the next. Pincay and Forty Niner are part of Monmouth Park heritage–and so, too, is the Virgil “Buddy” Raines Distinguished Achievement Award conferred on Baffert in 2015 for his commitment to the Haskell. Devised to salute integrity and professionalism in the service of New Jersey racing, this is exactly the kind of honor that should reinforce in its recipient an obligation to take no risks with the reputation of his community.

Buddy Raines, after all, was the incarnation of the fine character that can be drawn out of humankind by the Thoroughbred. His 80-year Turf career began when a trainer passing through rural Illinois was given hospitality by his parents. Gazing at so many hungry brothers seated round the table, the guest wistfully remarked that he could do with a strong young helper to help around the barn. “Well, hell, take that one,” said Mr. Raines, pointing at Virgil.

Buddy Raines came to mind this week on the passing of Hall of Fame jockey John L. Rotz, with whom he shared a career pinnacle in the 1962 GI Preakness S. won by Greek Money. Rotz had an exemplary career, working his way up from hotwalker to Midwest fairs to the George Woolf Memorial Award, and the manners that earned him the soubriquet “Gentleman John” also extended to his mounts, gaining him a particular reputation for the management of difficult temperaments.

Greek Money's Preakness is remembered best for Joseph di Paola's iconic photograph of Manny Ycaza on Ridan apparently trying to elbow Rotz as their tumultuous stretch duel neared the line. (Nor was Ycaza done, then having the temerity to lodge an objection for interference.) Rotz later absolved his rival of any contact, but also wondered whether Ycaza might have won had he confined himself to riding his own horse, rather than trying to control both.

Rotz rode enough good horses virtually to guarantee that you'll find his fingerprints somewhere behind the Haskell winner. In Mandaloun himself, for instance, the second dam of his sire is by Stop the Music, famously awarded the Champagne S. after Rotz took exception to a brief deviation in Secretariat's march to greatness; while Midnight Bourbon (Tiznow) is by a grandson of Relaunch, whose sire In Reality and damsire The Axe II were both partnered by Rotz.

Midnight Bourbon arriving Thursday at Monmouth | Bill Denver/Equi-Photo

It's a fascinating race, pitching three Classic runners-up against the flagship of Runhappy's brilliant revival after a disappointing freshman campaign. Trying a second turn against elite opposition will certainly tell us what substance may underpin the dazzling style of Following Sea, but many neutrals will be hoping for a merited Grade I success for Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow). As has been widely celebrated, “Chuck” set the fastest opening quarter in the long history of the GI Belmont S., and a :46.49 half bettered only by Secretariat, yet retained the reserves to pull 11 lengths clear of the rest in harrying crop leader Essential Quality (Tapit) all the way down the stretch. Perhaps the sport might have been spared much of its present embarrassment if he had been ridden with similar aggression in the Derby, instead of gifting control to Medina Spirit (Protonico), but the notion that he can eyeball a rival even better without blinkers (as well as without the whip) looks an intriguing gamble.

However things play out between them, the fact that all three of the Triple Crown protagonists converging here completed their springtime preparations in the GII Louisiana Derby means that there is already one guaranteed winner. And that's the Fair Grounds management, for having the enterprise to stretch out a race that has come to seem too close to the first Saturday in May–too close for the trainers of today, at any rate–to permit equivalent grounding with another rehearsal in between.

We credit much of “Chuck's pluck” to Oxbow, whose ardent Triple Crown campaign so shames the current crop–not one of whom contested all three legs this time round. True, the Mid-Atlantic stalwart Raines chose to sit out the Derby to bring Greek Money relatively fresh to the Preakness, but that didn't stop him running in the local prep race the previous Saturday. Who knows? Even as a son of Oxbow, Chuck might not have been able to dig so deep in the Belmont had he also contested the Preakness. But he's certainly made of the right stuff.

That, and an ownership team that transcends generations, gives us plenty of optimism for the future of the game. A precious commodity, right now, but this is a race (and racetrack) that has always engaged dynamically with challenges. That's how we can try a Haskell without whips; a Haskell with a $1-million bonus backed by the operators of a pioneering venture in fixed-odds wagering; a Haskell headlining a meet of boosted purses and turnstiles clicking cheerfully once again.

So, if it can also be a Haskell that honors the memory of “Gentleman” John Rotz, and indeed that of Buddy Raines, then people out there might once again start to accept our claims that we treat every horse right–not because of rules and regulations, nor because of cosmetics, but because it wouldn't even occur to us to do anything else.

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

Source of original post