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This Side Up: Seconds Out for the Next Round

No getting away from it: even 107 previous runnings, a million bucks and 170 starting points can't dress up the recent misfortunes of the GII Twinspires.com Louisiana Derby as a springboard to the first Saturday in May.

Maybe that's because it falls between stools, in terms of scheduling, the previous cycle of rehearsals having left trainers scope for one more start before the GI Kentucky Derby. Not many around, nowadays, who'd even be thinking about running again with just six weeks to go. Credit to the Fair Grounds team, then, for their initiative in stretching out all three legs of their trial series last year. If the old school liked to give these adolescent horses a deeper racetrack grounding, that was largely because of the extreme test awaiting them against 19 rivals going flat out through 10 furlongs at Churchill. Now that the Louisiana Derby falls only a few strides short of that distance, however, trainers have the chance to draw on a deeper seam while remaining on the lighter race schedule that's now so fashionable.

Following the postponement of the main event last year, of course, this will be the first test of the new bridge over the gap. As such, the opportunity is there to open out a four-cornered Derby–following a nearly mechanical sequence of spectacular auditions by Greatest Honour (Tapit), Essential Quality (Tapit), Life Is Good (Into Mischief) and Concert Tour (Street Sense)–into a pentagon.

The three local protagonists, having filled the podium in both the GIII Lecomte S. and GII Risen Star S., have left each other the door ajar for a breakout performance. True, they have a Californian shipper to deal with this time. And we've seen those wipe out the Oaklawn horses with a 1-2 in the GII Rebel S. last weekend, and also chase home Essential Quality before that.

That is exactly what Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow) did at the Breeders' Cup. He was 94-1, but there was no fluke about that performance and I retain plenty of hope for the “Chuck” fairytale–he was the last horse sold by the late Edward A. Cox Jr., remember, pinhooked for $17,000 before his half-brother became Mitole (Eskendereya)–even if his reappearance form has meanwhile come to appear a little porous.

In terms of the hometown horses, there's a nice symmetry: on the one hand, Proxy (Tapit) could give his sire three of the top five chances in his quest for the Derby that would crown his resume; on the other, here's Mandaloun (Into Mischief) bidding to consolidate the emergence of a no-less-remarkable stallion as a Classic influence, following Authentic (Into Mischief) last year and now Life Is Good.

Obviously this evolution, with the improvement of Into Mischief's books, has long been a pretty blatant trend. The real straw in the wind was Audible, out of Gilded Time mare and conceived at $20,000, when a strong-finishing third to Justify (Scat Daddy) in the 2018 Derby. Mandaloun obviously has a lot more to work with, in the seeding of his Juddmonte family.

The question now is whether Into Mischief might even keep building in the manner of Danehill and Mr. Prospector, breed-shaping stallions who wildly diversified what started out as a speed brand. Even as it is, however, there are valuable lessons in what he's doing.

Because if Into Mischief is getting stock to carry their speed, that is not necessarily simply down to classy two-turn mares. The dam of Audible, remember, won a few sprints running for $4,000 or $5,000 at Mountaineer and Finger Lakes. So really, if we recognize Into Mischief as an extremely important horse, we also have to take on board an extremely important message–and that's to view pedigrees in the round, as a composite of diverse, entwined strands.

Where are these horses finding their stamina? Well, just in back-of-an-envelope terms, let's remind ourselves that the first three dams of Into Mischief's sire Harlan's Holiday are by Affirmed, Honest Pleasure and Princequillo. The latter, obviously a welcome linchpin in any pedigree, also surfaces behind Into Mischief's dam, the celebrated Leslie's Lady (Tricky Creek): her granddam is by One For All, whose damsire was Princequillo. (And moreover out of a very gifted mare by a monster European staying influence in Sea-Bird (Fr). And while her own sire never gets enough credit, Tricky Creek's first three dams, similarly, were by His Majesty, Nijinsky and Swaps. (The latter, moreover, enters the equation through none other than the Darby Dan foundation mare Soaring.)

Obviously, there are plenty of people who will persist in telling you that Leslie's Lady has produced Into Mischief, Mendelssohn (Scat Daddy) and Beholder (Henny Hughes) through some occult alchemy with the Storm Cat line. We still await a coherent explanation why we should disregard all the other illustrious names across the pedigree. Happily, the $8.2 million given in 2019 for a yearling filly out of Leslie's Lady by American Pharoah, obviously an entirely different sire-line, confirms that Leslie's Lady–by a sire who ended up standing at $2,500 in New Mexico, and a mare once claimed for $5,000–is getting due credit where it counts.

The way things are going, nobody could be too surprised if Into Mischief were to end up someday siring a Belmont winner. For now, that remains Tapit's preserve, and the pair of them meanwhile are closing on the Derby in a gripping contest of styles and status. The Louisiana Derby, then, is a skirmish within that wider battle, with Proxy borrowing Mandaloun's Risen Star trick by trying blinkers. It's another round in two separate bouts: one between the leading New Orleans sophomores; the other between two of their sires.

However things play out, let's absorb the rebuke of Into Mischief against all simplistic systemization. Pedigrees are not interstate highways. They're complex city grids, and we can only hope to reach our destination by ensuring that all possible routes maintain the quality regardless.

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This Side Up: River Levels Rising

They used to say that when you think you have two Epsom colts in your stable, you don't have any. The axiom has long since been decommissioned, however, by the skills of Aidan O'Brien and his patrons, albeit with the inane complicity of a commercial market that is disastrously diluting competition. And it looks as though it no longer transfers to the GI Kentucky Derby, either.

Having (eventually) landed running with champion Essential Quality (Tapit), and with Caddo River (Hard Spun) and Mandaloun (Into Mischief) testing their own credentials over the next eight days, Brad Cox is hoping to win three trials across four weekends. As such, the middle leg of this sequence has the potential to weigh quite significantly in the shifting balance of power at the top of the North American training profession.

Because the man who continues to set the standards, for Cox and everyone else, awaits Caddo River in the GII Rebel S. with a staggering record of seven winners, three seconds and a third from 13 starters since he first shipped here in 2010. And a week after producing an Authentic (Into Mischief) imitation, as it were, here comes Bob Baffert with a doppelganger for Nadal (Blame).

In fact, the evolution of Life Is Good (Into Mischief) and Concert Tour (Street Sense) seems so closely aligned to their predecessors in the barn–November maiden at Del Mar/GIII Sham/GII San Felipe for one; January maiden at Santa Anita/GII San Vicente/GII Rebel for the other–that we have to remind ourselves that these are different individuals, setting their trainer fresh challenges.

That said, when Baffert sticks to a formula it's because he has made it work. Certainly he has changed the way trainers think about the Triple Crown trail, having proved that his adolescent racehorses don't need the kind of grounding once considered essential. No doubt that reflects the experience his horses instead derive from the aggressive, speed-oriented works he imported from Quarter Horse training, often giving his better horses the chance to hone their velocity and confidence with a “punchbag.” That's exactly what Baffert arranged for Concert Tour the other morning–i.e. an inferior workmate released as a target to run down–and the response was electric.

Baffert has a genius for the fast horse that keeps going: precisely the challenge awaiting Cox with Caddo River on Saturday. The signs are promising, so fluidly has this guy maintained his cruising speed in different scenarios for his last two starts; and remember how his sire held out for second to Street Sense in the Derby, nearly six lengths clear of the third (horse called Curlin) after blazing away early. Street Sense and Hard Spun, of course, have long since shared the same stallion barn so it'll be fun for the Jonabell team to see them carry on their rivalry by proxy here.

Effortless speed is also the trademark of Life Is Good, just as it was with Authentic. And while the Horse of the Year has definitively confirmed their sire's eligibility as a Classic influence, in tandem with the upgrading of his mares, Life Is Good has also shown something of the mental immaturity we saw this time last year. Authentic, crucially, was indulged with a September Derby but this time round the race will, we trust, be run at its customary date. Life Is Good was conspicuously granted a clear run last week and, while he took freakish advantage, we'll have to see whether he will know how to respond when stretching out against 19 hostile rivals.

Life Is Good, who was sold as a yearling, and the homebred Concert Tour are both graduates of a program that notoriously has unfinished business with the GI Kentucky Derby.

In returning to Oaklawn, Gary and Mary West will remember the day their whole Turf adventure hit a different key, 28 years ago, with the 108-1 rock-your-world success of Rockamundo (Key to the Mint) in the Arkansas Derby. That horse was saddled by Ben Glass, who was fortunately persuaded to stay on as racing manager when deciding to quit training a couple of years later. When this team started out, they were claiming horses for $2,500 at places like Grand Island, Nebraska; and, in the convincing testimony of Glass, their experiences on a long road since have cultivated in his patrons exemplary standards of stoicism and attention to welfare.

He remembers when they went to the barns at 5 a.m. to see Buddha (Unbridled's Song) on the eve of the 2002 Derby. This was after the Wests had begun to raise the stakes: Glass had picked him out as a $250,000 yearling, and he had beaten Medaglia d'Oro in the GI Wood Memorial. And here was the second favorite for the Derby emerging from his stall, the morning before the race, holding off his left fore. An immediate scratch. Glass couldn't believe how Gary West took it on the chin. He just shrugged and said: “Well, I'm going back to bed.”

Ben Glass with Gary West | Sid Fernando photo

So the Wests and Glass had seen it all by the time they took Maximum Security (New Year's Day) to Churchill a couple of years ago. Or so they thought. No need, here, to reprise everything that happened then, and subsequently. Suffice to say that a) Thoroughbreds never cease schooling us in adversity; and b) whatever the rights and wrongs of Maximum Security's Derby, and indeed of his trainer at the time, we can all be grateful to the Wests for the priorities driving their program. Because the two races they most covet are the Derby and the Travers, and their investment in the type of Thoroughbred best adapted to those historic measures of the two-turn sophomore will only serve the breed well.

That's why it's always so edifying to review the purchases made by Glass at the September Sale. You won't see him joining the witless stampede for rookie sires whose averages will almost invariably never be so high again. Last year, he bought 15 colts catalogued from 29 to 2186, for between $65,000 and $360,000: two apiece by Blame, Distorted Humor, Flatter, Street Sense and Union Rags; plus one by Candy Ride (Arg), Empire Maker, Ghostzapper, Quality Road and Uncle Mo.

'TDN Rising Star' Concert Tour upon arrival at Oaklawn this week | Coady

Concert Tour is out of a Tapit mare, giving the Gainesway phenomenon yet another foothold in this year's Derby quest. So, again like Nadal, he looks bred to relish this second turn after showing his raw class sprinting. Certainly the Wests will be hoping to efface that nose defeat for their reappearing champion Game Winner (Candy Ride {Arg}) in this race two years ago.

Game Winner subsequently passed the post sixth in the Derby, after a messy trip. That kind of thing rather goes with the territory, you would say, and let's hope nobody congratulated his owners on his promotion to fifth. Unfortunately Game Winner only managed one more start, though kept in training at four; but even that was one more than Buddha, after he was found to be lame that Friday morning. To that extent, we must hope that Concert Tour ceases to impersonate Nadal after the Arkansas Derby. Because you can safely say that this would be a Rebel winner with a cause.

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This Side Up: It’s Elementary as Fire Tests Water on Dirt

On the day that the leading grass juvenile of 2020 rolls the dice on the GI Kentucky Derby trail, here's a really important question for every American horseman. Just what was it about European turf star Mishriff (Ire) that qualified him to run down as irresistible a dirt runner as Charlatan (Speightstown) for the richest prize in our sport last weekend? The answer is so straightforward that it condenses into a single word, yet the implications continue to elude almost everyone in our industry. And that word is: opportunity.

There were two very obvious reasons why Mishriff was given his opportunity in the Saudi Cup. One is that we're all rather more disposed to gamble when the odds of reward are so spectacular; the other is that the race was staged in his owner's hometown.

To be fair, Mishriff had made an encouraging reconnaissance the previous year, while his subsequent deeds in Europe left no doubt of his eligibility in terms of class. So that all figures. Yet the fact is that only those incidental incentives emboldened the kind of experiment nowadays almost manically forsworn on both sides of the Atlantic.

By this stage I have doubtless worn out the record over the shocking lack of adventure lately emasculating the European challenge at the Breeders' Cup, despite the remarkable achievements of those who did gamble on dirt in years past. But Americans have become barely less prescriptive in deciding a horse's surface requirements, carved in stone after a single glance at a pedigree. Both communities, as such, need sit down a minute and consider that of Mishriff.

His sire Make Believe (GB) is a French Classic winner by a British Classic winner, out of a daughter of Arc winner Suave Dancer, himself by a French Classic winner. Mishriff's dam Contradict (GB) is out of a half-sister to two remarkable Irish stallions in Invincible Spirit (Ire) and Kodiac (GB); and if Contradict is admittedly by a Breeders' Cup Classic winner, we all know that Raven's Pass was obliged, that year, with a synthetic surface congenially akin to turf.

The next three dams, meanwhile, are by turf milers Bahri, Kris (GB) and Artaius. Actually Bahri was also sire of Sakhee, whose dam won at Royal Ascot and was by the reputed chlorophyll addict Sadler's Wells. Nonetheless Sakhee was beaten a nose by dirt monster Tiznow at the Breeders' Cup, 20 days after romping the Arc in the mud. In terms of pedigree, the grounds for running Sakhee on dirt were the same as for Mishriff: zilch.

As I'm always saying–and I'm sorry to keep mounting the same soapbox, but nobody else seems to care–what is at stake is the kind of mutual transfusion that has historically energized the breed.
Speed-carrying dirt blood was the foundation of the Coolmore revolution, which continues to percolate through the twin branches of Northern Dancer's European dynasty, via Sadler's Wells and Danzig. Yet where is the rival with enough wit to challenge the same firm's Epsom hegemony by the same formula today, with stallions who–like Northern Dancer–carried their speed two turns on dirt? Anybody remotely serious about prising Classics out of the grasp of Galileo (Ire) and sons should have the big Bluegrass farms on speed-dial. As it is, the Europeans can't even absorb the blatant lessons of recent bargain imports by an accredited turf stallion in Kitten's Joy.

But American horsemen are no less myopic. Yes, some do import European bloodstock–as yearlings, or already in training–but only to target a weaker U.S. program. Few remember how farms like Claiborne and Darby Dan created Classic dirt pedigrees with stallions imported from Europe. Today turf sires in Kentucky are treated as commercial poison, and even when Noble Mission (GB) contrived a GI Kentucky Derby runner-up from his first crop–duly reminding us all that the running style of his brother Frankel (GB) was pure dirt–the next thing you know he has been driven out of town.

Fire At Will (Declaration of War) gets his shot on dirt in the GII Fasig-Tipton Fountain of Youth S. for the same reason as Mishriff last weekend. Nothing to lose, and potentially enormous rewards. His sire, remember, was beaten a nose and a head when trying dirt for the first time on his final start at the Breeders' Cup. But Declaration Of War was obviously far too versatile for his own good, wandering four continents through his first seven years at stud. In fact, Noble Mission is now in the same barn. Someday, too late, breeders in Europe and America will wake up to the fact that the ultimate 21st Century Thoroughbred is being bred in Japan from blood they rejected.

As it happens, Fire At Will is himself a combination of those Danzig and Sadler's Wells highways to Northern Dancer: he's by a son of War Front out of a Kitten's Joy mare. Not even I can pretend that Kitten's Joy is a versatile influence, though it's interesting that his own sire El Prado (Ire) did give us one in Medaglia d'Oro. Regardless, the family tapers into outright dirt royalty, to Rough Shod through Flippers and Moccasin; and it's been seeded with corresponding quality, by Arch, Nureyev (third dam, of course, Rough Shod) and Seattle Slew.

Whether or not Fire At Will takes to dirt is immaterial. The principle can't stand or fall on a single horse. Nobody will be reading too much into that off-the-turf success in the slop last summer, and he's resurfacing from a long hibernation (curiously enough, on the same day as the dirt champ over at Oaklawn). He'll find no hiding place between the speedball Drain The Clock (Maclean's Music) and a two-turn prince in Greatest Honour (Tapit). But I simply hope he runs well enough, so soon after a finishing kick honed on grass was too much even for Charlatan, to make horsemen everywhere stop and think. Just how many other horses might be out there, you wonder, with capacities far exceeding their opportunity?

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This Side Up: Proxy Steps In to Try that Unique Fit

Derby dreams at this time of year can prove as ephemeral as the vapours rising into the glacial air of Hot Springs. But the owner of the champion juvenile knows perfectly well that plans, with Thoroughbreds, can only ever be provisional–and that the postponement of Monday's Oaklawn card is a relatively trivial inconvenience to Essential Quality (Tapit). To recall the graver vexations that can unravel a Derby colt, Sheikh Mohammed needs only rewind to the last cycle, and the last colt that offered to requite perhaps the greatest single ambition still animating the biggest bloodstock empire in the breed's history.

Anyone with a sophomore of elite potential knows the highwire that axiomatically permits every Thoroughbred foal one opportunity, and one only, to contest the Kentucky Derby. If, with the approach of his third summer, he is not fit and well on the first Saturday in May, then fortune will never indulge him with a second chance. There might yet be greatness, a Travers or a Breeders' Cup. But there will be no Derby.

In 2020, however, the unprecedented (and arguably unnecessary) disordering of the Classic calendar offered some horses a reprieve even as it destroyed the fortunes of others. Nadal (Blame) and Charlatan (Speightstown) showed their readiness for the appointed hour, when the same track that is frozen this weekend salvaged an appropriate Grade I for sophomores on Derby day. Both colts, however, were sidelined by the time Churchill eventually staged a September Derby. In contrast, Maxfield (Street Sense) had appeared to be thrown a lifeline after a layoff that would have made a normal Derby very tight, if not impossible–only to be derailed by another setback in the summer.

Happily, Maxfield made a seamless resumption before Christmas to nourish hope the patience of all involved can be vindicated, and his full potential finally explored, by an uninterrupted campaign at four. Fitting, then, that he should be resuming Saturday in the GIII Mineshaft S.–a race honoring the 2003 Horse of the Year, who built with maturity on foundations laid so carefully in his European nursery.

Maxfield | Horsephotos

Among horsemen, after all, hope springs eternal. And while Maxfield provides a cautionary context, Godolphin certainly has some exciting young colts. Besides Essential Quality, there's the eye-watering Gulfstream maiden winner Prevalence (Medaglia d'Oro); while in yesterday's edition colleague Steve Sherack highlighted the prospects, down the line, of Speaker's Corner (Street Sense). Closer to hand, meanwhile, the deferral of the champion's reappearance switches attention to the aptly named Proxy (Tapit).

The GII Risen Star S. pitches this colt into a rematch with the pair who sandwiched him not only on the GIII Lecomte S. podium, but more or less from the moment the gate opened. That was not so much a horserace as a procession, all three basically holding their positions throughout as Midnight Bourbon (Tiznow) controlled a light pace. Seemingly Proxy's rider was intent on engaging Mandaloun (Into Mischief) in the stretch, which possibly helped the leader to hold out. Be that as it may, Proxy gets Johnny V. this time while stretching out to serve a pedigree lavishly seeded by Classic influences. As yet another string to the Tapit bow, alongside Essential Quality and Greatest Honour, Proxy is getting a solid grounding to help add mental maturity (has shied under pressure) to the palpable progress he is making in physical terms.

'TDN Rising Star' Mandaloun | Coady

It remains to be seen whether things can play out quite so conveniently for Midnight Bourbon this time, while Mandaloun must excel not to get caught wide again from gate 11. He certainly has the kind of family that is now supporting his sire, freshly gilded by Authentic, as a bona fide Classic stallion. Indeed, beyond the mare who became agent of its transfer to Juddmonte (bred first three dams), there's an unbroken Whitney line going back to 1918!

The big story bubbling under this race, of course, is Senor Buscador (Mineshaft). Joe Peacock, Jr.'s homebred looks an explosive talent and could put a smile on many faces at Remington Park, in the weeks leading up to May 1, if banking 50 Derby points here. He's a half-brother to Runaway Ghost (Ghostzapper), whose GIII Sunland Derby a couple of years ago remains the solitary graded stakes win among 1,158 overall for Todd Fincher. Veteran racetrackers everywhere would be thrilled to see Fincher consoled for the way Runaway Ghost had to leave the Churchill trail with injury.

Senor Buscador | Dustin Orona

It's not just Sheikh Mohammed, then, who knows how precarious a trek these horses are trying to make. So far as Godolphin is concerned, however, I hope it's right to perceive a wholesome shift in the way their Derby quest is viewed. Whether through its owner or the media, there was always something a little too politicized about winning the race “from the desert.” The Sheikh would still be deservedly gratified to realize that dream, but it would be no less a consummation of his unprecedented Turf career to get the job done from an American barn.

Thunder Snow (Ire) (Helmet {Aus}), himself a G2 UAE Derby winner, subsequently confirmed himself as eligible a Derby runner as Godolphin has found–yet his deranged antics on breaking were a bewildering reminder that nobody has ever cracked this challenge until that garland is over your horse's withers.

Proxy | Hodges Photography

Suffice to say, for now, that the Sheikh must be delighted with the work of his Stateside team. Maybe none of these horses will reach a sufficient peak to seize the hour on May 1, but right now nobody can know that. Godolphin, remember, have not even had a dozen Derby runners. People who talk of “failure” or “frustration” are forgetting the exorbitant ratios involved, just to get any colt out of the global crop into the Derby gate. They also need to remember that the more difficult this man finds a challenge, the more he enjoys it; and the more he will persevere.

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