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This Side Up: A Coup d’Etat to Benefit Us All

In these days of wilful division and reluctant separation, perhaps the wider world could for once learn something from our own community. For while our preoccupations may be frivolous, relative to such momentous challenges as the securing of democracy or public health, they do at least inculcate precisely the kind of calm forbearance most needed, right now, to quell the hysteria and despair infecting national wellbeing.

It’s pouring with rain? Go feed your horse and clean out the stall. Middle of a heatwave? Go feed your horse and clean out the stall. The trough has frozen to the depth of your fist? Go feed your horse and clean out the stall. You have no choice; and you have no guarantees. How often does it happen that your reward, for all your dependability and patience and exertion, is a split-second that instantly unravels daily increments of endeavor amounting to months, seasons, years? Yet still we persevere, ever animated by faith in what we are doing; faith in our horses. Or, if not faith, at least hope. And it just feels like a lot of people out there could do with a little more of that.

Even the Breeders’ Cup, the game-changing innovation of the modern industry, is now into its 37th cycle. And if the differences in the experience this year could scarcely be less welcome, the host city and its racetrack have banked enough Turf history to absorb even the bleakest addition to precedent. If the stands loom emptily over the stretch, they still teem with the glad spectres of horsemen and women past–whose lore, whose length of perspective, has seeped into the Bluegrass generation by generation, as gradual as the dew laid through cold hours of darkness to offer a sparkling welcome to a new day.

Because we know that dawn will come. It will bring fresh challenges, no doubt, as well as fresh hope. But the sun will rise in the same place, to the same clatter of buckets, the same impatient nickering.

That’s why there could be no more fitting winner of the American sport’s richest prize than Tom’s d’Etat (Smart Strike). Especially if he could be preceded to the winner’s enclosure by Starship Jubilee (Indy Wind), or Whitmore (Pleasantly Perfect), or another from a handful of runners foaled in 2013. For these are living monuments to the shared resilience of the Thoroughbred and its custodians; and, whatever happens here, the light they have collectively shed on this gloomiest of years has already shown us how to keep the faith.

It is five years and one day since Whitmore won by seven lengths on debut at Churchill. Before discovering his true vocation as a sprinter, he proceeded to finish last in the GI Kentucky Derby. And some of those ahead of him, from winner Nyquist (Uncle Mo) to seventh Brody’s Cause (Giant’s Causeway) and 14th Outwork (Uncle Mo), were represented on Friday’s juvenile program by first foals.

Whitmore at Keeneland | Coady

That’s not an option available to Whitmore, whose castration means that Ron Moquett, having maintained his enthusiasm with such skill, may yet eke out a fifth start in the GI B.C. Sprint at Del Mar next year. Tom’s d’Etat, however, will very soon discover just what he has been missing when he retires to WinStar–a farm with a remarkable stake in the GI Longines BC Classic.

Losing Pioneerof the Nile just as he was entering his pomp was all the more unfortunate given the ageing profile, at that point, of its other elite stallions. But WinStar is regenerating with purpose and, even while joining other farms in a series of pragmatic cuts for 2021, has been able to more than double Constitution’s fee to $85,000. If his son Tiz the Law happens to win the Classic, then the guys at WinStar may be almost as pleased as Coolmore, who will someday be welcoming him to Ashford.

WinStar is further represented, moreover, by Improbable (City Zip) and Global Campaign (Curlin). Given the sad news this week about Sagamore Farm, his co-owners, it would be especially poignant if Global Campaign were to outrun his odds as I expect.

My pick, however, remains Tom’s d’Etat–and not merely on grounds of sentiment. After stumbling out of the gate in the GI Whitney S., he was stuck behind petrified fractions (:25.12 and :49.74) and did well even to close for third to Improbable. Feeding off splits of :22.90 and :46.09 at Oaklawn in the spring, however, he had cut down the same rival decisively. That performance showed how well this horse operates off a break, and he has been duly freshened by a trainer who has been working back from this assignment all year. It was in a Grade II round here last fall, moreover, that Tom’s d’Etat announced his belated coming of age: the only Keeneland stakes success in this field.

The one pity is that Al Stall, Jr., having been ungraciously cast as the villain when Blame (Arch) spoiled the immaculate record of Zenyatta (Street Cry {Ire}), would find himself saluted with even less acclaim this time round. Whatever happens, he deserves immense credit for so patiently bringing Tom’s d’Etat to his full potential after just seven races across his first four years in training.

Global Campaign | Horsephotos

In fairness, the horse has become very sound with maturity and–from the final crop of a sire of sires, and with his second dam a sister to none other than Candy Ride (Arg)–looks an extremely attractive stud prospect. At WinStar, after all, he will be joining another stallion who has bucked the general trend by advancing his fee to $90,000 from $70,000. And Speightstown, who didn’t retire until he was six, is now rising 23.

So patience, once again: our perennial watchword. Seven starts across four seasons will have encompassed an awful lot of mornings–rainy, sunny, foggy, snowy–when his manger has been filled, his bedding changed, with no gallop. And that’s before we wind back to his pre-training, with Frank and Daphne Wooten; his preparation for the sales, just down the road from Keeneland at Hunter Valley Farm; never mind to the original drawing board of breeders SF Bloodstock.

Unlike Whitmore, Tom’s d’Etat won’t be racing into a third presidential term. But all these venerable animals reprove us that even the Classic racehorse is only an adolescent. A few years ago, researchers studied 274 American Thoroughbreds and established their average peak at 4.45 years.

Some benighted farms, no doubt, would be nervous of starting a stallion at eight. But since they tend to give up on most sires by the time they reach that age anyway, it’s hard to see the rush. Far better, surely, to give them a chance to demonstrate the kind of genetic attributes we should want to replicate in the breed.

So patience, everybody. Go feed your horse. And keep hoping.

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This Side Up: Breeders’ Cup Hits Pay Dirt at a Mile

Less is more, they say. Don’t worry, that’s not a facetious observation on the counting of votes. It’s just that some of us still feel that the expansion of the Breeders’ Cup into a second day, in 2007, somewhat diluted its trademark intensity.

A couple of years previously they had faced a similar calculation, in Britain, about adding a fourth day to the Cheltenham Festival: would the guarantee of another lucrative full house, at this phenomenally popular climax of the jumps season, represent a legitimate trade-off for the inevitable erosion of quality? Purists said no; the accountants said yes. You can guess whose reckoning proved decisive.

The one thing to avoid, in both cases, was to give the best horses any excuse to avoid each other. Partly to that end, no doubt, the Breeders’ Cup focused much of its innovation on grass. This can be viewed in two ways. On the one hand, the series duly embraced a discipline that has meanwhile continued to thrive domestically. At the same time, however, it offered European horsemen a pretext for renouncing the spirit of adventure that had produced so many unforgettable moments on the main track.

It so happened that the first two-day meeting was also the one that left such a deep scar on the European psyche, through the grotesque loss of George Washington (Ire) (Danehill) in the Monmouth slop. If that experience heightened appetite for the synthetics experiment, then the staging of the next Breeders’ Cup on such a surface, at Santa Anita, had quite the reverse effect on indigenous horsemen. Suddenly the Europeans were being invited to make hay not only in a bunch of new grass events, but in “dirt” races that were barely less congenial.

One way or another, there has clearly been a retrenchment since. That’s a topic for another day. What I’d like to address instead is the impressive way in which one particular race–the Big Ass Fans Dirt Mile–has evolved since two of its first three editions were staged, paradoxically enough, on something so akin to turf.

Back then, it felt like a consolation prize for horses on the periphery of the elite. As we approach the 14th running, however, it has matured into a bona fide Grade I with a promising record, already, of producing stallions. On Saturday, indeed, Mr. Money (Goldencents) and Rushie (Liam’s Map), will both line up as sons of past winners now doing well at stud.

Spun to Run wired the 2019 Dirt Mile | Breeders’ Cup/Eclipse Sportswire

Only this week it was announced that last year’s winner Spun to Run (Hard Spun) will stand at Gainesway in 2021, connections’ perseverance at four having unfortunately backfired with an idle campaign. The same farm already hosts 2012 winner Tapizar (Tapit). In between, dual scorer Goldencents (Into Mischief), Liam’s Map (Unbridled’s Song), Tamarkuz (Speightstown) and City of Light (Quality Road) all claimed a place at stud with a common air of validity. Some of the horses they beat, moreover, powerfully elaborated their eligibility in other races. Tamarkuz was chased home by none other than Gun Runner (Candy Ride {Arg}) and Accelerate (Lookin At Lucky); while last year Spun to Run gave the slip to the stellar Omaha Beach (War Front).

For what remains a young race, that’s a pretty formidable array of graduates. By the same token, it remains early days for most. But last year’s runner-up and the 2018 winner, for instance, both looked worth every cent of opening fees as high as $45,000 and $40,000, respectively.

Yes, you could argue that they devalued other races by taking on lesser animals in this one. Had Omaha Beach instead been obliged to square up to Mitole (Eskendereya) in the Sprint, and City of Light to Accelerate in the Classic, both those championships would have gained depth. By that point in their respective careers, however, both had discovered an optimal theatre for their brilliance. It felt right that they should be granted a platform to showcase their brand. In rejecting bigger purses to run for $1 million, after all, connections make that trade in prestige with their eyes open.

The miler, of course, has long enjoyed a premium as a stud prospect. In theory, he strikes a happy medium between sprint speed and the attributes associated with the Classic Thoroughbred. My own view, admittedly, is that such an equilibrium is most truly achieved round a single turn, without the breathing space available when you spend half the race adjusting for bends. That’s why the GI Metropolitan H. has such a storied record in announcing sires whose stock can carry their speed.

To be a true championship, drawing upon the best of both the sprinter and the two-turn horse, the Dirt Mile should really be a seamless, sweeping stampede that permits no hiding place. Nowadays, unfortunately, very few top tracks offer a “flat” mile on dirt. Hollywood Park and Arlington are out of the game, for different reasons, while the Breeders’ Cup right now seems more likely to be staged at Finger Lakes than New York’s city tracks. That leaves us only Churchill, among regular venues, though perhaps Laurel will include its “proper” mile in any prospectus for 2023.

Complexity | Sarah Andrew

Unfortunately, the hosts this year are obliged to compress the Dirt Mile into a configuration that flings the field straight into the clubhouse turn and, while gaining 70 yards, moves the winning post back to the sixteenth pole.

In 2015, Liam’s Map–despite having made his reputation that summer with those thrilling attacks from the front at Saratoga–had so much in hand that he could drop onto the rail before switching into the stretch to reel in Lea (First Samurai) at his leisure. But a more contentious field will probably make the draw a much bigger factor this time.

Though we must salute what he did round a single turn in the GII Kelso H., stall 10 will surely make things a little, well, complicated for favorite Complexity (Maclean’s Music). Conversely Art Collector (Bernardini) will have least ground to cover, if getting the necessary breaks. And while the setback that cost him a place in the GI Kentucky Derby appeared to tell in a flat GI Preakness effort, let’s not forget how he had thrashed the winner on his last visit here.

Certainly Art Collector has the pedigree to consolidate the Dirt Mile’s growing status as springboard to a stud career. He will be the hometown hope, of course, as was his dam–bred from a mare Bruce Lunsford had acquired to access a noble Greentree family–when closing to within a length in the 2011 GI Filly and Mare Turf at Churchill.

It was Lunsford, remember, who gave Mitch McConnell such a fright in their 2008 Senate race. He finds the politics of today depressingly negative and funding-driven. But he retained his optimism, when we spoke during the summer, and loves the fellowship of the Turf. So while many people this week find themselves standing apart for reasons other than contagion, let’s hope that all Kentucky–united by their esteem for his trainer, jockey and owner-breeder–can come together and root for Art Collector.

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This Side Up: Young Guns Seek Juvenile Momentum

You can’t really resent someone hoarding the ammunition, if he only needs it because he’s being forced to play Russian roulette.

That’s pretty much how things are for all those new, unproven stallions who corral such huge books of mares. Yes, I remain ever aggrieved on behalf of those quiet achievers who never get commercial traction, despite results that will almost invariably prove beyond their emerging rivals. But I do feel increasing sympathy for the young guns, because their margin for error is zero. They have to land running, or they can pack their bags.

Only rarely can a horse persuade the market to repent, like Daredevil. His export to Turkey last year, certainly, was a good deal more typical than his recent repatriation. After entertaining 376 mares across three seasons, he had found himself reduced to 21 as breeders moved on to the next parade of clean-cut cadets.

Such is the ruthlessly narrow window of opportunity. While allowances may be made for the two-turn type–whose clientele tend to be in less of a hurry and may even, glory be, include end-users–any of us can already look down the current freshmen’s table and speculate which may be first to Louisiana, and which to Korea.

The juvenile program at the Breeders’ Cup on Friday serves as a real “windsock” for those latest stallions trying to get airborne. Needless to say, we also have several established names defending their patriarchal status through the likes of Essential Quality (Tapit). But the annual distribution of the mare pool is such that the most precocious animals in any crop–typically out of more commercial dams–tend to represent the new blood.

Freshman sire Not This Time | Jon Siegel

Sure enough, Not This Time looks to seal his flying start with an unbeaten favorite, Princess Noor, in the GI Juvenile Fillies. In the same race, others near the top of the freshmen’s league are represented by Simply Ravishing (Laoban) and Vequist (Nyquist).

Success for Vequist would show how tightly these cycles turn: Nyquist himself, in sealing his championship at the Breeders’ Cup, belonged to the first crop of Uncle Mo–who duly gained an eponymous momentum he has maintained ever since.

Nyquist also fields Gretzky the Great in the GI Juvenile Turf (presented by Coolmore America), where Outwork has the chance to consolidate his own strong start through Outadore. And in the GI Juvenile (presented by Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance) itself, a whole bunch of freshmen take a hand: Not This Time again, plus one apiece for Upstart, Frosted and Brody’s Cause; and a couple of longshots for Laoban.

Even getting this far, mind, is only a start. Plenty of stallions have faltered after producing one or two headliners early in their careers. The challenge, then, is to consolidate after the same fashion as Maclean’s Music, who gained his first-crop foothold through the GI Preakness success of Cloud Computing but has now, crucially, built on that with two Breeders’ Cup favorites: Complexity, in the GI Big Ass Fans Dirt Mile; and Jackie’s Warrior, here in the Juvenile.

Complexity has regrouped splendidly after bombing in the 2018 Juvenile, having pitched up (just like Jackie’s Warrior) as a dazzling GI Champagne winner. Jackie’s Warrior’s forte, unsurprisingly in a barn full of speedballs, appears to be “pouring it on”. Whether he can stretch again remains to be seen: for the one-turn mile at Belmont, he tempered his opening fractions to 23.12 and 46.54, having blazed 22.56 and 44.83 in the GI Runhappy Hopeful S. and 22.06 and 44.85 over six on his previous start. The handicappers who think money grows on speed figure trees will seek no farther.

But if Maclean’s Music is a model for the rookies–in his own freshman campaign, 20 winners from just 40 starters conceived at $6,500 earned him 181 mares (including the dam of Jackie’s Warrior) at $25,000 the following spring–then he is still gazing upwards at venerable Classic influences like Tapit and the late Empire Maker.

Both have aristocratic sons menacing Jackie’s Warrior, but whereas Essential Quality–his family newly decorated by Japanese champ Contrail (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn})–is a Grade I winner over the track, Classier arrives here very raw.

The late Empire Maker could add to his legacy | EquiSport Photos

The single consolation, when Empire Maker died at the start of the year, was that he had long secured his legacy, with grandsons at stud including American Pharoah, Cairo Prince, Classic Empire, Midnight Storm and Always Dreaming. True, their respective sires had left the stage: Pioneerof the Nile predeceased Empire Maker, while Bodemeister was one of those posted to Turkey after failing to build on his breakout. With another couple of crops in the pipeline, however, Empire Maker may yet add one or two direct heirs.

As a $775,000 Keeneland September yearling, Classier was certainly priced to be a stallion–and his powerful ownership group could not have asked for a better start. They will be making no assumptions, however, after what happened with another son of Empire Maker in this race last year.

The implosion of Eight Rings opened the door to Storm the Court (Court Vision), whose shock success was by no means an outlier in a race that has also given us the likes of Action This Day (Kris S.), Wilko (Awesome Again), Vale of York (Ire) (Invincible Spirit {Ire}) and Anees (Unbridled). In that tradition, I offer you Rombauer (Twirling Candy).

Certainly his sire sets an exemplary pattern to the young guns, having dropped from $15,000 to $10,000 when his first runners appeared before earning gradual increments to $40,000. In the present market, moreover, for Twirling Candy to hold that fee for 2021 in effect represents another hike. And the diversity of his best stock, from dirt dashers (like GI Breeders’ Cup Sprint candidate Collusion Illusion) to turf routers, puts him in a strong position in the race eventually to succeed Candy Ride (Arg).

Actually his sire’s flexibility almost put Rombauer off the scent, as he started his career on grass. But then the excellent Michael McCarthy switched John and Diane Fradkin’s homebred to the main track for the GI American Pharoah S. The result was a really auspicious two-turn dirt reconnaissance. Detached early, while appearing perfectly at ease, he circled the field with a powerful move and closed to within a length of the winner, who had been handy throughout, clearing away all the while from Classier’s odds-on barnmate Spielberg (Union Rags).

Rombauer has royal Californian blood: his second dam is Ultrafleet, who gave us not only Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint winner California Flag (Avenue of Flags) but also his sister Cambiocorsa, “queen of the hill” at Santa Anita and granddam of Roaring Lion (Kitten’s Joy).

This winter brings us the poignant, fleeting opportunity to buy the only weanlings by Roaring Lion, whose story reminds us how unpredictable are the paths ahead of even the most wonderful young horses. Safe travels to all, then. All the rest is gravy.

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This Side Up: A Very Different Experience-but Euro Strategy Same as Ever

It’s the baby I can’t get out of my mind, try as I might.

Maybe you feel it shouldn’t have been out at all, on such an evening and in such a place: sitting there in its diaper, on a table, under the adoring smiles of the good-looking couple who had brought it into the raucous bar. But then the infant looked very much at home, alternately raising a glass of bourbon and a cheroot to its lips.

Only in L.A.; only on Halloween. On closer inspection, of course, the baby proved to be a doll and its precocious addictions automated. But Hollywood was only down the road, and its proud “father” explained that he was a professional. He created life-like dummies for the kind of roles that cause actors to become a little testy with their agents, like being blown up or run over or pushed off a cliff.

His Halloween stunt was plainly in pretty appalling taste, but the traveler needs an open mind and it was fun to hang out for a few minutes. This, after all, is just the kind of thing that makes Breeders’ Cup week what it is, for those of us who come over from Europe not simply for the most captivating race meeting on the planet but also for all the kaleidoscopic cultural impressions–some challenging, some enchanting–that go with it.

Sheer numbers at the Breeders’ Cup will look very different this year from last | Horsephotos

Back in Pasadena for Halloween last year, I was baffled and entertained anew by the communal delirium of a carnival that has, until a gradual commercial seepage in recent years, never had anything like the same importance on my side of the Atlantic. But the spectres, at Santa Anita, seemed all too real: we were all haunted by that harrowing sequence of breakdowns earlier in the year. In the event, a tremendous collective effort was bitterly unravelled in the final stages of the Classic itself, dashing to smithereens the champagne flutes all those diligent veterinarians and administrators must have been on the point of raising to their lips.

Let’s not neglect to revive an overdue toast, then, after Santa Anita recently concluded its fall meet with zero fatalities from 1,106 starters and 51,200 training bouts. Sadly, however, the Breeders’ Cup this year finds itself under a far more pervasive cloud.

For it is not just transatlantic devotees like me, grounded by the pandemic, who will feel forlornly detached this time round. Even Lexingtonians, the lucky residents of my hometown-from-home, will be painfully reminded that the whole point of the Breeders’ Cup circus is how vibrantly, and how intimately, it entwines people from all walks of life; from all parts of America, and beyond.

Some bring a particular horse, and partisan hopes. Most, however, are united by impartial fervor for the Thoroughbred, and this ultimate test of its capacity for noble endeavor. And, between mornings on the track and evenings on the town, the anticipation tends to be at least as exciting as the consummation.

As it is, the horses now have a week to thaw the human coldness of this wretched year. (And, incidentally, also to reconcile any froideurs likely to be exacerbated, in the meantime, by such a contentious election.) Will they be equal to that extra burden? We can but hope.

From the European point of view, however, that hope continues to stagnate. I won’t reprise, for the umpteenth time, how disastrously the raiders have mislaid the sense of adventure that yielded many of their finest moments at the Breeders’ Cup. Suffice to say that not a single European entry has been made in any of the dirt races, an absolutely embarrassing state of affairs when you consider how dramatically “turf” horses (both in breeding and experience) have transformed perceptions in years past.

Maximum Security working last week toward the Classic | Horsephotos

In fairness, the Coolmore partners already have a momentous stake in the Classic through Maximum Security (New Year’s Day). And they remain the one European power that reliably grasps the value, to the breed, of measuring horses in a different environment and different marketplace. (The best European racehorse of recent times, in contrast, never once spent a night away from his stable in Newmarket.)

Their willingness to roll the dice has come at a mild cost, perhaps, in the way Americans perceive their principal trainer, Aidan O’Brien. But remember that Bobby Frankel, another we knew to be a genius, had to wait for his 39th starter to win a Breeders’ Cup race; and John Sadler for his 43rd. And, almost invariably, horses shipping for Europe are being asked to regroup even as their reserves run low at the end of a long campaign.

O’Brien has saddled a dozen Breeders’ Cup scorers, including both European winners the first time the series came to Lexington. But last year the entire, 36-strong raiding party depended for its solitary success on his son, who pulled the Filly and Mare Turf out of the fire with Iridessa (Ire) (Ruler of the World {Ire}). (O’Brien and his wife Annemarie, remember, did gain credit not only as breeders of the trainer, but also of Iridessa herself.)

O’Brien divides as many as 10 of his winners between just two races, six in the Turf and four in the Juvenile Turf. Such a perfectionist hardly needs telling that he has unfinished business in other disciplines. But while these two races may seem pretty seamless, to American eyes, they are actually divided by a spectrum that shows how O’Brien, like all great trainers, views each race in a horse’s career as an organic part of a bigger, longer project.

The Turf is a destination for a horse reaching its prime, like Highland Reel (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), Found (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) or High Chaparral (Ire) (Sadler’s Wells). For the adolescents sent over for the Juvenile Turf, however, it is as much about new experience–long travel, change of training environment, sharp tracks–as the customary stakes of prizemoney or a stud career.

Mendelssohn (Scat Daddy) nailed it both ways, in 2017, gaining the laurels on the day while also laying the ground for a switch to dirt, where he proved better yet. The next year, nobody gave a second glance at Anthony Van Dyck (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) after he finished a rather dazed ninth. But the following June he showed the dividends, over the Epsom rollercoaster, by winning the Derby itself.

O’Brien’s candidate for the race this year is the first foal of none other than Found, a War Front colt named Battleground. Albeit more by accident than design, having been held up by a cough, he will be much fresher than the typical raider having made three starts in June and July and then disappeared. He broke his maiden at Royal Ascot, no less, and then followed up at Goodwood–a useful track to educate a horse with America in mind, though he will duly want to look a bit sharper about his work this time. The form doesn’t look too gripping, but he is too valuable a prospect to be sent here without due purpose.

His pedigree, in mingling the best of transatlantic influences, represents exactly what horsemen should always be looking to achieve–at the Breeders’ Cup and beyond. In racing terms, there’s a similar exercise underway with Qatar Racing’s Kameko (Kitten’s Joy), whose Classic success at Newmarket in May underlined just how culpably obtuse European breeders have been in learning the lessons offered about their sire by poor old Roaring Lion. (The one man sharp enough to buy both horses being David Redvers.)

That’s another theme I have probably labored enough, by this stage. But while it may sound paradoxical, to me these are two sides of the same coin. Their turf horses, given the chance, would do far better in next weekend’s dirt races than most European horsemen would nowadays seem to expect. At the same time, however, many American stallions–not just Kitten’s Joy but speed-carrying dirt sires–would also give European mares a better chance of producing Classic horses on their home turf.

But you know what they say. You can lead a horse to water, and all that. And much the same is true of horsemen. After all, when even the babies drink bourbon, why would any of us try to get through such a bittersweet week on water?

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