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This Side Up: Veterans Would Have An Instant Solution

Coming from a culture where most wagering stipulates a fixed dividend, in the startling event that your horse happens to see through his part of the deal, I tend to view the morning line on American races as named for the hangover evidently being suffered by its compiler. Certainly by the time the market has been soberly hydrated with dollars and cents, I won't be expecting anything as close to an even play as the 4-5 listed about Forte (Violence) overcoming the wide draw that appears to introduce his only real jeopardy in the GI Curlin Florida Derby at Gulfstream on Saturday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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This Side Up: Veterans’ Day at Oaklawn

When it comes to ageing, as the wiseguys remind us, it's when you're over the hill that you begin to pick up speed. And it's true: the magnolia trees where I live are coming into blossom, and I swear that each passing year compresses both the duration of those brief candles and, above all, the intervals in between. The inference is a dismal one: time flies when you've had your fun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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This Side Up: Tapping At That Derby Door Again

We had the Forte (Violence) bit last week. Now for the piano. The champion juvenile resumed his sonata in virtuoso fashion, reprising themes established in its first movement with familiar verve. From his barnmate Tapit Trice, in contrast, we have so far only had a couple of experimental arpeggios–but even those have sufficed for their trainer to remove the local trial winner from his path in the GIII Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby on Saturday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essential Quality | Sarah Andrew

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

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

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

Flightline | Horsephotos

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

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

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

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This Side Up: Lessons From A Polish Donkey

I must admit that this whole business of getting wiser as you get older is giving me a little trouble. Somehow I only seem able to nail one half of the deal–albeit, so far as that goes, I'm definitely making rapid, daily progress.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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