This Side Up | Horse Racing Free Tips

This Side Up: The Tough Get Going

I'm pinning my faith in Happy Jack. Not to win, obviously, even after a Derby so outlandish that it still confounds the handicapper's genius for rationalizing the most unaccountable events with the invincible benefit of hindsight. As a Calumet homebred by Oxbow, however, you can certainly envisage this fellow proceeding to the GI Belmont S. and so ensuring that at least one horse has contested each leg of the Triple Crown–which would, dismally, be one more than was managed last year even by a crop containing Oxbow's outstanding son to date, who has meanwhile confirmed toughness to be his genetic trademark.

Of course, those of us outraged by renewed proposals to desecrate the Triple Crown heritage will be hoping, far ahead of Happy Jack, either to see Epicenter (Not This Time) show that he has soaked up his remarkably generous exertions in the Derby; or Secret Oath (Arrogate) make it equally plain that this kind of Classic schedule remains within the compass even of modern Thoroughbreds, if only they are bred and/or trained the right way.

As things stand, it feels an affront to both these splendid creatures that their showdown on Saturday, one wholly worthy of the 147th GI Preakness S., should have been so unceremoniously displaced from the top of the week's news agenda. Regardless of whether Rich Strike (Keen Ice) can ever again remotely approach what he did at Churchill, a single, freakish performance should not qualify him, overnight, to subvert the legacy of so many generations of horsemen.

(Click the arrow below to listen to this column as a podcast.)

In fairness, it's not as though his connections set out to start some national debate. They just made a decision about their own horse, and what they figured might work best for him. True, if weighing their decision on bigger scales, they might perhaps have been a little more cognisant of the broader responsibilities–to their sport, with a rare opportunity of engaging the attention of the world beyond–that arguably accompany such a literally fantastic gift from the racing gods. As it is, we have to conclude that they were concentrating on one horse, standing there in his stall. And that's absolutely their prerogative.

But when other people start using that decision as a pretext to review the whole future of the Triple Crown, then you have to ask yourself whether the challenge to all logic, when Rich Strike suddenly materialized along that rail at Churchill, has incidentally prompted us to discard all sanity as well. Because while Eric Reed and Rick Dawson certainly had a pretty interesting start to their month, I am not sure how far they have advanced up the line of horsemen eligible to turn so much of our history on its head.

Sure, there are a whole bunch of other Derby participants sitting out the Preakness. By this stage, however, that feels wholly consistent with the prejudices of modern trainers, in either observing or merely perceiving some inadequacy in the kind of animals we're breeding today. Some of these guys are either automatons themselves, or think that their horses are. As with every question asked by a Thoroughbred, targets should be determined by the flesh-and-blood differences between individuals–and not reduced to a formula, according to the number a horse might have run, or the date on a calendar.

What a drab convention of the faint-hearted, if the schedulers were to yield meekly to such timidity! Thank goodness for D. Wayne Lukas, who has reliably redeemed both the caliber and the narrative of this race. The real torment–for those grateful to him for this, the latest of so many services to our sport–is that we might actually have had a filly on the Triple Crown trail but for the ride that blunted her blade when she tested the Derby waters.

As I've remarked before, the Triple Crown schedule doesn't just maintain the historic integrity of the way we measure the breed. It's how horsemen of the past keep us honest. And while this may not be the most truthful age in the story of civilisation, we have no excuse for lowering our own standards when our livelihoods depend upon a creature as transparent and trusting as the Thoroughbred.

Which, as it happens, is exactly why we can't let training be all about pharmacy–and why people also have to be honest about why they might be trying to emasculate the policing of medication. There's a virtuous circle here. For one thing, a horse is never going to be in greater need of time between races than when a rival has called on artificial reserves. Conversely, it's the horse bred and raised and trained with a clean conscience that will ultimately give us a genetic package worth replicating.

And that conscience comes into play long before the appointment of a scrupulous trainer. It is also required of those whose spending and/or advice at ringside currently, somehow, makes commercial poison of the most wholesome paternity. Calumet may have let a Derby winner slip through their grasp but at least they are prepared to stand against the tide. And that's another reason to hope that Happy Jack can disclose something of the quality that for now remains no more evident than it was in Rich Strike this time two weeks ago.

Kenny McPeek | Coady

This, after all, is an unpredictable game. Who could have imagined that Kenny McPeek, having last winter looked as though he might come up with a Derby trifecta of his own, would roll up here with none of those horses–instead buying a $150,000 wild card for a horse that won, you guessed it, two weeks ago at Churchill?

Obviously Creative Minister (Creative Cause) is unlikely to have endured as taxing a race then as the three who do accompany him here from the Derby. As such, he arrives as a kind of compromise between those making a quick turnaround and the ambush party headed by Early Voting (Gun Runner). Whether that proves the best or worst of both worlds remains to be seen, but I do know one thing. We gain nothing by trying to make things “easier”. In the old axiom, it's when the going gets tough that the tough get going. We need to find out who those horses are, and reward the horsemen who produce them.

The post This Side Up: The Tough Get Going appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

This Side Up: Don’t Make Them Like That Anymore

Well, I guess it's precisely because the protagonists aren't used to the limelight that everybody has so enjoyed their arrival at center stage. But they have quickly learned that once there, with everyone hanging on your every word, you had better know your script.

In the excitement of his success, under one of the most remarkable rides in GI Kentucky Derby history, connections of Rich Strike (Keen Ice) told everyone that they had the previous morning been reconciled to instead contesting the GIII Peter Pan S. at Belmont this weekend. But they are now claiming that they were actually targeting the GI Preakness S.–and that spacing out his races was always their priority.

(Click the arrow below to listen to this column as a podcast.)

Their strategies and pretexts for ultimately missing the Preakness are entirely their own business. Nonetheless it's vexing that those who want to spread out the Triple Crown series, having been effectively muted by American Pharoah and Justify, now feel emboldened to put their heads back over the parapet. Colleague Bill Finley masterfully disposed of this myopic and really rather decadent lobby in Friday's edition, and I would merely add that the Rich Strike decision is particularly disappointing in view of the miles he has on the clock. Because however little else he brought to the Derby, he did have more “bottom” (eight starts) than any other runner bar the obvious herbivore Tiz the Bomb (Hit It a Bomb) (nine).

By modern standards, runner-up Epicenter (Not This Time) had also laid fairly solid foundations, especially compared with the raw Zandon (Upstart) who seemed to hit a wall after the race had set up perfectly. True, he graduated from a race that nowadays serves the prejudices of modern trainers to the extent of granting them an extra week, but remember the GII Louisiana Derby also trades that concession for extra distance. The race produced four of the first six past the post last year, and once again it has proved a major bonus to have run a mile and three-sixteenths before the first Saturday in May.

Rich Strike was nowhere near the Derby's hot pace | Coady

Epicenter's perseverance, after contributing to the pace meltdown, indicates courage as exceptional as talent. Whether he can himself absorb such an exacting effort inside two weeks remains to be seen. Here, after all my complaints about the two-dimensional nature of the modern Derby, was a horse ideally equipped to boss the kind of procession we have seen so often since the points system eliminated sprint speed–only to hit the first pace implosion since Orb in 2013 (paradoxically, the first year of gate points).

Be all that as it may, we can't pretend that Rich Strike would have been an especially obvious fancy had he instead rolled up for the Peter Pan. Just try to restore his spectral presence, from that parallel world he fleetingly inhabited eight days ago, into the field that does assemble at Belmont on Saturday–potentially, in some cases, with a view to instead beating him back at the same track next month. Really, the exercise doesn't feel so different from the moment he suddenly appeared along the rail at Churchill: the ghost runner, the puzzling silks in the post parade, the impostor who seemed merely a ceremonial, three-dimensional representation of the horse scratched by D. Wayne Lukas.

So much for my hunch that the Coach might yet have a say in the Derby, despite having reserved what may yet prove the best sophomore of the crop to the company of her own sex. In the event, it became a tale of two substitutes, his brilliant filly's proxy Ethereal Road (Quality Road) crucially ceding his spot to this interloper.

Nobody in the modern era has put more “bottom” into a horse than Lukas, and the taxing race she endured under a fairly witless ride in that GI Arkansas Derby experiment not only set up Secret Oath (Arrogate) to dominate a vintage field for the GI Longines Kentucky Oaks but will also, surely, steel her for her imminent next encounter with colts.

The 2022 Kentucky Derby winner | Coady

The defection from that showdown of a fairytale Derby winner does deprive our sport of an opportunity to redeem much of the public distaste we have collectively invited over the past two or three years. The Preakness had offered to bring together two very different phoenixes: one rising from the pyre of age and fashion, his genius gleaming bright as ever; the other literally from the flames, an inferno having consumed 23 horses in as harrowing a nightmare as any horseman could imagine.

But the Rich Strike team are clearly going to follow their own narrative. Everybody else presumed that he didn't really belong in the Derby; and now they have decided, contrary to the outside consensus, that he doesn't belong in the Preakness. Again, it's their prerogative to do as they please. But the Triple Crown gods had cast them in pretty compelling roles, and I'm not sure anyone should want to start meddling with a plot of such momentum and coherence. They can flatter themselves that he was only primed to seize his moment last weekend because of their own calculation, but they do have to credit somebody up there with an assist.

Everything we do with horses, of course, combines luck as well as judgement. That's certainly true of breeding, and it may be no more than a striking coincidence that both Secret Oath and Rich Strike appear to have hewn their physical competence for the Classics, these most demanding examinations of the adolescent Thoroughbred, from genetic foundations assembled with an exceptional eye on reinforcement.

Secret Oath is pegged down at every corner by the great Aspidistra. Damsire Quiet American is famously inbred as close as 3×2 to Aspidistra's son Dr. Fager, in both cases moreover through a mating with a daughter of another matriarch in Cequillo. Secret Oath's second dam is by Great Above, a son of Aspidistra's Hall of Fame daughter Ta Wee. And Arrogate's grandsire Unbridled also brings in Aspidistra, as fourth dam; besides being (like Quiet American) a son of Fappiano, himself out of a Dr. Fager mare.

As we discussed in Tuesday's edition, Rich Strike's pedigree is also conspicuous for doubling down on venerable influences. His sire is a grandson of his own damsire, Smart Strike, while his third dam is by a full-brother to Smart Strike's sire Mr. Prospector. Keen Ice himself, meanwhile, duplicates the broodmare sire legend Deputy Minister 3×3. And his fourth dam Chic Shirine is by Mr. Prospector.

Keen Ice at Calumet | Sarah Andrew

Keen Ice's family–tracing to the 1962 Epsom Oaks winner Monade (Fr), imported by King Ranch–was developed through five generations by Emory Hamilton. We would have no Rich Strike, then, without the parallel human and equine dynasties going through her mother Helen Groves, that wonderfully vital connection to the Old West whose unique spark was finally extinguished this week at 94. They simply don't make them like “Helenita” anymore. In fact, I'm not sure they can have done previously, either.

I doubt that the fearless cowgirl would be terribly impressed by anyone turning down the opportunity to emulate Assault, who won the Triple Crown for King Ranch in 1946. She never forgot that Preakness Ball, full of demobbed servicemen and an infectious optimism, as a 19-year-old college student.

Assault, incidentally, won the Dwyer S. two weeks after the Belmont. That was his sixth win in nine weeks. (Nothing compared to Citation, of course, who two years later also landed the Triple Crown in winning 19 of 20 sophomore starts.) Sadly, infertility prevented Assault passing on that constitution, but that's what we're looking for in Triple Crown horses, and that's why it is set up as it is. It's how their predecessors keep the horsemen of today honest.

Last year not one horse lined up for all three legs. That may reflect on modern breeding, or merely the perceptions of modern trainers. Either way, it's obvious what needs reform–and, even more obviously, it isn't the Triple Crown.

The post This Side Up: Don’t Make Them Like That Anymore appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

This Side Up: Run to Win, Not Win to Run

(Listen to this story by clicking the play button below.)

We live in a world where change is routinely mistaken for progress, draped in the cheap frills of “modernization”–a word that needs treating with extreme suspicion, implying as it does that any who challenge innovation are obstructing our species in some otherwise inexorable journey to fulfilment.

Nobody can sensibly deny that a great deal of change has indeed been for the better. Few who honor her memory at Keeneland on Saturday, I'm sure, would like to have been with Jenny Wiley in her pioneer cabin, that bloody day in 1789. But nor should we ever be vapidly impulsive in our stewardship of the Thoroughbred, that beautiful time capsule for generations of toil and reflection by stockmen whose lore has long faded from all other record.

In my homeland of England, they actually have ended up having to use heritage as a substitute for decent purses. Even in that environment, however, vigilance is constantly required against well-intentioned but crass unstitching of the pageant.

On both sides of the water, admittedly, we must tolerate such pragmatic change as will preserve what has become known as “the social license” to persist in our way of life, in an era when a largely urban world can grossly amplify its misapprehensions on social media.

That's a context we can't afford to neglect in any of the scandals, actual or perceived, that undermine our claims to scrupulous regard for equine welfare. At one end of the spectrum, you may this week have glimpsed some nightmarish images from the Quarter Horse world. Be in no doubt, however: we absolutely invite outsiders to place us on the same continuum even in what too many people in our community consider our marginal complicities–when indulging the alchemy apparently practised in certain barns, for instance, or arguably when harnessing ideological lobbies to litigate against meaningful regulation.

And I do feel that some of the decisions we make as breeders show inadequate consideration for the breed's long-term welfare. Everyone talks a good game about turf stallions, for instance, but they won't actually give them commercial oxygen. And the odds are stacked even against dirt stallions if perceived as “slow burners”, whether in terms of maturity or stamina.

With far too many horses brought into the world to walk, not run, I recently took the tragic cue of Get Stormy's loss to celebrate the exemplary approach of Crestwood, where the roster majors in competitive longevity, often combined with turf acceleration and/or an aristocratic maternal line. But the suspicion must be that a family farm, with relatively limited resources, can only have created this heroic niche in the Bluegrass because of market contempt for precisely those assets that would best sustain the breed.

Thankfully Crestwood is not alone in understanding how the viability of our sport depends on the physical competence of the model we hand over to the next generation. Few grasp this more ardently than Airdrie–where Divisidero, for instance, built five campaigns on a maternal line extending to Cosmah herself; and Preservationist, who pairs up the King Ranch icons Courtly Dee and Too Chic, must somehow get people to see past the fact that he was six when he broke two minutes in the GII Suburban.

That pair will need a lot of far-sighted support to emulate the breakout of their buddy Upstart, who–multiple Grade I-placed at two, three and four, and tracing to a Federico Tesio champion–has genuine prospects, with only his second crop, of a first Kentucky Derby-Oaks double since Native Dancer.

Whatever happens at Churchill, Upstart has done something pretty phenomenal just to put himself in this position as a $10,000 start-up. Remember this is the 50th anniversary of Airdrie's foundation; and also that Zandon's first three dams were all mated in support of resident stallions. Typically of this farm, moreover, the family traces to a great matriarch in Boudoir II (GB), whose foals included the dam of Flower Bowl, granddam of Majestic Prince and sire of Kelso. Any neutral whose Derby pick will be determined by a due sense of heritage and class, then, will have had goosebumps watching Zandon put it all together in his hometown trial last weekend.

Now it's true that Zandon has himself participated in radical change; in a process, indeed, that many trainers would doubtless hail as “modernization”. Having been so lightly campaigned, by the standards of the past, last week he needed things to go right just to reserve himself a Derby gate.

It's a world away from 1941, when Whirlaway (seven-for-16 at two) was beaten in a Blue Grass nine days before the Derby, and again in the Churchill Derby Trial five days later, only to convert that sharpening into an eight-length win in the first leg of his Triple Crown. On its nine-day turnaround the Blue Grass produced the Derby winner nine times in 14 runnings from 1959. In 1990, however, it was pushed back to three weeks before the Derby, and in 2015 to four. That leaves the GIII Stonestreet Lexington S. as the last chance saloon for those still needing gate points and, despite its relative proximity to the Derby, as the ultimate example of how trials have become treated principally as a means to get into the race, rather than actually to win it.

Lexington contender Ethereal Road with D. Wayne Lukas | Coady

Except that maybe D. Wayne Lukas is trying to do both, in backing up Ethereal Road (Quality Road) a week after the Blue Grass–where patience seems finally to have been exhausted with his jockey, now replaced both here and on Secret Oath (Arrogate) in the Oaks.

Remember how Lukas brought a son of Summer Squall to this race in 1999, a couple of weeks after he'd made some late ground into fourth of eight as an outsider in the GI Santa Anita Derby? Charismatic had needed six attempts to win a maiden, and both his wins had come under a tag, but all that groundwork suddenly came together in the Lexington. And 13 days later he went into the Derby–with 12 more races under his belt than will Taiba (Gun Runner)!

The only rule, with Thoroughbreds, is that there are no rules. If Taiba can win off that prep, then I will have to acknowledge myself not just a traditionalist but a culpable reactionary. Actually, as we've indicated already, there is one immutable rule: that whatever we do with these horses, their welfare comes first. But if they are not being “proved”, the way they once were, then I don't know that anyone gains.

If trainers don't trust the resilience of the genetic material they're being given, then that's a poor reflection on the breeders of today. And equally it's no help to the breeders of tomorrow if stock perfectly equal to a tougher schedule never gets a chance to demonstrate those wares. So, no, not all change is good–any more than all change is bad.

The post This Side Up: Run to Win, Not Win to Run appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

This Side Up: No Points for Freshness

There was a time when you would load as much experience and conditioning as possible into a Kentucky Derby horse, as a mere adolescent required to jostle with 19 others through 10 furlongs. Nowadays, however, trainers are trying to reach Churchill Downs across a highwire stretched to a thread by two diametrically opposed imperatives. One is their conviction, whether through perception or presumption, that the typical, commercial-bred Thoroughbred of today can only stand up to a much lighter schedule. The other is to secure enough gate points in the trials.

In trying to reconcile this paradox, many horses reach this stage of the game with zero margin for error. For these the next two Saturdays, with six races carrying 170 starting points apiece, will be make-or-break. If you land a wide draw, or a rough trip, or an off track–well, tough. In some cases, to be fair, setbacks along the way will have left trainers no choice. But others have painted themselves into a corner by a witting trade-off between the benefits they perceive in conserving the gas, and the risk of the strategy backfiring.

What sets Bob Baffert apart, as the master of the modern Derby preparation, is his ability to fast-track even a horse as late onto the scene as Justify (Scat Daddy). It doesn't seem to matter that a lot of those Californian trials are too mildly contested to yield much in the way of useful experience. Somehow, whether by accident or design, his methods have proved ideally tailored to the changing demands of the race. Okay, so maybe even he could only hit with a winner as goofy as Authentic (Into Mischief) was in the GIII Sham S. because the Derby, that year, was delayed until September. Time after time, however, Baffert manages to drill raw horses to all the professionalism required to take control on the first Saturday in May.

(To listen to this story as a podcast, click the arrow below.)

Now I realize that his regime is a demanding one. But if you don't like those Quarter Horse works, hard and fast, then how else do you propose getting a horse ready for the Louisville street fight after barely five minutes of competition? (Some or even most of which, moreover, will have been confined to maiden company.)

As I'm always complaining, carrying your speed in the Derby is nothing like as exacting, now that the sprinters have been excluded by the starting points system. This has surely assisted Baffert, whose horses so often just run the finish out of their pursuers. But it's not as though the race is now some kind of picnic.

The trials have always been a means to an end. They were dress rehearsals, a way of ensuring that the actors knew their lines blindfolded and had their timing tight. But the contradictory aspirations of many trainers today are muddling those ends and means. Their actors rehearse lying in the bath, mumbling to themselves from a soggy script. Trainers used to build up physical and mental fitness until their horses were ready to break down the door. Now they try to wedge it open just enough for horses to slip through with minimal effort.

Needless to say, there are a lot of outstanding horsemen out there applying themselves to the conundrum. It looks no coincidence, for instance, that the GII Louisiana Derby proved the deepest trial last year, having been extended to a mile and 3/16ths. That has created a useful compromise: the timing serves the conservatism of trainers, with 14 extra days of freshening relative to those running at Aqueduct, Keeneland and Santa Anita next week; while the distance, at the same time, gives the horses something valid to recover from.

Certainly those supervising Epicenter (Not This Time) have actually used his preps as just that: as preparation. They haven't viewed them merely as a way of securing a big day out, but as a tool for maximizing his chance of actually getting that blanket of roses. Admittedly they have hardly explored his versatility, in terms of surface, albeit he broke his maiden on the one that stages the Derby. But he has been learning about his vocation all winter, notably from a speed ambush in the GIII Lecomte S., and was able to make a slick adjustment to a different running style last Saturday.

This year, of course, the Baffert horses have themselves been left without wriggle-room in terms of starting points, having been ineligible to bank any before their recent move to other barns. As a former assistant who shared his transition from Quarter Horses, however, Tim Yakteen has worked his new recruits in seamless fashion, sending Doppelganger (Into Mischief) into the GI Arkansas Derby with five furlongs in a minute flat, to follow six furlongs in 1:10.8 the previous week.

Lukas alongside his latest star filly this week | Coady

As it happens, the ultimate pioneer from the Quarter Horse world also has this single shot to get to the Kentucky Derby, though again the circumstances are highly unusual. As we've remarked before, a bold experiment with the filly Secret Oath (Arrogate) could yet redeem our whole community, single-handed, from an apparently endless streak of hideous headlines. If she can proceed to the Derby as one of the favorites, it will scarcely matter whether or not she can actually win, so long as D. Wayne Lukas gets a platform to intrigue, win round and ultimately inspire outsiders in the days before the race. But if she can excel, then perhaps the old master may have some timely lessons for his timid juniors within the business, as well.

The principal purpose of these proving grounds, remember, is to ensure that the next generation of breeders can work with properly tested genes. Charismatic (Summer Squall)–the fourth but perhaps not the last of Lukas's Derby winners–learned on the job to the extent that he took six attempts to break his maiden at two, and his Derby trail then comprised starts on Dec. 27, Jan. 16, Jan. 31, Feb. 11, Feb. 19, Mar. 6, Apr. 3 and Apr. 18. This was 1999, not 1949, and how blessed we all are that the Coach is still here to show the kids how it can be done.

We all marveled at Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow)'s latest reiteration of his toughness and courage in Dubai last weekend. Nobody could call his sire a commercial hit. But who was it that showed us that Oxbow, one of the few good horses he has been sent in recent years, could soak up 13 starts inside 12 months? Who was it who reminded everyone that you're still allowed to run in all three legs of the Triple Crown, and run 6-1-2, even if you don't win the first?

Good luck to you, then, Mr. Lukas–because with this filly, your luck is everybody's luck.

The post This Side Up: No Points for Freshness appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post