First Captain First, Triple Tap Third in Returns

A pair of highly touted sophomores returned to make their 4-year-old debuts with mixed results Sunday. First Captain (Curlin), sent off the 4-5 favorite in a seven-furlong allowance at Gulfstream Sunday, looked to have left himself too much to do before making a furious late rally to win by a head in his first start since finishing third in the Curlin S. last summer. The 'TDN Rising Star' and $1.5-million Fasig-Tipton Saratoga yearling won last year's GIII Dwyer S. for West Point Thoroughbreds, Siena Farm, Bobby Flay and Woodford Racing and trainer Shug McGaughey.

Less successful on return was Summer Wind Equine's homebred Triple Tap (Tapit), a half-brother to Triple Crown winner American Pharoah who was making his first start since finishing fourth in the Dec. 26 GI Malibu S. in a seven-furlong optional claimer at Santa Anita. The 1-5 favorite, facing just three rivals, chased pacesetting Fore Left (Twirling Candy), but was hemmed in by Dark Vadar (Tale of Ekati) for much of the stretch. Finally finding clear sailing, Triple Tap made late progress, but could do no better than third as Dark Vadar nipped Fore Left for the win.

Triple Tap, tabbed a 'TDN Rising Star' following his debut win at Santa Anita last March, added a Nov. 5 optional claimer at Del Mar before suffering his first loss when well-beaten behind Flightline (Tapit) in the Malibu.

The post First Captain First, Triple Tap Third in Returns appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Sunday Insights: Fancy Colts Make 4-Year-Old Debuts on Both Coasts

Sponsored by Alex Nichols Agency

10th-GP, $63K, Alw/OC, 4yo/up, 7f, 5:14 p.m. ET

'TDN Rising Star' First Captain (Curlin) makes his 4-year-old debut against a relatively accomplished field here. The $1.5-million FTSAUG yearling kicked off his career three-for-three, annexing the one-turn-mile GIII Dwyer S. at Belmont in July. He has been off since finishing third as the favorite in Saratoga's restricted nine-panel Curlin S. later that month, and trainer Shug McGaughey told TDN's Steve Sherack recently that the son of MGSW and MGISP America (A.P. Indy) was given a freshening without a specific issue or injury.

“There really wasn't anything the matter with him, I just wasn't altogether pleased of where I stood with him, so I thought, 'Well, let's just give him some time,'” McGaughey said. “Time helped him a lot. He was at Barry Eisaman's and he did a great job with him. He got out here and had a really good bottom in him and he's been breezing ever since.”

First Captain will take on the likes of GSWs Trophy Chaser (Twirling Candy) and Dennis' Moment (Tiznow) and stakes winners Real Talk (Gemologist) and Hello Hot Rod (Mosler). TJCIS PPs

7th-SA, $72K, Alw/OC, 4yo/up, 7f, 6:47 p.m. ET

The Bob Baffert barn has a pair of talented if lightly raced 4-year-olds signed on here in 'TDN Rising Star' Triple Tap (Tapit) and sale topper Shaaz (Uncle Mo). The former, a Summer Wind Equine homebred, is a half to none other than Triple Crown winner and Horse of the Year American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile) and a full to GISW juvenile Chasing Yesterday. He took his track-and-trip debut almost a year ago, and resurfaced on Breeders' Cup weekend at Del Mar to clear another condition. The chestnut was last seen finishing a distant fourth to fellow Summer Wind-bred Tapit colt and brilliant 'Rising Star' Flightline in the GI Runhappy Malibu S. Dec. 26.

Michael Lund Petersen's Shaaz (Uncle Mo), meanwhile, fetched $1.1 million at the 2020 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic sale off a :10 flat breeze. The half-brother to Grade II-winning grasser Azar (Scat Daddy) from a very deep female family earned a gaudy 105 Beyer Speed Figure when besting another stablemate narrowly in a maiden event on the Malibu undercard. He crossed the line second at 3-10 in a first-level optional claimer Feb. 5, only to be put up by the stewards in a decision that yielded plenty of chatter on twitter. TJCIS PPs

The post Sunday Insights: Fancy Colts Make 4-Year-Old Debuts on Both Coasts appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

For Bloodstock Agent Ingordo, Flightline Always Had The ‘It’ Quality

Halley's Comet comes around once in a lifetime. Someday, the same might be said of Flightline.

In three starts, the 3-year-old colt by Tapit has won by a combined 37 ½ lengths, going six furlongs in 1:08.75 in his debut, the same distance in 1:08.05 next out, and then racing seven furlongs in 1:21.37 while winning the Grade 1 Runhappy Malibu Stakes at Santa Anita on Sunday's opening day of the winter-spring meet. Jockey Flavien Prat was like a statue down the lane as Flightline won under wraps by 11 ½ lengths for trainer John Sadler.

His Beyer Speed Figures were 105, 114 and 118, respectively. The latter is the highest Beyer Speed Figure given to any horse this year, according to Daily Racing Form's Jay Privman.

“That puts this horse in a different stratosphere,” said West Point Thoroughbreds' CEO Terry Finley, one of Flightline's owners.

An hour before the Malibu, the 3-year-old filly Kalypso won the G1 La Brea Stakes with a seven-furlong final time of 1:24.78, fully 3 2/5 seconds slower than Flightline.

Performance numbers are one way of measuring a horse's ability. David Ingordo, the bloodstock agent who bought Flightline on behalf of West Point Thoroughbreds and several other partners for $1-million at the 2019 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Yearling Sale, said the colt also passed the eyeball test.

“He's a brilliant horse and you don't need Ragozins or Beyers to see that,” Ingordo said. “You can tell that he doesn't have to put a lot into what he's doing. He does it so easily.”

Ingordo first laid eyes on Flightline when he and Bill Farish from Lane's End visited breeder Jane Lyon's Summer Wind Farm in Georgetown, Ky., to look at a different Tapit colt from the 2018 foal crop, a chestnut-coated half brother to Triple Crown winner American Pharoah. Lane's End consigns the Summer Wind horses and Ingordo said there was interest in buying the colt off the farm privately.

“There was another horse in the paddock and I said to Bill, 'I like the brown one.' Bill said, 'We're here to see the chestnut one.'”

The brown horse turned out to be Flightline. The chestnut colt, who remained the property of Summer Wind, was named Triple Tap and turned over to trainer Bob Baffert. Two-for-two going into the Malibu, Triple Tap finished 18 ¾ lengths behind Flightline in fourth place.

Ingordo saw the two horses several more times and his preference for the brown colt never wavered.

When it came time for the Saratoga sale, Ingordo hitched a ride to New York on a Tex Sutton flight to ride with a group of yearlings. “I was sitting in the back with one of the guys I knew well,” Ingordo said. “He said it was going to be a bumpy ride and asked if I would grab a couple yearlings. “One of them had a pretty good head on him and I noticed his name was Flightline. I looked up his pedigree and saw it was the horse from Summer Wind that I liked so much.”

Ingordo began representing West Point Thoroughbreds in 2017 and the Tapit colt out of the graded stakes-winning Indian Charlie mare, Feathered, is the kind of prospect Finley said his partners are looking for. Finley knew it would take serious money to buy Flightline, so put together a group that included Hronis Racing LLC, Siena Farm LLC, Farish's Woodford Racing LLC and Summer Wind. The hammer price was $1-million.

“Stephanie Hronis was there and David has done great work for them (she and husband Kosta Hronis),” said Finley. “She fell in love with the horse at the Lane's End consignment. We've had good luck partnering with Siena (Anthony Manganaro), buying five together and getting two Grade 1 winners, a Grade 2, and a stakes winner. We had not done anything with Jane Lyon before, but that really makes a difference when a breeder has the confidence to stay in, especially when it's big dollars. She bypassed the chance to take $250,000 off the table, and that's a strong statement.”

Finley confirmed that Summer Wind owns 25% of Flightline but didn't want to disclose how the remaining share of the horse was divided among the four additional partners.

There is no textbook for picking potential athletes, whether they are equine or human. Ingordo said he spent time with a couple of professional baseball scouts who are also interested in horse racing and found it's the same in both professions. There's an “it” quality with some athletes that is hard to miss, he said, whether it's a LeBron James in basketball or Bo Jackson, one of the greatest two sport athletes of all time who was named a Major League Baseball All Star and an All Pro running back in the NFL. (The two scouts, Ingordo said, both thought Jackson would be better at baseball if he stuck to one sport.)

“Horses are the same way,” he continued. “I remember when Garrett O'Rourke (Juddmonte Farms general manager) showed me a bunch of 2-year-olds. One of them just stood out, and it was Empire Maker (eventual G1 Belmont Stakes winner). Same thing with Zenyatta. I said, 'This is a horse we have to have.' Honor A.P. (G1 Santa Anita Derby winner) is another. I said, 'I don't give a crap. I'm buying this horse.'

“Flightline is another one of those. Each time I saw him I liked him more. There was just something about him. Of course the history books are littered with stories about trainers getting great unraced 2-year-olds where something happens.”

Something did happen to Flightline, but, fortunately, it only postponed his racing career.

In January 2020, Ingordo went to visit Flightline and other clients' horses at Mayberry Farm in Ocala, Fla., an operation run by Jeanne Mayberry and her two daughters, April and Summer.

“I'm watching these sets train and saw lots of beautiful horses,” he said. “I'm waiting for the next set and I hear this big crash, a loud bang. The Tapit colt scared himself, something startled him. He had his tack on and was ready to go out, but caught his butt on a stall door latch. It was a pretty deep wound and took a long time to heal. You can see that scar back there. One of those fluke things that will happen. We gave him plenty of time to heal, then COVID hit, and a lot of people were on a holding pattern.

“The Mayberrys are a big part of the program,” he said. “Jeanne (working alongside her late husband, Brian) trained a Kentucky Oaks winner (Sardula in 1994 for Ann and Jerry Moss). They called me very early on about Zenyatta. And two years ago they called me and said we might have another good one, Honor A.P. And then April called me early last year to say, 'You're going to think I'm crazy, but we might have two or three horses that are better than the group we had with Honor A.P.”

It's tempting to get overly excited about a horse after one start. Flightline won his April 2021 debut by 13 ¼ lengths at Santa Anita, then didn't show up again until Sept. 5 at Del Mar, Sadler giving him plenty of time to overcome a foot bruise. He won that allowance race by 12 ¾ lengths.

That second win brought more hype and speculation that Sadler might point the lightly raced colt to the G1 Breeders' Cup Sprint at Del Mar. No dice. He instead circled Dec. 26 on the calendar. Flightline didn't miss a beat in his training up to the Malibu.

Flightline passed this latest test with flying colors, even though this was not the deepest Malibu field we've seen and the other leading 3-year-old colt in training, G1 Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile winner Life Is Good, is in Florida with Todd Pletcher training up to a start in the G1 Pegasus World Cup Invitational at Gulfstream Park on Jan. 29.

Sadler, according to Daily Racing Form's Steve Andersen, is looking at a possible start in the G1 Met Mile on the June 11 Belmont Stakes day card for Flightline and possibly three other starts in 2022.

“John will steer the ship,” Finley said when asked about possible races for Flightline. “He's done so well. He's been training 40 years, and it's really something to see his passion and intensity – not just John's but the whole barn. John's assistant, Juan Leyva, is talking about this horse in a way that I've never heard someone at a barn say before.  Rene Quinteros, the barn foreman, every single day at 4:15 in the morning, walks this horse for 30 minutes. Everyone is just zeroed in on him.”

Ingordo has been down this road previously with one of the greatest horses of the modern era, Zenyatta, who didn't lose a race until her 20th and final career start, coming up a head short of Blame in the 2010 Breeders' Cup Classic at Churchill Downs.

“John has referred to Flightline as his Zenyatta,” Ingordo said.

“We've all been let down before,” Ingordo said of horses that showed early promise then failed to sustain it. “That's why when you expect a great performance and everybody has done everything right and then it really happens, it's that jaw-dropping.

“This one does everything so easily,” he added. “He's so smart. He's got it all. We're not looking to rush him off to the (breeding) shed. We want to run, just as much as the fans want to see him run. We might have to temper our desire to run more than the fans do. But you know how it goes sometimes. Horses will laugh at our plans.”

There's no telling just what Flightline may be capable of doing. Let's just hope he has the opportunity to show us.

The post For Bloodstock Agent Ingordo, Flightline Always Had The ‘It’ Quality appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

Can Flightline Handle a Dogfight in Malibu?

Brilliant 'TDN Rising Star' Flightline (Tapit), among the most exciting horses in training or in recent memory, faces his toughest test to date in Sunday's GI Runhappy Malibu S. The $1-million FTSAUG buy turned in a debut for the ages when drubbing local foes by double digit lengths and earning a 105 Beyer Speed Figure here in April, and after overcoming a bruised foot he put up a gaudy 114 Beyer when making similarly short work of Del Mar optional claiming foes Sept. 5. The John Sadler trainee has certainly not yet faced a field as accomplished as this one, but the runner-up from his last outing Escape Route (Hard Spun) is a consistent sort who looks poised to clear his '1X' condition earlier on the card; and fourth-finisher Positivity (Paynter) bested that runner narrowly next time out before missing by a nose in a state-bred stake last month. The knocks on Flightline are that he has been handled with kid gloves thus far–including passing on a try at the Breeders' Cup–and has certainly not battle tested to this point, but his talent is undeniable and the additional furlong of the Malibu may in fact help him if anything.

Dr. Schivel (Violence), meanwhile, has been in several dogfights already and could very well earn champion sprinter honors if he takes down the favorite here. A winner of the GI Runhappy Del Mar Futurity going this distance last summer, the bay scored three straight this year after being transferred to Mark Glatt, besting elders in the GI Bing Crosby S. in July and GII Santa Anita Sprint Championship S. in October. He seeks redemption after taking a tough nose beat in the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint here Nov. 6.

It's rare for a two-for-two Bob Baffert-trained 'Rising Star' to be flying under the radar–especially one with a pedigree like Triple Tap (Tapit)–but the chestnut may in fact be doing just that. Born and raised on the same Summer Wind Farm as Flightline, the half-brother to Triple Crown winner American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile) and full to fellow Summer Wind colorbearer and GISW Chasing Yesterday (Tapit) was a comfortable debut winner over track and trip back in March. He resurfaced on Breeders' Cup Friday Nov. 5 to take a Del Mar optional claimer from well off the pace.

The post Can Flightline Handle a Dogfight in Malibu? appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Verified by MonsterInsights