Can you imagine being a horse racing-crazy kid with a ringside seat to the creation of the Breeders' Cup? Mark Taylor can, because he was.

Fast forward more than four decades and now he is president and CEO of the Central Kentucky farm that is believed to have raised and/or sold more Breeders' Cup winners than any other. There's also the matter of having stood the Breeders' Cup winner who currently holds the record for siring the most Breeders' Cup winners in turn. And, oh yes, there's also Knicks Go, another Breeders' Cup winner, in the farm's stud barn right now, as well as a few in the fields. Yes, surely Taylor can be excused if his reverence for the Breeders' Cup might be even greater than usual.

“Listen, the [Kentucky] Derby is amazing, but if you're in this industry, the Breeders' Cup is the real deal,” said Taylor. “Every division: turf, dirt, 2-year-olds, 3-year-olds, older horses, all coming together and laying it all on the line.”

Taylor's father was the legendary farm manager Joe Taylor, whose fortunes coincided with that of Gainesway. Many will remember Gainesway under John Gaines and the elder Taylor together. At one point the farm on Paris Pike stood 40 stallions and bred over 2,000 mares a year. This was all the more remarkable considering it was in the days when stallion books were much smaller and reproductive work wasn't quite so advanced, often necessitating multiple covers per mare.

In addition to owning one of the most successful stallion stations in our sport's history, Gaines is also credited with the conception of the Breeders' Cup. Joe Taylor was at his side for all of it. Although they were farm owner and employee, the two men were far closer than that, said Mark Taylor.

“Mr. Gaines and my dad were like brothers in a lot of ways,” he said. “Mr. Gaines was a brilliant business guy and the visionary. My dad was the diplomat and the horseman. My dad was really gratified for Mr. Gaines when he got it all together and got the Breeders' Cup done. What an amazing thing.”

Knicks Go at Taylor Made | Sarah Andrew

Taylor said he was the youngest of eight kids and a young teenager when Gaines hatched the idea behind the Breeders' Cup.

“I feel like I got a front-row seat,” said Taylor. “I was the last kid still in the house in those years where the Breeders' Cup was really coming to fruition. I could hear my dad in there on the phone with Mr. Gaines and the two of them brainstorming.

“It was like political warfare, getting everyone on board. For Mr. Gaines to try to bring this concept to fruition he deserves some sort of Nobel Peace Prize. I don't know how he got it done.”

All these years later, Taylor still marvels at the unobstructed view he received.

“It's really amazing. I feel like of all the thousands and thousands of people in this industry, I got to see this and I was just a 13- or 14-year-old kid. I had a really unique view of this thing coming together. I was really into horse racing. I'd be waiting for the Blood-Horse or Thoroughbred Record every week, and the race results in the Herald-Leader every day. The TDN wasn't around yet.

“It was kind of cool watching it all come together. I love the Breeders' Cup. It's one of my favorite days of the year. Watching what it's become is really special.

“I'll never forget that first Breeders' Cup Classic. That wild stretch drive. I think it was more than Mr. Gaines could have dreamt up the way it came together.

“What a privilege to see it all come together.”

Sarah Andrew

After witnessing something so special, no wonder Taylor–along with his older brothers–would later found Taylor Made Farm, today a diverse operation which has conquered the worlds of boarding, selling, stallions, and more. No fewer than 20 individual Breeders' Cup winners have been raised or sold by Taylor Made. Lest one think those eventual winners simply passed through sales barns, a full 11 of those 20 spent their formative years cavorting through Taylor Made pastures. Among those raised on Taylor Made's land were Triple Crown winner American Pharoah and leading sire Unbridled's Song. The latter also spent his entire stud career at Taylor Made and would sire six individual Breeders' Cup winners. Long before he sired a foal, Unbridled's Song was tied to Taylor Made.

“It's a long story,” said Taylor. “We had Unbridled's Song here on the farm when he was a weanling owned by Mandysland Farm. They were dispersing; ultimately he was bought by someone else and they took him to Saratoga where he sold as a yearling, but was sent back to Taylor Made for some R&R. Ernie Pargallo's Paraneck Stable and Buzz Chace bought him.

“Back then, Taylor Made sold 2-year-olds in training. We obviously didn't have a training center, so we were the marketing arm. I never will forget when Unbridled's Song breezed, he was just this big, gray monster. He breezed so effortlessly. As he crossed the line, the announcer said, 'He went so fast the infield trees swayed.'”

Sarah Andrew

Unbridled's Song brought $1.4 million in 1995 at the Barretts March sale. At the time, it was a world record for a 2-year-old in training. However, there was a hitch. A chip was found in the colt's hind ankle and the buyer, according to Taylor, tried to negotiate a reduced price.

“We had an anxiety attack,” said Taylor. “Here we'd spent all this money going to California–we'd flown all the way to Barretts to sell him–and our big horse was being turned back. Ernie Paragallo said, 'Don't worry about it. We're going to win the Breeders' Cup with him.' The rest is history.”

Sure enough, Unbridled's Song did just that. About seven months later, he captured the GI Juvenile in a spectacular stretch duel with Hennessy.

“That was amazing. Of course, he came here [after his racing career], led the general sires list, and was a tremendous sire for us,” said Taylor. “He really put our stallion operation on the map. He had so much speed for a big horse and could carry it two turns. He also had such a sweet disposition, not a mean bone in his body.

“And he died with that chip in his hind ankle!”

Knicks Go with Ernesto Martinez  | Sarah Andrew

Unbridled's Song passed away in 2013 at the age of 20. Another Breeders' Cup winner, 2021 Classic winner and 2020 Dirt Mile winner Knicks Go, is currently in the stallion barn.

“Several farms were after him, so the fact that we were able to get the horse was very exciting,” said Travis White, director of sales at Taylor Made. “It's not often you get a horse like that. For us he checked a lot of boxes. We feel so fortunate and excited to have him.

“The Breeders' Cup is the Super Bowl of our sport. Anytime you can get a horse of that caliber, the best of the best, proven on the world's biggest stage, it's a great addition to a stallion roster. You're going to attract the top breeders in the world.”

Knicks Go was just history's sixth horse to find the winner's circle in two different Breeders' Cup races, but there was almost a third Breeders' Cup win on his CV. It's often lost among the Eclipse championships and two championship day wins, but Knicks Go also finished runner-up as a 2-year-old in the 2018 Juvenile behind eventual champion Game Winner.

“I think a lot of people forget he was a Grade I winner at two and that he won or placed in three different Breeders' Cup races,” said White. “It is extremely rare for a horse to be as precocious as he was and then come back and win two different Breeders' Cup races as an older horse. Most horses have a niche–they can't go two turns, can't come from off the pace, have to have things go their own way–but he was able to do it all. Hats off to Brad Cox and his crew for doing such a great job with him.”

White said it's an honor to have Knicks Go in the stallion barn at Taylor Made. “Anytime you have a horse with his accomplishments and accolades, it means the world.”

Knicks Go isn't the only Breeders' Cup winner currently on the farm. The most high-profile Breeders' Cup-winning mare at Taylor Made at the moment is undoubtedly Blue Prize (Arg), winner of the 2019 Distaff and a $5-million purchase out of Fasig-Tipton by OXO Equine. However, it is Miss Macy Sue who holds pride of place.

Miss Macy Sue at Taylor Made last month | Sarah Andrew

Miss Macy Sue, a graded winner who was third in the 2007 Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Sprint, had five foals to race. Four were stakes winners, including GI Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile winner Liam's Map (who is by Taylor Made's Unbridled's Song) and Not This Time, who was runner-up by a neck in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile and is now king of the stallion barn at Taylor Made.

“She is pensioned and still lives here,” said Taylor. “She is the grand dame of Taylor Made. Almost two Breeders' Cup winners. What an achievement. Stallions get to produce hundreds and hundreds of foals every year, but mares get one chance a year for maybe 10 or 15 years. For her to have that kind of strike rate in the Breeders' Cup is just incredible.”

Taylor Made has had a lot of significant moments in the Breeders' Cup, but there was one that might have been a little extra special. In the 2004 edition at Lone Star Park, two mares grazing in Taylor Made paddocks both had Breeders' Cup winners. Silken Cat and Goulash produced Sprint winner Speightstown and Distaff winner Ashado, respectively. Now the mares are buried next to each other at Taylor Made.

Silken Cat's grave at Taylor Made | Sarah Andrew

“Both were bred by Aaron and Marie Jones, long-time customers. That day was incredible,” remembered Taylor. “We raised them both here and they were on opposite ends of the spectrum price-wise. Speightstown was a $2-million Keeneland July yearling and Ashado brought $170,000 at Keeneland September. And yet they both turned into champions. Later we resold Ashado for a then world-record $9 million.”

It's probably safe to say Taylor Made's story in the Breeders' Cup is far from over. Whether future chapters will be written from the mare side or the sales division or even by horses standing in the stallion barn remains to be seen, but the touch of Taylor Made will likely continue to be felt alongside the Breeders' Cup. What could be more fitting for a kid with a front-row seat to the birth of racing's championship days?

The post Another Chapter in Taylor Made’s Breeders’ Cup Story appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Champions California Chrome, Arrogate (Unbridled's Song) and Songbird (Medaglia d'Oro), all in their first year of eligibility, joined jockey Corey Nakatani in the contemporary class of 2023. Fernando Toro was selected by the Historic Review Committee. Three people–the late John Hanes II, the late Leonard Jerome and Stella F. Thayer–were inducted as Pillars of the Turf in the ceremony at the Fasig-Tipton Sales Pavilion.

Award-winning journalist Edward Bowen, a museum trustee who has chaired a number of Hall of Fame committees, was presented with the inaugural Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Award for his contributions to the museum.

With his big cowboy hat in hand, Coburn accepted for California Chrome, winner of the GI Kentucky Derby, GI Preakness S. and G1 Dubai World Cup and a two-time Horse of the Year. California Chrome won 16 of 27 starts, a total of seven Grade I races and earned $14,752,650.

Coburn thanked the horse for taking him and his wife in a remarkable journey over five seasons. He praised the work of trainer Art Sherman and his son and assistant Alan, and the staff, who he named, for the way they developed and handled the horse.

California Chrome's story–from his modest breeding, to difficulty the mare Love the Chase had with his foaling, to his personality and his connections–blended nicely with his success on the track and produced a legion of fans who called themselves “Chromies.”

“The mare had problems giving birth to Chrome, so as a baby, he was in the stall with the mare,” Coburn said. “He wasn't turned out with the rest of them. The only time he got to play with anybody was when they came to check on him. That's how come he became so loveable to people. He just liked people. I don't know how to express the love that people gave this horse. The Chromies are here. They've come in from all over the place, you know. Thank you.”

As he moved to the end of his remarks, Coburn, hesitated for a moment to control his emotions.

“Last but not least, I would like to thank that little nervous filly, Love the Chase,” he said. “Without her we wouldn't have Chrome and for Chrome to be inducted into the Hall of Fame it's indescribable. Just like winning the Kentucky Derby. This is a good way to say that story has come to an end. I told Laffit Pincay, III after he won the Santa Anita Derby, 'Mark my words. This horse is going to go down in history.' And today's the day. Period.”

Plenty of emotion from Steve Coburn, as he accepts the plaque for 2023 @nmrhof inductee: California Chrome pic.twitter.com/09u9qydCdC

— TDN (@theTDN) August 4, 2023

Nakatani, 52, was the final inductee on the program. He came to the sport as a teenager with no background with horses, but fashioned an outstanding 31-year career. He won 3,909 races; 10 of his 341 graded stakes wins came in the Breeders' Cup. His $234,554,534 in purse earnings ranks 14th.

To describe his attitude and determination, Nakatani told the story of what he did in a game of youth football. He said he weighed about 58 pounds at the time and was told by his coach to run around a defensive player to score a touchdown. Instead, he decided to try to run over the other player and was stopped on the two-yard line.

“Long story short, that was the first time that I was told not to do something and was like 'I better just go it.' That tells my career in a nutshell,” he said as the audience roared.

Nakatani was built to be a jockey, and, despite his lack of experience, he developed the skill needed to succeed against the odds on the tough Southern California circuit.

“The guys I was riding against were Gary Stevens, Chris McCarron, Laffit Pincay,  all these Hall of Fame riders,” he said. “I was very fortunate to have an opportunity to ride with them and take a lot of learning from all of it. Sandy Hawley. Alex Solis. All the guys that I had the chance to ride with, even the King of Saratoga, Angel (Cordero, Jr.). These guys have a special place in my heart.”

Toro, 82, did not make the cross-continent trip from his home in California and will be honored at Del Mar. The native of Chile, was a top rider in his home country before moving to California in 1966. He retired in 1990 with North America totals of 3,555 victories and purse earnings of $56,299,765. He won 80 graded stakes. At the time of his retirement, he was sixth in stakes wins at Del Mar, eighth at Hollywood Park and tied for eighth at Santa Anita.

During the ceremony, a video was shown of how California turf writers Jay Hovdey and Jay Privman told Toro that he had been elected to the Hall of Fame.

Arrogate, trained by Hall of Famer Bob Baffert, showed that he had the makings of a superstar in the 2016 GI Travers just down the street from the sales pavilion at Saratoga Race Course. In his first graded stakes attempt, he won by 13 1/2 lengths and broke a 37-year-old track record for 1 1/4 miles. He went on to win the GI Breeders' Cup Classic, edging California Chrome, the 2017 GI Pegasus World Cup and the 2017 Dubai World Cup in a seven-race win streak. The gray colt owned by Juddmonte Farm retired with a record $17,422,600 in purse earnings.

Dr. John Chandler accepted on behalf of Juddmonte Farms, the racing powerhouse launched by the late Saudi Prince Khalid bin Abdullah.

“It's very sad that Prince Khalid himself unfortunately passed away a couple of years ago,” Chandler said. “He would have liked to have been here and appreciate the recognition.”

Arrogate was a departure from the norm for Prince Khalid's international stable.

“For many years at Juddmonte, we had a lot of turf horses, because our racing started in England,” Chandler said. “We were going through a bad spell after our trainer Bobby Frankel passed away. The Prince had been looking through all the results, week after week, and he said, 'This man in California, Bob Baffert, is doing very well isn't he, training a lot of winners. Why don't we send him some horses?'”

Since Baffert mainly trained dirt horses, Chandler said the turf horses bred by Juddmonte would not be a good fit. He said the Prince said, 'So, we'll buy some dirt horses.' The trainer and Garrett (O'Rourke, Juddmonte's U.S. manager), went to the sales and they bought some horses, some nice, expensive dirt horses. One of them turned out to be Arrogate. That brought the Prince more pleasure than anything else that I'd seen in a long time. We're very grateful to the Hall of Fame committee to take our horse. All I can say is thank you.”

Songbird, owned by the late Rick Porter's Fox Hill Farm, started her career with 11 consecutive victories and retired in 2017 with a record of 13 wins and two seconds from 15 starts. Trained by Hall of Famer Jerry Hollendorfer, she secured Grade I victories at two, three and four and earned $4,692,000.

“In her 15 races, it took being a champion to beat Songbird,” said Fox Hill manager Victoria Keith. “She lost, finishing second twice, to Beholder and champion Forever Unbridled.”

Keith described Songbird as a talented but laid-back filly.

“You often hear that great racehorses have a fiery side and this contributes to them being a great race horse,” she said. “You particularly hear this about speed horses. Songbird was a speed horse but she had no fiery side. She's a sweet, loving and gentle horse.”

Keith and Porter's widow, Betsy, accepted Songbird's plaque.

“We are so pleased that Songbird is being inducted into the Hall of Fame,” Keith said. “We consider it not only an honor for Songbird, but also for Rick Porter and Fox Hill Farm. It is bittersweet because we dearly wish that it was Rick on the stage today.”

ICYMI: Watch SONGBIRD's induction into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame! #FasigGrad #FasigSaratoga @nmrhof pic.twitter.com/4YRAbNLaaw

— Fasig-Tipton (@FasigTiptonCo) August 4, 2023

The post Three Champs Lead Class of 2023 into Hall of Fame appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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When Saint Ballado came to the farm, Duncan Taylor recalls Les Brinsfield telling him to try Mari's Book mares.

“Mari's Book!” he exclaims now. “It's not like there were Mari's Book mares all around, out there in the population. But Les was a smart guy, very analytical.”

And it was easy to see the logic: Mari's Book was by Northern Dancer out of a Maribeau mare; and Maribeau, like Saint Ballado's sire Halo, was out of Cosmah–whose half-sister Natalma, of course, gave us the sire of Mari's Book. Plenty of genetic wheels within wheels there, then.

“So we bought this mare by Mari's Book, Goulash, [for Aaron Jones] and bred her to Saint Ballado four times,” Duncan resumes. “And we got like three stakes winners, one of them being Ashado. And it really made the stallion. But then Mr. McNair had a mare with very similar breeding, and I kept saying, 'You've got to breed her to Saint Ballado, got to!' So he did. And he got a swayback.” He chuckles. “Named it Duncan.”

Just one snapshot, this, of the breadth of experience that have given the Taylor brothers their plain-talking sense of how to make the best of a difficult game; and a wholesome, hard-headed scepticism about any theory or system purporting to make it easy.

And that, in turn, is why we've seized the pretext to visit two of them, Duncan and Mark, in a rather different capacity from the usual: to hear how the family ended up breeding an elite sprinter in Sibelius, winner of the G1 Golden Shaheen in Dubai.

Taylor Made is obviously far better known as the largest consignor in the business, and also for standing the likes of Not This Time, the sire of Sibelius. But anyone familiar with the energy and imagination they have always brought to their principal roles can only be curious to hear how they adapt their know-how to the kind of challenge that occupies the majority of their clients.

“Anytime you're big, you get exposed to more people, with more theories and more thoughts,” reasons Duncan, who formally handed over to Mark as President and CEO last year but remains a vital influence as Senior Consultant. “So you're able to soak those in, and get to talk about lots of different aspects. Where a guy that's out on his farm with his 15 broodmares, that's all he is focused on. He can read all the books, but–well, we're not even trying to hear stuff and we hear it.”

And that ties into a parallel conviction: that the best breeders, historically, have been able to weave many different strands of horsemanship together.

“I'm not knocking anyone else,” stresses Duncan. “But in my lifetime, just watching what's gone on, there's been two or three people that you just thought really knew what they were doing. John Nerud was one, Alec Head was another. There was a guy named Bob Bricken at Elmendorf that was a guru of breeding. And, like Tesio himself, what did they have in common? They basically had a 360-degree view of every horse. They knew how to train, knew how to raise horses. And they were around every single one, watching and looking and trying to figure out what worked best where.”

Mark Taylor | Keeneland

“Nobody is going to breed a terrible stall-walker to a terrible stall-walker,” agrees Mark. “Nerud, if he trained the sire and the dam, would know that this filly had a lot of talent but wasn't so good between the ears. So he'd need to give her something to balance that out. But a lot of these people doing matings on a computer, honestly they may never even have seen the mare or the stallion and they certainly have no idea about any of these other characteristics.”

And even when a Nerud or a Head noticed a recurring motif, they didn't make sweeping extrapolations.

“Say they see a Nodouble mare coming through this, this and this, and they could all run,” Duncan says. “Well, if I brought up a Nodouble mare that looked the exact opposite, they would know: 'Just because that S.O.B. is by Nodouble, it isn't the Nodouble that I want. I want one that looks like this one over here.'”

And seeing the bigger picture cuts through the whole program. “When you have control over the entire operation, you're not sending your horse to Trainer X,” Duncan says. “Because Trainer X is thinking, 'I could probably back off this horse and he would be okay later on, maybe win a stake or two. But he might be my only chance ever to win a Kentucky Derby. So I'm going to keep training hard on him.' And then he breaks down.

“Whereas if Nerud had him, he'd have said, 'Nope, we ain't running in the Derby. Back to the farm, and give him all he needs.' Because when that horse hits, it affects the value of eight others in his operation.”

The Taylors' own remarkable story, of course, attests to the fruitful combination of nature and nurture. Their father Joe literally wrote the book on farm management, having supervised Gainesway for 40 years; and any congenital flair for horses was further underpinned by the discipline and faith of their upbringing. And whatever they have in common, even this closest of clans are hardly cookie-cut, whether in aspect or outlook.

Duncan Taylor | Keeneland

“Well, we had eight in our family,” muses Duncan. “And you can see a common look. But we're all different–and it's a 100% nick. It's the exact same with horses. The evolutionary scheme of genetics has so many variables.”

No guarantees, then, but nonetheless there are plainly rewards available if you put the work in. Another thing Duncan did when Saint Ballado arrived, for instance, was create a scoring system on every mare ever bred to his full-brother Devil's Bag.

“Let's say the ancestor was Buckpasser,” he explains. “Anytime Buckpasser was in the first six generations, I said, 'Okay, was it a stakes winner or not?' So if it was one-for-49, I know I don't like a lot of Buckpasser in there. And so on, for all the relatives. I had them in an alphabetical order and knew the rate that they hit at. And as Saint Ballado came through the ranks, we started keeping the same statistics. You're trying to see which ancestors are going to go with the horse, and sometimes you'd find others carried along the same way.”

But only sometimes.

“And what you find in this business is that most people want a simple answer,” he continues, in exasperated tones. “If there's 12 pies here, they want to be told that this one will taste best because it has half the ingredients my grandmother used, and she baked a hell of a pie. But the other half of the pie, we don't know what the damned ingredients are. And when I eat it, it doesn't taste like grandma's. But that pie brings more.”

“It's the microwave mentality, unfortunately,” Mark adds. “Whether it's accurate or not, they don't care, they just want something they can understand. So I get into fights all the time with people that just get fixated on one tool, which a lot of times will send you in totally the wrong direction. To me, if you look at what works on 'blood' then you find a lot of times it makes sense as a physical mating, from a conformation perspective.”

Sibelius wins the G1 Golden Shaheen | Erika Rasmussen

But we're forgetting why we troubled these gentlemen in the first place. And this Sibelius (targeting his first start since Dubai in the GII True North S. at Belmont on June 10) is a nice story, bringing together some of the most cherished stalwarts of this remarkable family firm.

He's out of Fiery Pulpit (Pulpit), an unraced half-sister to graded stakes winner Clamorosa (Seattle Dancer), acquired as a 7-year-old for $55,000 at the Keeneland November Sale of 2011. There's quite a gang involved: Pat Payne, who might almost be another brother; Jeff Hayslett, who's been working here for over 30 years; and two of the farm's oldest clients, in Louis Brooks and Sam Pollock.

“This mare is a good example of any breeding success that we've had,” Mark says. “Because most of the mares we own are in partnership with customers. We've never aspired to go out and say we're going to build some world-class broodmare band, become great breeders. It's more just coming alongside partners, who like to be commercial breeders. And in this mare's case, it was an interesting group. Pat was a partner of ours. Jeff was our farm manager and then our first Thoroughbred Advisor. The Pollocks have probably been with us 30 years, and the Brooks family maybe 40. The first yearling I ever took to the sales ring was a Secretariat filly [co-]bred by Louis.”

(That was the old July Sale at Keeneland in 1983: Wayne Lukas gave $525,000 for her and, as Fiesta Lady, she ended up a Grade I winner.)

Fiery Pulpit had managed to produce a minor stakes performer by Broken Vow, a son of Unbridled, so they tried her with Unbridled's Song. The result was a $400,000 Keeneland September colt who won seven times. Next came a colt by Graydar, this time a son of Unbridled's Song: Peter O'Callaghan bought him as a Keeneland November weanling for $185,000, and he became a hard-knocking, 11-for-48 campaigner. Then a colt by Will Take Charge made $250,000 at Keeneland September.

The late Unbridled's Song, a cornerstone of Taylor Made's stallion barn | Taylor Made

“Before we got ahold of her, her babies weren't bringing anything at all,” Mark notes. “But just by knocking on this Unbridled's Song thing, she became a slot machine, paying off every year.”

Typically, however, the one exception was her foal from the first crop of Not This Time–who has turned out to be her best runner. Offered as a short yearling at Keeneland January, he was a $62,000 RNA and it was a similar story after he had been moved on, returned at $75,000 in the same ring that September. Bottom line, however, is that Sibelius currently has a 19-7-3-3 record: pretty robust, for a horse that didn't vet.

“He was a beautiful horse,” Mark emphasizes. “Just sesamoiditis. We got him sold privately. It's like Duncan's just been saying about breeding theories. Vetting, X-rays, they're a tool, get you part of the way. But people want to be told that it's simple.”

That said, commercial breeders nowadays tend to think about the ring sooner than the racetrack–a reality in which Mark cheerfully acknowledges complicity.

“My winning post is making money,” he accepts. “The one thing I don't have the luxury of doing is breeding something that might come out ugly, and the market's going to reject it, but it might be a great racehorse. I can't afford to do that. I'm trying to breed a good-looking horse.”

Sadly it feels as though age may be catching up with Fiery Pulpit herself. She required colic surgery and, donated to one of the Taylor Made sales team who has a small farm, successfully conceived to Catalina Cruiser. After Sibelius won in Dubai, Mark called and said: “Hey did you see that? She just got a Grade I winner!” Unfortunately the reply was: “Didn't you get my text last night? She had a dystocia, the foal died.”

So much can go wrong, at any time. But just as people shouldn't pretend that the game is easy, nor should we make the simple things complicated. A lot of it is common sense.

“Basically, when we're breeding a mare, we're looking at the value and we're looking at the conformation,” Duncan says. “And not only the conformation of the two horses. If the mare's had foals before, you look at those too. Because she might not be toed-in herself, but three of the first four foals have been. So you're not going to breed to one that toes in.”

Maybe you'd have bred her to Unbridled, though, as he toed out somewhat. Duncan, indeed, remembers the team more or less having to beg people to support the horse pending his first runners.

“And then Unbridled's Song comes out of his first crop, and Grindstone,” he recalls. “Well, if Unbridled's Song had died foaling and Grindstone broke down before the Derby, maybe he'd have been in Turkey or something.”

The margins are always so fine. Duncan remembers deciding that Mutakddim mares might work with California Chrome, whose damsire was a half-brother to that horse's dam. That was a Mari's Book type of call. But sure enough, just about the best runner Chrome left behind was Cilla, whose second dam is by Mutakddim.

“Of course all the knockers of my theory can say, 'Cilla's out of an Into Mischief mare, you can breed anything to that horse,'” he admits. “But Mutakddim, I picked a random horse. Most of his horses are in South America. And he ends up in the pedigree of California Chrome's best horse. So there's something to it. But if you bred every Mutakddim mare to California Chrome, it still might only be three or four out of 100 foals. And then two of them, the trainers mess up, and another one gets loose on the track.”

Current Taylor Made stalwart Not This Time | Mary Ellet

Back we come, then, to the holistic approach. Because it's no good getting everything else right, and then having the whole thing unravel because you haven't matched the horse to the right trainer.

“If you want someone to coach a bunch of egomaniacs that all want to be the star, and turn them into the Bulls, you get in Phil Jackson,” Duncan reasons. “Somebody else is coaching them, it probably would never have happened. Same with trainers. The mating's one key factor. But you could have the smartest mating in the world, and you have a bad trainer or a bad foaling man, it's never going to come to fruition. So you need a team.”

He mentions one highly successful program. Could just be lucky, maybe, but he ticks off the quality of its land, farm management, sales scouts, trainers. “And if that gets a stallion from 10% stakes winners to 15%, that's a hell of a change in the economic value of that stallion,” he says. “Because he becomes the superior horse.”

Conversely, some stallions face adverse odds from the outset. At a given market level, they will only tend to get mediocre mares–and that won't just tell in the genes.

“Mortality and conception rates are hugely important to a stallion,” Mark says. “With lesser stallions, the conception rate tends to be just not as good because most of their mares come from farms that don't have the same resources or organization. So from the very beginning that stallion has more to overcome.”

“There's so many variables,” concludes Duncan. “But if that's a curse, it's also a blessing. Because if it was easy to do, these rich people wouldn't be intrigued as they are. They know it's hard, and that's just what keeps everybody interested.”

The post A Different Role but Still Made to Measure appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Over the years, it has become a badge of honor for a sire to produce a Rising Star. So which sires have been the most prolific when it comes to having one of their progeny be named a Rising Star? Below is our Top 10, which includes only sires based in North America. The list probably won't surprise you. Good sires produce good horses.

Sire (#Rising Stars)

1) Tapit (51)
Not only is the 22-year-old Tapit one of the top sires in the history of the sport, but he has been around nearly as long as the Rising Stars have. He got his first Rising Star way back in 2010 when Trappe Shot won a maiden special weight race for 3-year-olds at Gulfstream Park. The TDN team was not wrong about Trappe Shot, who went on to win the GII True North H. in 2011. A year earlier, he won the Long Branch S. and ran second in the GI Haskell Invitational S. As a sire, Trappe Shot has had two Rising Stars.

Tapit was just getting started. Constitution was named a Rising Star in 2014 after winning a maiden special weight race at Gulfstream. He would go on to win the GI Florida Derby and the GI Donn H. Constitution turned out to be a top sire in his own right and had produced seven TDN Rising Stars. The hits kept on coming with subsequent Rising Stars by Tapit including 2014 GI Belmont S. winner Tonalist and Essential Quality, the 3-year-old champion of 2021, whose victories include wins in the Belmont, the GI Travers S., the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile and the GI Claiborne Breeders' Futurity.

And, no, the team didn't miss out on Flightline. Arguably the best horse Tapit has ever produced, he was named a Rising Star after he broke his maiden on April 24, 2021 at Santa Anita. You know the rest of the story.

We didn't always get it right. One of Tapit's early Rising Stars was Tapit It Rich, who broke his maiden on Oct. 12, 2013 at Santa Anita. He ran five more times and never won again.

2) Into Mischief (36)
The main thing separating Tapit and Into Mischief is how long they have been at stud as Into Mischief is four years younger than his rival stallion.
Into Mischief started churning out Rising Stars from the start. His first was Goldencents, who was named a Rising Star after he broke his maiden in 2012 at Del Mar. A top horse throughout his career, Goldencents went on to win, among other races, the GI Santa Anita Derby and two runnings in the GI Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile. As a sire, he's had two Rising Stars. Other notable Rising Stars by Into Mischief include GI Kentucky Derby winner Mandaloun, multiple Grade I winner Life Is Good and 2020 champion female sprinter Gamine.

There are two Rising Stars by Into Mischief who are among the top candidates for this year's Kentucky Derby in Newgate and Giant Mischief.

We did not tab 2020 Kentucky Derby winner Authentic, among the better horses Into Mischief has produced, as a Rising Star.

3) Distorted Humor (28)
Another sire who has been picking up Rising Stars for years. He got his first Rising Star way back in 2005 with Halo Humor, a maiden winner at Saratoga who was a Louisiana-bred. Halo Humor did not go on to win a graded stakes, but plenty of other Rising Stars by Distorted Humor did. The list includes such graded stakes winners as Any Given Saturday, Alternation, Cowtown Cat. There's also Maclean's Music, who, though he raced just once, has gone on to be a top sire.

With Momos having earned Rising Star status in 2020, Distorted Humor's time as a producer of Rising Stars has covered a span of 15 years.

4) Medaglia d'Oro (24)
Another prolific sire who has been around for a while and has churned out two dozen Rising Stars, starting with Dashing Debby in 2009, who broke her maiden in the JJ'sdream S. at Calder.
In 2015, the team nailed it when naming Songbird a Rising Star after she broke her maiden at Del Mar. She, of course, went on to be a major star who was the champion 2-year-old filly in 2015 and the champion 3-year-old filly in 2016. She won eight Grade I races.
Elate, named a Rising Star in 2016, became another top performer for her sire and had Grade I wins in the Alabama S. and the Beldame S.

4) Unbridled's Song (24)
His list is topped by Arrogate, named a Rising Star after he won a 2016 maiden special weight race at Santa Anita. Considered one of the best horses of this century, he had a run that won't soon be forgotten, winning, in order, the Travers, the GI Breeders' Cup Classic, the GI Pegasus World Cup Invitational S. and the GI Dubai World Cup. Arrogate has produced three Rising Stars so far during his brief time as a stallion.

Unbridled's Song's list of Rising Stars also includes Liam's Map, the winner of the GI Woodward S. and the Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile.

6) Speightstown (23)
He got off to a fast start as a Rising Stars sire as his second ever Rising Star was Munnings. Named a Rising Star in 2008, he won three Grade II races and went on to be a top stallion, who has had 10 Rising Stars. Other notable Rising Stars by Speightstown include Speighster, Echo Town, Charlatan and Nashville. Another sire who has been producing Rising Stars over the course of three decades, he had his most recent Rising Star last year when Andiamo a Firenze broke his maiden at Belmont Park.

6) Curlin (23)
Curlin picked up his first Rising Star in 2013 with Del Mar maiden winner Socialbug. That horse didn't go on to win a graded stakes, but plenty of other Rising Stars by Curlin did. His most successful Rising Star was no doubt Malathaat, the champion 3-year-old filly of 2021 and the champion older dirt female of 2022. Her dam, Dreaming of Julia, also deserves mention as she is also the dam of Malathaat's full sister and Rising Star Julia Shining. Julia Shining was named a Rising Star after breaking her maiden last fall at Keeneland and has since gone on to win the GII Demoiselle S. (The record for most Rising Stars for a broodmare is six, held by Delta Princess, the dam of Royal Delta). Curlin's most recent Rising Star is Faustin, who is a Kentucky Derby candidate after finishing second in the GII San Vicente S.

8) Malibu Moon (22)
Another sire who has been producing Rising Stars for what seems like forever. He had his first Rising Star in 2007 and his most recent came in 2021 with H P Moon, a maiden winner at Pimlico. His top Rising Star is Carina Mia, who captured the GI Acorn S.

9) Bernardini (19)
Bernardini's list is topped by Cavorting, a three-time Grade I winner who captured the GI Test S., the GI Ogden Phipps S. and the Personal Ensign. Grade I winner Dame Dorothy is another Rising Star by Bernardini. She is the dam of Spice Is Nice, a Rising Star by Curlin.

9) Storm Cat (19)
Considering that he was retired from study duty in 2008, it's remarkable that Storm Cat made the Top 10. Where would he be if Rising Stars went back to 1990 when his first crop appeared on the racetrack? He picked up his first Rising Star in 2005 with Where's That Tiger, a winner at the Curragh. In the U.S., the list of Rising Stars by Storm Cat includes Grade I winners Bluegrass Cat and Life Is Sweet, the winner of the 2009 GI Breeders' Cup Ladies Classic. He had his last Rising Star in 2011 with Hoorayforhollywood, a maiden winner at Santa Anita.

The post Which Sire Has Had The Most Rising Stars? It’s Tapit appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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We mate by physical mostly–negative traits to positive traits and vice versa. We try to add speed where there is none and we do not believe in like-to-like matings. We do not use nicks, but we do like successful crosses like Twirling Candy with Unbridled's Song. This is a sample of our matings planned for our 82 foaling mares and 32 maiden and barren mares.

ASTRAY (m, 9, Bernardini – Away, by Dixieland Band) to be bred to Life Is Good

This young stakes producer's Into Mischief filly sold for $720,000 at the 2022 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Sale. She is about the prettiest Bernardini mare you will ever see. I am a big fan of her pedigree and we currently own her niece, too!

She is currently in foal to Hard Spun and we figured that now that we have bred her to several proven stallions, we could revert back to a first-year. She is booked to Life Is Good for 2023.  Life Is Good is an absolute stunner and has a heart the size of Texas.

BECCA'S ROCKET (m, 5, Orb – Idoitmyway, by Unbridled's Song) to be bred to Jackie's Warrior

Becca's Rocket was one of the prettiest and fanciest yearlings we had the year we sold her even though her sire was fast falling out of favor. I watched her hit the board in 13 of her 20 starts, including multiple stakes, and she won over $250,000. We bought her back privately as a broodmare prospect to rejoin Machmer Hall as a broodmare.

For her first foal she is booked to the super good-looking, super talented horse Jackie's Warrior. As Mark Toothaker said to me when I sent her over, “Well, this is a no brainer.” And that is exactly how I felt!

CAMPAIGNING (m, 4, Nyquist – Azalea Belle, Dixie Union) to be bred to Upstart

We bought this Nyquist filly carrying her first foal by Classic Empire at the 2022 Keeneland November Sale. She was a $500,000 yearling herself, so her looks match her sales price.

Since she is only a half-sister to a stakes-placed filly [GIII Iowa Oaks runner-up Aurelia Garland (Constitution)], but she has a nice family, we wanted to be mindful of the stud fee we put in her. She is booked back to Upstart, who only had 19 named 2-year-olds for 2022 and STILL held his own big time. We are thinking that with his bigger and better crops coming down the pipeline, he seems like great value to start a young mare off right.

Heidi Maria, the dam of last year's GII Sorrento S. winner Vegas Magic, will go back to Good Magic in 2023 | Benoit

CLAIRE'S SONG (m, 15, Unbridled's Song – Chimichurri, by Elusive Quality) to be bred to Medaglia d'Oro

Claire's Song is currently in foal to Essential Quality and we have booked her back to Medaglia d'Oro for 2023. We sold her Medaglia d'Oro colt in Saratoga for $625,000 last year and the yearling full-sister is just as nice of a physical as he was. It's hard to not go back to him with this three-time stakes-producing Unbridled's Song mare considering her half-sister produced Canadian Horse of the Year Wonder Gadot and Grade II-placed Solemn Tribute, both by Medaglia d'Oro.

DISTURBINGLY HOT (m, 17, Unbridled's Song – Diablo's Blend, by Diablo) to be bred to Sharp Azteca

Disturbingly Hot is currently in foal to Kantharos and is booked back to Sharp Azteca. We were lucky enough to be his yearling consignor, so I knew what a gorgeous horse he was at that point in his life. We took a breeding right from that faith and honestly I think he has shocked everyone. He was a very fast horse and his progeny seem to be good minded and sound, much like him!

FISCAL LITERACY (m, 4, Uncle Mo – City Sister, by Carson City) to be bred to Twirling Candy

Fiscal Literacy is currently in foal to Maxfield, who is just a ten physical. With a first dam that fills an entire page of horses that run and sell great, we bought this mare as a yearling with some significant vetting issues eyeing to keep her as a broodmare.

If there are two sires that have made Machmer Hall, one would be Twirling Candy (the other is Into Mischief), so we booked this big, fancy girl back to Twirling Candy. She has strong hocks like he needs and we love the idea of alternating between proven and unproven stallions in these types of mares. We hope it will turn out for the long run.

HEIDI MARIA (m, 15, Rockport Harbor – Third Street, by Salt Lake) to be bred to Good Magic

Heidi Maria is a stakes winner that we bred and sold as a yearling only to buy her back privately as a broodmare prospect. She is currently in foal to Collected, who just had a lovely first-time starter [Cuvier] of Pletcher's win at Gulfstream Park that we bred, so fingers crossed! She is the dam of Good Magic's Grade II-winning filly Vegas Magic, so it only made sense to book her back to this exciting son of Curlin.

LADY BELLAMY (m, 9, Bellamy Road – Hot Spell, by Salt Lake) to be bred to Aloha West

We bought this mare in foal to Good Magic along with her West Coast colt at foot in 2020. She is currently in foal to Tiz the Law, who I am a HUGE fan of and am taking a punt on him throwing the talent he had by his brilliant sire Constitution.

This mare has a Gift Box yearling (we have 5 yearlings by our homebred stallion) and we have booked her back to GI Breeders' Cup Sprint winner Aloha West. Aloha West is a very pretty, mid-sized horse. He's light on his feet and correct. Lady Bellamy is a massive mare with bone like tree trunks.

I am hearing great reports about her Good Magic colt with Boomer Bloodstock, so hopefully by the time he runs we will have a lovely Aloha West! This is the first mare owned in partnership with some of our best friends who have never had a Thoroughbred. So far she has had great luck!

LAID BACK LADY (m, 11, Hold Me Back – Sheena's Gold, by Fast Gold) to be bred to Early Voting

Laid Back Lady is currently in foal to Twirling Candy. The only reason we own this mare is because I bought her from a client who had to liquidate his entire broodmare band due to a family illness. and we took her over. We did the mating on her first foal who she was in foal to when we acquired her and that Twirling Candy filly, Always At Ease, just became stakes placed in California–just missing the stakes win!

She is booked back to Early Voting, a first-year stallion and the Grade I-winning son of emerging supersire Gun Runner.

LADY FALCON (m, 5, Super Saver – Sluice, by Seeking the Gold) to be bred to Epicenter

We just purchased this mare in November in foal to her second baby by Practical Joke. I am a huge fan of her family. I have drooled over the progeny of her dam, Sluice, and her half-sister, Mushka (Empire Maker), over the years. She's a big, coarse, plain mare with a lot of substance and she has my favorite thing from her female family–that walk!

We booked her to first-year sire Epicenter, a Grade I-winning son of Not this Time. She will have two proven-sire foals ahead, so we like to change it up with a new sire.

LAYREEBELLE (m, 17, Tale of the Cat – Voodoo Lily, by Baldski) to be bred to Jack Christopher

Layreebelle is currently in foal to one of the greatest values of our time in my mind, Candy Ride (Arg). She is the dam of two graded stakes winners and her daughter is also a graded stakes producer. She is a Machmer Hall homebred and was named after my children (Layne- Reece- Isabelle). She has been so good to us since she injured her shoulder in a paddock accident as a yearling.

Her dam, Voodoo Lily, died of old age after being a retired baby sitter on our farm for many years. She was the grandmother of up-and-coming sire Justify. I am hearing great reports of Layreebelle's Into Mischief 2-year-old colt who is down in Ocala after selling at the Saratoga Sale to Bradley Thoroughbreds.

We have exclusively bred this mare to proven sires her entire life and since we have now retained one of her daughters, who is booked to Tapit for her first foal, we decided to take a shot on a first-year stallion with Jack Christopher, who was bought by one of my favorite people in the industry and a great judge, Liz Crow.

Special Me's daughter and future Grade I winner Gina Romantica practicing her conformation pose as a yearling | courtesy Carrie Brogden

LINE OF VISION (m, 8, Court Vision – Gold Lined, by Numerous) to be bred to Bolt d'Oro

Line of Vision is a small-but-mighty stakes winner by Court Vision. We ended up having so many big mares with our Unbridled's Song crew that we added a few of the 15'1 to 15'2 types this year. We got them for good value because they could really run but did not have the height a lot of buyers want.

We bought this mare in foal to Tiz the Law and while that might not be the physical mating I would have chosen, we were very happy with the price and both parents' racetrack accomplishments.

We have booked her back to champion freshman sire Bolt d'Oro, who seems to throw size and stretch no matter what mare he is bred to. His 2-year-olds were impressive at all the sales I attended in 2022 and they came through in their performances. I would certainly think with how they are built that they would stretch out and it also bodes very well for his half-brother Global Campaign, who we were lucky enough to sell as a yearling for WinStar!

MISS SHOP (m, 20, Deputy Minister – Shopping, by Private Account) to be bred to Authentic

Miss Shop was a grand old Grade I-winning, graded stakes-producing girl when we bought her. Her Into Mischief filly we sold last year at Keeneland September was one of my most favorite yearling fillies of the year, so we decided to repeat that breeding. Miss Shop is currently in foal to Into Mischief, but with his stud fee going out of our farm's comfort zone and us still being his biggest fan, we figured to book her back to the next-best thing: his gorgeous, well-priced son Authentic.

I tell you, those Authentic babies I saw at the sales were just beautiful! We have four yearlings by him and I am delighted with every single one. Miss Shop is one of three mares we have booked back to Authentic.

SPECIAL ME (m, 17, Unbridled's Song – Delta Danielle, by Lord Avie)

Special Me is currently in foal to Twirling Candy and is due in March. This little lady is the foundation of Machmer Hall. She has produced Grade I winners Gift Box (Twirling Candy) and Gina Romantica (Into Mischief), plus Grade II winners Special Forces (Candy Ride {Arg}) and Stonetastic (Mizzen Mast). She was our first mare to produce a homebred million-dollar yearling. She has a yearling full-brother to Gina Romantica this year. She is 17 years old now and this is one mating that is TBD. She has proven that she can go to a plethora of sire lines and have success. We figure that we will wait until she foals safely to make the decision for her next mating. It is a big choice!

Interested in sharing your own mating plans? Email garyking@thetdn.com.

The post 2023 Mating Plans, Presented by Spendthrift: Machmer Hall appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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“He was getting overlooked, and some of the partners felt the move to New York would maximize his income potential with New York stallion awards,” says Rockridge Stud's Lere Visagie. “The partners who are staying in are planning to buy mares to give him a strong start.”

The sire of six stakes horses in 2022, including stakes-winners Carpenters Call–who also established a new track record in the Peach Street S.—and I Can Run, Tourist will stand for a fee of $3,500 in 2023. His 2-year-old colt Mo Tourist was most recently third in the GIII Grey S. at Woodbine last Saturday, and Tourist is also the sire of GISP Tango Tango Tango. This is the female family of dual Japanese champion Hishi Akebono (Woodman) and MG1SW, Japanese multimillionaire turned globetrotting sire Agnes World (Danzig) and GISP Unbridled Express (Unbridled's Song).

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Except you don't know Carrie Brogden. For instance, did you know that she's only here because of Einstein? Seriously. We'll come to that, and to the Beanie Babies, too, who have a more immediate role in her story.

But how are we truly supposed to know any human being, when even our collective obsession with an animal of largely simple needs still leaves us groping for answers?

Okay, so the latest Machmer Hall graduate to hit the big time, Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup winner Gina Romantica, is one of those that makes us feel that we might indeed be working to some coherent, viable principles. She's by Into Mischief, she cost a million bucks, so of course she's a Grade I filly.

But then she only cost that much because her mother Special Me (Unbridled's Song) had already produced millionaire Gift Box and graded stakes winners Stonetastic (Mizzen Mast) and Special Forces (Candy Ride {Arg})–and Brogden and her husband Craig found that mare, all 14.2 hands of her, for $6,000 at the Keeneland January Sale of 2009.

“Nobody has a crystal ball,” Brogden says. “We bred another Into Mischief, a colt we sold for $500,000, and he was a morning glory. He did not give a crap about running. The only Into Mischief I ever had that had no heart to run, it's such an unusual thing for him.”

Rather more characteristically, Brogden made it her business to salvage the horse from the wreckage of expectation.

“He was running in cheap claimers, and being claimed and claimed and claimed,” she says. “So I called the last trainer and bought him privately, and we placed him. And of course, he shipped in and, goddamn, he is breathtaking. But I'll tell you one thing, he's a lot happier being a show hunter, because he's happy going slow. And that's something I cannot predict. None of us can.”

But that cuts both ways. If all that glisters is not gold, then nor should we ignore diamonds in the rough.

“I've had so many great horses whose X-rays do not match,” Brogden says. “Just recently, I had a super-nice racehorse failed for a private sale, because 'issue' was found on an X-ray–from a cracked shin as a young horse, before his racing career, long healed. He's running, he's sound, he's working awesome, he's just won a couple of stakes. I mean, Flat Out (Flatter) had a big old defect in his front sesamoid. And he won, what, $6 million? And the people that bought him did so because they took the consignor's word [i.e. Meg Levy of Bluewater] that this was a nice, sound horse–which, obviously, he proved to be.”

She cites a maxim of Florida horseman Albert Davis: “Never forget that vets pass as many horses that can't run as they fail horses that can.”

Without that crystal ball, then, all we can do is try to breed and raise horses for a competitive outlook.

“Management makes you, management breaks you,” says Brogden. “I mean, ours don't come in. Sleet, rain, thunderstorms, they're out there learning how to face adversity. Now, if they're sick or injured, we take care of them. But if they're healthy, horses need to be outside. As Chris Baker once told me, 'Barns were created for people.'

“Year after year, it's the same breeders raising the racehorses. There's a big reason why those Ashview horses ran one-two in the Belmont. Because they keep them out in the fields, bumping around. We don't separate any of our colts until we go to prep. That's why I'm really proud of my horses a lot of times: in a crowded situation, coming up the rail, they won't be afraid.”

Brogden works from flesh and blood, not paper formulae. She comes from a family of mathematicians, took statistics in college herself, and is dismayed by the influence of flimsy data on mating strategies. All she wants is to breed a big, beautiful athlete, and that should be challenge enough. If you breed by numbers, and end up with a little rat, good luck.

Of course, she absolutely believes in pedigree; and why wouldn't you, when you have one like hers? Ever wondered where Machmer Hall gets its name? Step forward great-grandfather Dean William L. Machmer of the University of Massachusetts. Opposite him, on the maternal branch of her family tree, stands an equally distinguished figure: Guido Fubini, who fled Italy as Mussolini began to accelerate persecution of the Jews.

“If you ever saw the movie A Beautiful Mind, with Russell Crowe, the theorem on the blackboard, that he's trying to work through, is the Fubini Theorem,” Brogden explains. “Einstein, believe or not, helped my great-great-grandfather get a job in Princeton. They didn't tell their anyone, their housekeepers, nobody, they just went across the Swiss border on a day trip, and my grandmother had sewn the jewelry into her fur coat.”

One day Guido's son found a young woman in the lobby of their New York apartment block struggling to buckle a ski boot. He offered to assist her, and that's how Brogden's grandfather Eugene met her grandmother Betty. Eugene went on to become Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Brogden has a vivid sense of her Italian ancestry. “Oh, definitely, those genes flow very freely through me,” she says with a laugh. “I love Italians because we wear our hearts on our sleeves, we put it all out there. We're flamboyant and ridiculous and over-the-top. I remember when my grandfather would blow his top, yelling and screaming. And then we'd sit down for dinner two minutes later, and he'd be like, 'Can you please pass the butter?' And that's kind of how I am, too. My poor kids! I have three great teenagers, all super-easy and responsible. Thank God they're not like I was!”

It would be wrong, however, to conflate this candid, demonstrative nature with her status as a relative pioneer, in a walk of life where women have long been underrepresented.

“Sometimes you do have to remember that you're dealing with a lot of men, and that often they're not so emotional,” she says with a shrug. “And that's okay. That's the yin and yang of it. My partner Andrew Cary always used to be like, 'Be careful, make sure what you're saying is what you mean–not the emotional, flippant Carrie!' And the closest men around me are all very smart, level-headed, even-keel: they do help to calm my over-the-top, passionate nature. But men are from Mars, women from Venus? I think that that is definitely changing. I don't think the young girls coming in will face the same stuff. I mean, women weren't even allowed in the breeding shed until the '80s. So, a lot of things have changed.”

Besides all her colorful antecedents, more immediately Brogden was also born to horses. Her parents were both veterinarians, ran an animal hospital in Virginia before taking on a farm in Ocala for a while. After they separated, Brogden's mother brought the kids back to Virginia to live with their Fubini grandparents. A traumatic experience, at an impressionable age, but the memory of her cherished grandmother would later be honored by Baby Betty (El Corredor) among Machmer Hall's foundation mares.

Brogden had been riding and showing through her girlhood, but parked the horses for psychology at college, and–ah yes, for the Beanie Babies. Her mom had launched a pet-themed gift store, and landed on a bewildering craze for these stuffed animals. Each cost only $2.50 wholesale but they were selling them online for $75 as fast as they could pack them up.

Their house was full of boxes, literally floor to ceiling. They rode the hectic wave, were glad when it finished, and Brogden's mom played up some of the winnings on a couple of mares, including an unraced daughter of Affirmed for just $7,700 deep in the Keeneland November Sale. And her half-brothers by His Majesty turned out to be GI Arlington Million winner Tight Spot and GI Hollywood Futurity winner Valiant Nature.

“So, she got really lucky there, and that was the start of it,” says Brogden, who now slipstreamed back to her first love, the horse; and met another one on the way, in the Australian chap she met one night in McCarthy's in Lexington.

But Brogden's debt to her mother Sandy Willwerth is not just a career path. All four siblings, growing up, were constantly challenged to raise the bar. And, sure enough, all graduated college to make an impact: one brother is a high-flying venture capitalist in California, another owns a construction company back in Virginia, their other sister has carved out a similar niche with show hunters to the one Machmer Hall has established with Thoroughbreds.

The program took root in Virginia but the superior land soon summoned them to Kentucky, where they started in 2001 with a parcel of 105 acres, cattle-grazed but auspiciously sited between Stone Farm and Claiborne. Craig had been working under the late Dr. Phil McCarthy, the pioneering reproductive veterinarian, at Watercress Farm.

“And a lot of our philosophy comes from Dr. McCarthy,” Brogden acknowledges. “Let horses be horses. Don't hothouse them. The only time they have to look spectacular is the day they walk onto the sales grounds.”

She says people give her grief over her support of HISA. It's not as though she won't give antibiotics to a horse with an infection; or apply shockwave to a hematoma.

“But I don't go through my stable and inject hocks and stifles on 15 different yearlings,” she says. “I think we've injected one yearling's ankle in two years. Any treatment we give is warranted and needed. I don't want to do blanket treatments, which I think is really what happened with Lasix. I know certain people won't like that I feel this way. But ultimately it's because I want our industry and everyone in it to be more successful.

“I'm not trying to talk down anyone else's product. I'm trying to raise the best horse I can. And I am not money-driven. I am success-motivated. The buyers know, if I know of a legitimate problem with a certain horse, I will absolutely tell them. I mean, we swim all our yearlings. I have a very good idea of who can and cannot breathe! The last thing in the world I want is somebody to buy a bad horse from me, especially for a lot of money.”

She would rather write off a sale and earn repeat business, just as she herself goes back to the same, trusted sources: whether Unbridled's Song mares, or Fox Hill mares, or mares bought by Ron Ellis for Spendthrift. Those have all added up, mind: Machmer Hall is now up to 560 acres, and 115 mares–the most they've ever had, and some will be traded out as they want no more than 85 foaling. Plus, don't forget 40 to 50 2-year-olds, spread among different consignors, and others retained for the track.

“I'm just a horse addict,” Brogden apologizes. “But they help you learn every year. I mean, one thing I've definitely learned through X-ray: don't start prep too early. They only need 60 days, otherwise you're going to create sesamoiditis. You watch that show, The Biggest Loser, where all these butterball people start a program of exercise and eating right, and all of a sudden most of them, wow, they look amazing. I think that prep is really our way of seeing the true nature of the athlete. When my parents had the farm down in Florida, you just kept them in the stall, kept their coats, and everything sold off pedigree. But all that's changing.”

The one constant, of course, remains the need for luck. Thirteen years ago this week Brogden and her partners were underbidders on the weanling colt that became Prime Cut (Bernstein), and instead settled for his dam for $4,500 from the back ring. If Life Happened (Stravinsky) could produce such a gorgeous son, then never mind if she was barren and reputed to be savage.

They tried to return her to Bernstein, but he had three mares confirmed that day so Brogden called round. Here was this big, stout, beautiful mare that needed to be bred today–and Spendthrift offered a new stallion called Into Mischief.

That mating produced Vyjack and next time, getting back in to Bernstein, they came up with Tepin herself. Brogden gratefully salvaged Prime Cut for $1,000 when he was discarded through a sale at the end of his racing days. Their dam, after all, couldn't have been better named. In a game of such uneven fortunes, in the end life just happens. No crystal ball.

“But that's the greatest thing about it,” Brogden says eagerly. “The fateful part that we can't control. I think that that's why so many men and women that are super-successful in other businesses come here–because they can't put a box around it. If they could, Sackatoga Stables would never have won the Derby with Funny Cide, you'd never have had the school bus and everything. I mean, that's what dreams are made of, right?

“You can have the best mare, the best stallion, and it's a beautiful physical mating. Everything works on paper. And then you have a nocardioform placentitis foal, 75lbs. And that's it, you're not going to have a racehorse. But ultimately, the fact that we can't really know is the greatest thing about it. Because the most valuable commodity of all is hope.”

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Though his racing career fizzled somewhat when he finished off the board in two of his final three starts after returning from Dubai, the enthusiasm was hardly dampened for what he could do as a stallion. As the last great son of generational sire Unbridled's Song and hailing from a deep female family highlighted by champion and six-time Grade I-winning third dam Meadow Star (Meadowlake), the sky was the limit for Arrogate as he took residence at Juddmonte in 2018. Not long after, tragedy struck.

Nearing the end of just his third season at stud, Arrogate collapsed suddenly in his stall and was unable to get back up. After a draining four days of testing at the Hagyard Clinic attempting to diagnose and save him, he was euthanized on June 2, 2020 at only seven years old. The mystery illness was later determined to be a lesion to his spinal cord that rendered him a quadriplegic.

“We were completely gutted by how it happened, and still are scratching our heads a bit,” Juddmonte general manager Garrett O'Rourke said. “For such a young horse, it was totally unexpected. It was extremely gutting for that to happen.”

The legacy of Arrogate, once thought sure to be etched in stone, was entirely up in the air as recently as last year. Seemingly as quickly as he appeared, dazzling the sport with his blinding brilliance, he was gone, with a mere three crops of foals now tasked with ensuring his name would live on beyond the late 2010s.

It frankly didn't look hopeful from the early results that they were up to the challenge. It took until Sept. 6, 2021, roughly five months after 2-year-olds began racing in North America for the year, for Arrogate to record his first winner as a stallion when DJ Stable's Adversity captured a fairly slow New York-bred maiden special weight at Saratoga. Momentum started to build somewhat from there, and he finished 2021 with 13 winners–a respectable number, but not the freshman sire splash Arrogate was expected to make.

Then, on the first day of 2022, a filly named Alittleloveandluck belatedly planted Arrogate's flag in stakes territory, capturing the Ginger Brew S. on the Gulfstream turf. Little did anyone know then, but that victory would be the perfect lid-lifter for what has become a breakout season for Arrogate the stallion at the highest level, with stars Secret Oath, Cave Rock and And Tell Me Nolies giving him three Grade I winners from just 92 total starters. Juddmonte itself has campaigned an additional stakes winner for him in Curlin S. victor Artorius.

“As Bob Baffert says, and I think Cave Rock and Secret Oath are like this: they're cruising along and then you let them down and their head drops down about five or six inches and that's the way they run,” O'Rourke said. “It's a very effective and efficient action. That's all you want out of them. You don't need them to look like their sire as long as they can run like him, and they definitely do run like him.”

As a filly and potential future broodmare, Secret Oath charging to victory in the GI Kentucky Oaks provided hope that Arrogate's longevity in the Thoroughbred breed might yet endure. Same goes for And Tell Me Nolies, who so far has conquered the GI Del Mar Debutante S. and GII Chandelier, and figures to be among the favorites in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies.

But the greatest triumph for Arrogate's legacy from his first two crops is almost certainly the emergence of Cave Rock. The dark bay, bought for $550,000 at Keeneland September–just $10,000 shy of matching Arrogate's selling price at the same auction in 2014–has been devastating in three starts, following up a six-length debut romp with a pair of easy, 5 1/4-length victories in the GI Del Mar Futurity and GI American Pharoah S. He will be heavily favored in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile and is already guaranteed to be a sought-after stallion prospect regardless of what he does on the first Friday in November or, for that matter, next year's first Saturday in May.

Quick as this industry is to overreact to slow starts from freshman stallions, many were willing to write off Arrogate as a breeding influence early on. But in under a year, his progeny have completely turned that narrative around, and if you ask O'Rourke, he's not surprised.

“To say there was no doubt would be a little too cocky, but I had expectations of what he could and should be from experience of watching that sire line most especially,” he said. “A lot of people don't realize how slow a start Unbridled got off to with his 2-year-olds, and Unbridled's Song was that type as well. I likened [Arrogate] to a stallion like Curlin; you've got to let them be what they're bred to be and when they do get to that point in time, they're going to be very effective. Impatience just doesn't go hand in hand with those types of horses. Obviously, Unbridled's Song was a champion 2-year-old and maybe that came through with this year's 2-year-olds as well, but I think definitely the Secret Oath, Artorius types are exactly what we expected of Arrogate. It's brash to say that was a lock, but that's what we hoped for him and that's what they're doing.”

The surge in positive results on the racetrack has translated into the sales ring too. After 43 of 61 Arrogate yearlings offered from his first crop in 2020 sold for an average of $227,049, that average dropped precipitously to $142,519 in 2021 from 52 of 68 sold. This year, Arrogate's yearling average has jumped all the way back up to surpass his 2020 output at $241,400, with 56 of 61 changing hands.

“I was just feeling so sorry for the people that bred to him, that were so committed to him, that were left feeling a little bit empty on their investment,” O'Rourke said. “I was delighted to see him get the runners, but I was more delighted for the breeders who supported him to see their Arrogates sell so well at the sales this year, because it could've gone the other way for them. But everything fell into place and it happened at the right time, just before the sales.”

O'Rourke added that he thinks breeders adapting their mares to Arrogate's physical traits after his first season has aided his breakout, creating more harmonious matings for his second and especially third seasons at stud.

“The other thing about him is he probably had his best-looking crop of yearlings this year at the sales,” O'Rourke said. “He was a big horse and I always feel like breeders take a look at the first crop and they go, 'OK, well we bred a really good mare to him in the first year but maybe physically she wasn't the ideal type, so we'll tweak that in year two,' and then they really get it right in year three. I'm going to give the breeders all the credit for picking the right physical types of mares as opposed to pedigree crosses in year three, because you can see it in his sales averages. I saw them individually at the sales; they were a lovely crop of yearlings, and if they run according to their looks, it'll be really ironic that his third crop will quite possibly be the best of all three of his crops.”

If that turns out to be true, let there be no doubt that the legacy of Arrogate–the supernova who appeared in danger of being mostly forgotten just a year ago–will instead be undeniable for decades to come.

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“I have a late -bloomer, a horse named Artorius (Arrogate), that I really like,” Brown said.  “He's going to run in the Curlin Stakes. Much like the dad, he's late bloomer. I'm not saying he's a threat to win the Travers, but I'm going to tell you: he's lightly raced and he's very good. And his mother was very good, Paulassilverlining (Ghostzapper), who won two Grade Is for us. Obviously, Arrogate was a great race horse, that I didn't train. He's very well bred. He's a horse we've always liked all winter. He just got started a little late.”

Seven weeks to the day later, Artorius, will be entered Tuesday with Zandon and Early Voting in the Travers, which will be run for the 153rd time on Saturday. Following a third as the favorite in the GI Haskell S. July 23, Jack Christopher returns to sprint distances in the seven-furlong GI H. Allen Jerkens on the Travers program.

Artorius thoroughly confirmed Brown's assessment that he was of Travers quality with a 4 3/4-lengths score in the 1 1/8 miles ungraded Curlin July 29. He has continued to train well, most recently a :47.00 half-mile on Saturday, and just like his famous father did in 2016, will make his graded stakes debut in the Travers.

In what was his fifth career start, Arrogate (Unbridled's Song) cruised into Saratoga history for trainer Bob Baffert in 2016 with a stakes and course record of 1:59.36 for the 1 1/4-miles Travers. He broke the record of 2:00 set in 1979 by General Assembly over a very wet track. The Travers was the launching pad for Arrogate, who died in 2020 during his third season at stud. He followed that 13 1/2-length Travers score with wins in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic, the GI Pegasus World Cup and the GI Dubai World Cup. The week of his victory in the Pegasus in an anticipated showdown with California Chrome (Lucky Pulpit) that never materialized, he won the Eclipse Award as 3-year-old male champion.

Brown said that Artorius had typical 2-year-old shin issues in 2021 and had another problem that delayed his arrival to the races. He broke slowly in his first start on Apr. 16 in a six-furlong race at Keeneland and finished second. The maiden-breaker came at a mile at Belmont Park June 10 and he followed that up with what turned out to be an easy victory at nine furlongs in the Curlin.

“He's doing great,” Brown said. “His last race was terrific, first race around two turns. I was very pleased with it. ”

Brown acknowledged that it is a big ask to send Artorius into the Travers against an accomplished field whose headliner is GI Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike. His stablemates Early Voting, victor of the GI Preakness S., Zandon, third in the Derby after a win in the GI Blue Grass S. will be in the gate, along with Epicenter (Not This Time), second in the Derby and Preakness and the winner of the GII Jim Dandy, and GI Arkansas Derby and GI Haskell winner Cyberknife (Gun Runner).

“I'm having to step him up. He seems like he's willing to do it,” Brown said. “I don't feel like I'm doing anything to compromise his development by doing it. Yes, it's a really tough race, but he's got a nice race over this track, albeit against lesser horses than he's going to meet in the Travers. He did it the right way and came out of it the right way. The Travers is a once-in-a-lifetime for a horse to try. You only get one shot to run in it when you're three. So, if they're sound and doing well, and their numbers look like they're heading the right way, have a race over the track, which is in this particular case is possibly beneficial, and a leading jockey riding the horse, you've got to take a shot.”

Juddmonte purchased Paulassilverling from breeder-owner Vincent Scuderi prior to her 5-year-old season in 2017 and turned her over to Brown. She promptly won the GI Madison and the GI Humana Distaff. Artorius is her first foal.

“He's not real big now,” Brown said. “He'd be more of his mom's size than his father's size, but he's good combination between the two. He's got the stamina and the movement of his father, who moved like a cat. His mother was a smaller filly, not the best mover, but had a lot of heart. When you're breeding the best of the best, you hope for the best. This horse got a good blend of both, which is what you really hope for in a lot of cases when you breed Grade I horses to Grade I horses.”

An hour or so after Artorius worked alongside multiple GI winner Search Results (Flatter) Saturday, Brown said he was certain that the colt had the physical tools for the Travers and it just was a matter of timing whether he would make it to Saratoga's signature race.

“It's not a surprise at all. We always thought that he's talented enough,” Brown said. “I'd use the word “relieved” that he was able to do it. There was a small percentage chance that he'd be able to advance this quick. We knew he had the ability, but things happen. Horses have setbacks, right? Horses don't always run the way you think they're going to run. For him to actually hit all the marks and really get there, the only way was if everything sort of went right. Everything went right along the way with his works and spacing and weather, health of the horse. Everything has for this horse. I've been relieved. We gave it a shot to put him on a path to get here and he hit it.”

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It's a bit of a different story now. Keen Ice and Arrogate are the sires of two black-type winners apiece, which wouldn't be anything to shout home about, except they've accounted for the two most prestigious races for 3-year-old colts and fillies.

By Curlin, Keen Ice was raced by Jerry Crawford's Donegal, whose Mo Donegal (Uncle Mo) came from far back to finish fifth in the Derby behind Rich Strike. Crawford, a client of Werk Thoroughbred Consultants, has a penchant for purchasing late-running 10-furlong horses, which I wrote about in this space two weeks ago, and Keen Ice, a $120,000 yearling, fit that profile. Initially trained by Dale Romans, Keen Ice was transferred to Todd Pletcher sometime during his 4-year-old campaign, and for Pletcher he won the Gll Suburban over 10 furlongs at five. However, Keen Ice only won three of 24 starts during his career, though he placed in numerous Grade l races for both Romans and Pletcher and earned $3.4 million. As a strict come-from-behind horse, he was frequently pace-traffic/trouble-compromised in races, most of which were usually too short for him. The 2017 edition of the Gl Whitney at Saratoga over nine furlongs is a case in point: Gun Runner, a son of Candy Ride (Arg), led for most of the race and won by 5 1/4 lengths; early on, Keen Ice trailed in last after a bad start but rallied for second.

Arrogate, a gray son of Unbridled's Song trained by Bob Baffert, was literally and figuratively a horse of a different color from Keen Ice. He had speed and the ability to carry it a distance, plus the acceleration to outrun opponents from anywhere in a race. He won his Travers leading throughout, but in a celebrated Gl Breeders' Cup Classic later that year against California Chrome, Arrogate impressively ran down his pace-setting older rival, who looked a winner in deep stretch only before Arrogate passed him to win. Keen Ice finished third, 10 3/4 lengths behind California Chrome, after getting bumped after the break and closing from far back.

Arrogate won seven of 11 starts, earned a North American record $17.4 million, and went to stud at owner Juddmonte Farms for $75,000, the highest fee among newcomers for the 2018 season. Gun Runner, who was retired to Three Chimneys, was second, with a $70,000 fee. Keen Ice began his career for $20,000 at Calumet, which had bought into the horse for his 5-year-old campaign. Keen Ice now stands for $7,500, Arrogate is dead, and Gun Runner, who led all North American-based first-crop runners last year, stood for an advertised fee of $125,000 this year, if you could get to him.

It's all about first-crop 2-year-old performances for the commercial marketplace, but the 10-furlong Classic in Louisville is another matter altogether.

Stamina Lines
Calumet's interest in Keen Ice was understandable for several reasons. The farm's present ownership has a keen interest in standing and breeding stayers, and champion turf horse English Channel, a staying son of Curlin's sire Smart Strike, was Calumet's best recent stallion.

Smart Strike, a son of Mr. Prospector, was known for reliably transmitting stamina; aside from English Channel and Curlin, his sire sons also include Lookin at Lucky, who like Curlin was a champion and Gl Preakness winner. Lookin at Lucky sired the 65-1 Derby winner Country House, who was awarded the Classic on the disqualification of Maximum Security in 2019.

Likewise, Curlin, who wasn't highly placed on the 2012 first-crop list, is a conduit for stamina; his sons and daughters have been particularly active in the runups for the Derby and Oaks through the years, and in 2021, Malathaat won the Oaks. This year, Nest was second to Secret Oath. Curlin got Gl Belmont S. winner Palace Malice from his first crop and Gl Preakness winner Exaggerator a few crops later, and he's one of the most reliable stallions for siring Classic-type runners.

The Mr. Prospector horse Fappiano is also responsible for a notable stamina branch, primarily through Derby winner Unbridled–the sire of Empire Maker and Unbridled's Song. The branch through Empire Maker includes Triple Crown winner American Pharoah and Derby winner Always Dreaming. Derby winner Real Quiet is a son of the Fappiano horse Quiet American. Another Fappiano branch through Cryptoclearance leads to Candy Ride and his high-flying son Gun Runner, whose first crop contains among others Gl Arkansas Derby winner Cyberknife, Gl Santa Anita Derby winner Taiba, and last year's champion 2-year-old filly Echo Zulu, who lost for the first time in the Oaks.

Unbridled also sired the first-crop Derby winner Grindstone, who wasn't much of a stallion but did sire the Belmont and Travers winner Birdstone. The latter, in turn, sired two memorable first-crop runners: 50-1 Derby winner Mine That Bird and 12-1 Belmont S. winner Summer Bird.

Unbridled's best sire son Unbridled's Song was generally a transmitter of more speed than others from the line. Though his daughters have become outstanding producers of high-level runners, his sire sons have been found wanting, and Arrogate was considered the potential heir until his untimely death in 2020. That mantle now belongs to Lane's End's Liam's Map.

First-Crop Engineering
When stallions like Arrogate and Keen Ice retire, the general thinking of stud farms and breeders is to send them faster and more precocious mares to balance their late development and stamina. Juddmonte, for instance, was actively looking for these types of stakes-winning mares for Arrogate, who was unraced at two.

Ironically, Secret Oath is from a mare that doesn't fit this profile, though her dam was a well-performed runner.

Secret Oath, who was bred and is raced by Briland Farm, is from the Quiet American mare Absinthe Minded, a multiple Graded-placed black-type winner of $607,747. Secret Oath is therefore inbred 4×3 to Fappiano on the sire-line cross (both sire and broodmare sire trace to Fappiano). Her dam failed to win in three starts at two, and she didn't become a stakes winner until she was four, when she also placed in the Gl Apple Blossom. She won two more black-type races at five, when she again placed in the Apple Blossom.

Rich Strike is the 10th Derby winner bred by Calumet, but the first for the farm's current ownership. Like Secret Oath, Rich Strike is out of a stakes-winning mare – Canadian Classic and Graded stakes winner Gold Strike, a daughter of Smart Strike. Like the Oaks winner, the Derby winner is inbred on the sire-line cross, in his case quite closely, 3×2, to Smart Strike. The latter, by the way, is also the broodmare sire of Mine That Bird and his half-brother Dullahan, another Donegal runner, who was third in the Derby. Dullahan was sired by the Unbridled's Song stallion Even the Score and was bred similarly to Mine That Bird, as both were 5×3 to Mr. Prospector on the sire-line cross through Unbridled and Smart Strike.

There is precedent for the close inbreeding of Rich Strike in other Calumet Derby winners from the past. Iron Liege, for example, was 2×3 to full brothers Bull Dog (Fr) and Sir Gallahad lll (Fr), and Tim Tam was 3×3 to Bull Dog, so perhaps it was a calculated decision to inbreed to Smart Strike so closely in Rich Strike's case. At the least, his dam had to be one of the better mares to visit Keen Ice in his first year at stud.

Calumet had purchased Gold Strike, a champion Canadian 3-year-old filly, for $230,000 in 2015, and at the time she was already the dam of Llanarmon, a Sky Mesa filly who'd won the Gll Natalma S. at two. Llanarmon went on to place in the Woodbine Oaks and also won the Carotene S. at nine furlongs on turf. Gold Strike was herself a Grade lll winner who'd won the Woodbine Oaks and placed in the Queen's Plate against colts over 10 furlongs, which gives Rich Strike plenty of stamina on both sides of the pedigree.

In fact, Rich Strike's pedigree probably contains much more stamina than necessary for the U.S. racing ecosystem, but a confluence of factors in the Derby, including a rapid early pace– the first quarter of :21.78 was faster than the :22.76 set by champion sprinter Jackie's Warrior in the Gl Churchill Downs S.– and an inspired ride helped to showcase it.

Sid Fernando is president and CEO of Werk Thoroughbred Consultants, Inc., originator of the Werk Nick Rating and eNicks.

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