Breeding Watch, June 11

Posted on by DerbyMateo

There are Grade 1 winners and then there are classic winners and Tonalist’s gritty victory in the Belmont Stakes filled out the last remaining hole in Tapit’s spectacular resume.

Tonalist is the first classic winner and 14th Grade 1 winner from six crops for Tapit, who already holds a nearly $2.7 million lead on the 2014 North American general sires list. The Gainesway Farm stallion now has three Grade 1 winners to his credit this season, including another 3-year-old colt in Florida Derby hero Constitution. Tonalist is one of only five starters by Tapit out of daughters of Pleasant Colony and he’s the first Grade 1 winner produced by the larger A.P. Indy-Pleasant Colony cross.

Classic winners A.P. Indy and Pleasant Colony both stood atLane’s End Farm, which is also home to North America’s current leading sire of stakes winners, City Zip. The son of Carson City has been on quite a roll with four stakes winners since Memorial Day.

That afternoon his 3-year-old daughter Red Velvet won her stakes debut in the $100,000 Jersey Girl Stakes at Belmont Park. She’s out of a mare by Honour and Glory who, like City Zip’s dam, is by Relaunch. That makes her the eighth black-type winner (from 197 starters or 2.2%) that show a double of Relaunch within four generations.

Another City Zip 3-year-old filly, City by the Bay, earned her second stakes victory in the June 1 Seattle Handicap at Emerald Downs to stay unbeaten in three starts. Out of a mare by Glitterman, City by the Bay is inbred to Relaunch’s sire In Reality at 4×4.

Just five days later Palace, who is out of a mare by End Sweep, graduated to the Grade 2 level with a score in the True North Stakes at Belmont. The following afternoon, Sweet Emma Rose, who is out of a daughter of Deputy Minister, earned her first stakes victory in the Crank It Up Stakes at Monmouth Park. Those victories give City Zip 12 stakes winners for the year, three more than Tapit and Medaglia d’Oro.

The nine 2014 stakes winners by Medaglia d’Oro include Coffee Clique, winner of the Grade 2 Churchill Downs Distaff Turf Mile and the Just A Game Stakes (G1) on the Belmont Stakes undercard. The four-year-old filly is the Darley America stallion’s second new Grade 1 winner of the season after Gulfstream Park Turf Handicap victory by the gelding Lochte. He now has a total of 11 Grade 1 winners on his ledger. Out of mare by the Nijinsky II stallion Royal Academy, it’s surprising to note that Coffee Clique is the only stakes winner by Medaglia d’Oro out of a Nijinsky II-line mare to date.

Of the Medaglia d’Oro Grade 1 winners only four are males, but one of them, Warrior’s Reward, is the early headliner among the 2014 first-crop sires. TheSpendthrift Farm stallion was represented by a trio of sparkling debut winners May 30.

Most impressive of all was Unbridled Reward, who is out of Unbridled Appeal, by Unbridled. She rolled to a 7 3/4 length win going 4 1/2 furlongs on the main track at Churchill Downs. A $330,000 purchase by owner John Oxley at the OBS March sale of selected 2-year-olds in training, Unbridled Reward is the most expensive juvenile by Warrior’s Reward.

About an hour earlier Warrior’s Reward’s first winner bounded down the stretch as Liatris, who is out of Miss Brickyard, by A.P. Indy, scored a 3 3/4-length debut victory over males in a 5-furlong maiden special on the dirt.

Another filly, Strawberry Baby, who is out of Kendall Hill, by Theatrical, completed the hat trick for her sire later that evening at Lone Star Park. She won by 2 3/4 lengths in a 5-furlong dash on the main oval.

That makes three starters and three winners by a combined 14 1/4 lengths out of mares by Mr. Prospector, Northern Dancer and Bold Ruler/Seattle Slew-line mares. Not a bad start at all for the first major son of Medaglia d’Oro with runners on the track.

The Relaunch-A.P. Indy cross has been sneaky good in recent years and two more stakes winners bred on this cross have emerged in late May and early June.

Tiz’naz earned his initial stakes victory in the Grover ‘Buddy’ Delp Memorial May 28 at Delaware Park. The 3-year-old colt is by the Spendthrift Farm Tiznow stallion Tiz Wonderful out of a mare by Pulpit, a son of A. P. Indy, who is the dam sire of Tiz Wonderful’s 2014 Grade 2 winner and Grade 1-placed Scherzinger.

Tiznow’s son Norumbega got up in the final strides to add the Grade 2 Brooklyn Invitational Stakes trophy to owner Stuart Janney’s crowded trophy case. He’s the third stakes winner from 15 starters on the Tiznow-A.P. Indy cross and Grade 1 winner Morning Line is among the others. Two more Relaunch sons, Honour and Glory and Tiznow’s sire, Cee’s Tizzy, have also sired graded winners out of A.P. Indy-line mares.

(originally published on http://www.thisishorseracing.com)

On Racing: Tales of Belmont Stakes Agony (Part 2)

Posted on by DerbyMateo

In my 30 years as a horseracing fan I’ve seen 10 horses win the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes only to fall short in the Belmont Stakes. Sometimes I was there in the stands, sometimes I was a TV viewer. Last week I recounted my experiences watching the first five failures. This week, the rest of the story…

2002 – War Emblem – I watched this one on television from my apartment in Lexington, Kentucky. The race was over as soon as the gates opened and War Emblem fell to his kneels. The speedy colt needed to be on or near the lead to have any chance and that chance vanished with the bad break. It was Wiseman’s Ferry (Wise Dan’s sire) who took the early initiative while jockey Victor Espinoza fought with a headstrong War Emblem and with other riders for a comfortable running position. He did rush up to be 2nd after a mile but never was there a point that he would be serious factor in the race. The Bob Baffert-trained colt crossed the wire in 8th well behind 70-1 chance Sarava, the longest shot ever to win the Test of Champions.

Espinoza gets another chance with California Chrome on June 7 but, because of that poor break in 2002, he’ll do so without previous experience in guiding a speed horse around the vast Belmont Park oval. It’s probably a small thing, but this type of exprerience likely cost really good horses like Spectacular Bid in 1979 and, as we’ll see, Smarty Jones in 2004.

2003 – Funny Cide I was at Belmont Park on that dreary, rainy Saturday as the spunky New York-bred with New York-based owners in the yellow school bus tried for immortality. The rub that year was that his main rival, Empire Maker, was probably a better horse. After toying with Funny Cide in the Wood Memorial, Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel later admitted to going easy on the royally-bred son of Unbridled leading up the the Kentucky Derby. Part of the reason was a minor foot issue that nagged Empire Maker, part of the reason was that Frankel wanted a colt as fresh as possible for a sweep of all three Classics. Funny Cide was at his best on Derby Day and kept Empire Maker and Frankel out of roses way. With his Triple Crown hopes dashed, Frankel skipped the Preakness to get Empire Maker 100% for the Belmont Stakes. Many blame the sloppy track for Funny Cide’s 3rd-place Belmont finish behind Empire Maker and eventual Travers S. winner Ten Most Wanted, but I side with the others that feel that the Triple Crown was lost in 2003 when Empire Maker fell short on the first Saturday in May.

2004 – Smarty Jones – If you want to know why the Belmont Stakes is no longer a BYOB event, watch the 2004 Belmont Stakes. A record crowd of over 120,000 people, including myself, crammed into Belmont Park that year hoping, expecting, the unbeaten Smarty Jones would be crowned a Triple Crown champion.

Smarty Jones was so impressive, first in the Kentucky Derby on a very sloppy track and then the Preakness Stakes on dry land. So much so that the first thing I did after Smarty Jones demolished the Preakness field was book a flight to New York. This would be the year. And it might have been had rider Stewart Elliot been more judicious with Smarty Jones’ speed. He parried early and often with Eddington and Rock Hard Ten before spurting away from those rivals at the top of the stretch. Birdstone looming, but not dangerously, right? Not Birdstone… Smarty was running his heart out but his legs began to slow by mid stretch. And Birdstone got closer. And closer and…

It’s an incredible thing to see and feel a large crowd go from absolute frenzy to complete silence but that’s exactly what happened when Birdstone nudged by Smarty Jones in those final agonizing yards. All of that excited energy of 120,000 people evaporated in an instant out of the Belmont Park balloon. We were all stunned, what was there to say? We just silently began to accept that we were robbed of the chance to bear witness to history yet again.

That was from my vantage point up on the third floor of the grandstand. I would later hear about boos and catcalls at the winner’s cirlce and the near riots and police action in the spacious backyard picnic area. And the next year we would all hear about the new alcohol policy at Belmont Park.

2008 – Big Brown – I was ready to riot after Big Brown’s failure in 2008. I again came to Belmont Park expecting to see a Triple Crown winner. This was no only because of Big Brown’s obvious talent but also because of paucity of talent evident in his competitors.

There was a lot of controversy swirling around the unbeaten colt’s primary owners IEAH Stable, who brought a slick (some said shady) Wall Street financier-type approach to thoroughbred ownership. And then there was controversial and boisterous trainer Richard Dutrow, a lightning rod who invited more media strikes as the Triple Crown progressed. IEAH is no more and  Dutrow is serving a 10 year suspension for numerous medication infractions. Oh, and there was the steroid thing. It came to light that Big Brown was given a steady diet of a steroid call Winstrol and it came further to light that this was not all together illegal in the thoroughbred racing game. That’s since changed in many states and Dutrow said he took Big Brown off of his regimen after the Preakness Stakes.

I was on a radio program the Thursday before the Belmont. As we talked about all these issues I remember saying something like ‘I think just seeing this horse do it, seeing him actually roll down that stretch and win it after all these years. That moment will be so incredible that the whole backstory will just go away.’

I believed it and kept tring to maintain faith even though there was something ‘off’ that Saturday at Belmont. It was insanely hot, 95 degrees with very high humidity. There was also some kind a water main break that knocked out service to good portion of the plant, including several restrooms. Hot, crowded and standing in line for the restroom all day is no way to spend a Belmont A few of my friends, veterans of scores of Belmont Days, said this was their last one.

Still, all Big Brown had to do was win and everything is better. Everyone is exuberant. Instead, the exact opposite happened. Big Brown was eased at the top of the stretch when rider Kent Desmormeaux felt all was lost. So now not only is everything not better, everything is decidedly worse. With the whole world watching and well up to speed on the owners and the trainer and steroids, the horse didn’t just lose, he stopped running! Everything was much worse and I slammed my program down to the concrete steps with a loud and disgusted ‘God Damnnn it!!!’ It’s still the maddest I’ve been after a horse race (well, after Mine That Bird’s Derby is pretty close).

2012 – I’ll Have Another – It’s easy to say now, but I had a feeling… I flew to New York early on Friday morning, June 8 and was settled into the Bay Shore home of long-time family friends for their annual Belmont Stakes weekend bash. It’s easy to say now but I had a feeling…I think I was even sipping on a margarita when I saw the news on the small kitchen TV. I had feeling… maybe that’s why it was so hard to believe when it actually came true. The past nine Triple Crown failures happened on the track. I’ll Have Another’s would fail to leave the barn. I was the first to see it, everyone else was chatting and making more margaritas. I stared at the TV for several more moments. I wasn’t sure I should say ‘Well, I had a feeling…’. Before I could say anything someone else noticed. “What?! I’ll Have Another scratched??!!”

Belmont Park was a museum to what could have been the following day. There were I’ll Have Another buttons everywhere and I’ll Have Another posters stacked on lonely tables. Then you’d see the posters on the floor scattered around like big, sad confetti. The only thing sadder were the poor souls trying to unload all of the I’ll Have Another t-shirts. I made the best of a bad situation by betting winner Union Rags (redemption for my Derby pick) and nailing the exacta and trifecta with Paynter running second and Atigun third. If you’re going to be disappointed for the 10th time it helps to have a margarita in your hand and a back up plan for the windows.

(originally published on http://www.myfantasystable.com

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On Racing: Tales of Belmont Stakes Agony (Part 1)

Posted on by DerbyMateo

I started following thoroughbred horse racing a little over 30 years. Across those three decades I’ve seen ten horses win both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes. And ten times my soul was later crushed at some point during the Belmont Stakes. Is the 11th time the charm? Is California Chrome the one? I figured it couldn’t hurt to try to exorcise the demons of past Triple Crown heartbreak.

1987 – Alysheba This was my second time attending the Belmont Stakes and Alysheba was my first favorite horse. Out of money at my local Off Track-Betting Parlor before the 1987 Kentucky Derby, I cancelled my Dad’s ticket on the race and put the stolen money on Alysheba. He very nearly fell down during in the stretch run at Churchill when Bet Twice drifted into his path but he and Chris McCarron persevered to win me my first Kentucky Derby. Another gritty win over archrival Bet Twice in the Preakness set the stage for the son of Alydar to avenge his sire and capture the Triple Crown. Those were the days when New York didn’t allow the anti-bleeding medication Lasix and much was made of the fact that Alysheba would go without it for the mile and one half test. There wasn’t much drama that sunny June afternoon as Bet Twice spurted away rounding the far turn and was never challenged. Alysheba settled for fourth.

1989 – Sunday Silence I was there for this one too but have to admit some mixed emotions. This was racing’s last great East Coast/West Coast rivalry and, as a yankee, I was all about Easy Goer. Like most of the Easy Goer-ers I blamed his Derby loss to Santa Anita Derby winner Sunday Silence on the slick racetrack at Churchill Downs. After Sunday Silence out-gutted him in the Preakness by a nose I could say nothing and be nothing but heartbroken. Like two years before, the Belmont Stakes was over at the top of the stretch with Easy Goer operating like a Secretariat-like machine. He ran away from Sunday Silence by x lengths stopping the clock in 2:26, a time bettered only by Secretariat himself. Easy Goer may have been the last truly brilliant distance horse we’ve seen in North America. It was also NYRA race caller Marshal Cassidy’s last Belmont Stakes call and, like me, he didn’t try to hide his rooting interest screaming:  “It’s New York’s Eaasssy Goer, in front!”

1997 – Silver Charm I had skipped the 1995 and 1996 Belmont Stakes but had to come back with a big shot at witnessing history. Silver Charm proved to be an incredibly courageous and game animal with close victories over Captain Bodgit in the Kentucky Derby and again in the Preakness (with Free House and Touch Gold in close proximity too). If Touch Gold hadn’t stumbled badly at the start of the Baltimore race and then been shut off a few times maybe there would haven’t have been a Triple Crown on the line at all that year. But with Silver Charm you never knew. If Touch Gold had gotten through on the inside of the Pimlico stretch and come up alongside Silver Charm, Silver Charm likely would have battled back. Actually Chris McCarron did know and he kept Touch Gold to the far outside down the lane in the Belmont. He never let Gary Stevens and Silver Charm see him until it was too late. When Silver Charm passed me at about the 1/8th pole I thought he had the race won and it was hard to see if anyone actually did get by him from our angle up on the third floor. By the crowd reaction I assumed someone had beaten him but I sprinted up the stairs to the nearest TV to see what had actually happened. Silver Charm would not let Free House pass him but I watched in agony as Touch Gold surged by both from the far outside. Silver Charm, literally, never saw him coming.

1998 – Real Quiet I didn’t make the trip to New York for this one for some reason, instead, I was planted firmly on my couch in Louisville, Kentucky as Real Quiet ran for history. I had bet him in the Derby but was a little skeptical about his overall quality. The Derby was only his third lifetime win, afterall. But when Kent Desormeaux let him loose at the top of that long Belmont stretch and Real Quiet responded and bounded away. I lept up and thought “Holy @#$!@#, he’s going to do it!” It felt like he had already won. And then Victory Gallop, Gary Stevens up, appeared. And then he started getting closer. And then Real Quiet started staggering. And then they hit the wire together and Tom Durkin gave one of his greatest calls. “It’s too close to call! Was it Real Quiet!? Or was it Victory Gallop!? A picture is worth a thousand words. This one is worth five million dollars!” (At the time there was a $5 million bonus for whoever earned the Triple Crown). I couldn’t tell who won either but after watching the replays I was almost hoping that Victory Gallop had gotten his nose down first. After all that staggering and drifting by Real Quiet, there would be a claim of foul for sure if Real Quiet had crossed the wire first. How would you like to be the stewards with that much history in the balance? When the photo came back it showed Victory Gallop had won the 130th Belmont Stakes. Despite the bitter loss I got to feel what it was like to watch a Triple Crown winner. If only for a few fake seconds.

1999 – Charismatic I had an even harder time taking Charismatic seriously the following year. A former claimer he had exploded on the racing scene by taking the Lexington Stakes then the Derby and then Preakness. He was owned by racing’s first couple, the affable Robert & Beverly Lewis, who had been so gracious in 1997 with their Silver Charm (and Serena’s Song and so on). Charismatic ran his heart out trying to hold off Lemon Drop Kid and Vision and Verse down the stretch under Chris Antley. His try turned out to be more than his body could sustain. The lasting image of this Belmont Stakes was Chris Antley supporting the left front leg of Charismatic after the finish line, waiting for the vets to arrive on the scene. There’s perhaps no better image to represent the past decades of Triple Crown futility and frustration.

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Next week: Part 2

(originally published on www.myfantasystable.com)