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Opening day of Santa Anita’s winter 2018 meet demonstrated that Santa Claus was still at work for stallions Street Sense and Twirling Candy. Mckinzie, whom Bob Baffert touted early in the year as one of his very best three-year olds, finally showed his stuff, in a crowded Malibu S.-G1 field that showed that trainers believed the race was wide open for the taking. Mckinzie thought otherwise, and won by nearly five lengths with complete ease, coming from off the pace and making his challengers look like Grade One amateurs. Darley’s Street Sense, who stood for $45,000 in 2018, once again stamps himself as Street Cry’s best son, and Mckinzie’s pedigree underscores what, historically, works with Street Sense.

Second crop sires in the United States have been dominated by Hill ‘n’ Dale’s Violence, and there is no reason to assume that will change before the end of the year. Violence entered stud in 2014 for a fee of $15,000, and he is up to $40,000 for 2019, but his statistics support this raise in stud fee. Depending upon what sire list you refer to, he has around 228 named foals, and 148 starters, with 81 winners, and is hitting at the requisite ten percent for stakes winners with eight currently, and over five million dollars in earnings.

It isn’t extraordinary that Bob Baffert took both of the Grade One events for two-year-olds at Los Alamitos on November 8, nor is it extraordinary that his charges finished one/two in the Los Alamitos Futurity and one/three in the Starlet S. , with Drayden Van Dyke up on both winners. What is extraordinary is that Improbable, the thrilling, over five lengths, runaway winner of the Los Alamitos Futurity and Chasing Yesterday, whose gutsy, wide trip all the way around two turns demonstrated her exciting talent, share such similar genetic material as to be weird twins of sorts. Just juggle the DNA a bit, and their similarities are, certainly no pun intended, more than improbable. Here are the basics: Improbable is by City Zip, out of the A.P. Indy mare Rare Event, while Chasing Yesterday is by Tapit, out of American Pharoah’s dam, Littleprincessemma, by Yankee Gentleman.

Anyone who witnessed Mendelssohn winning the UAE Derby-G2 at Meydan can only regard his retirement with both regret and excitement. Certainly, he beat little in that field, but winning any derby by 18 ½ lengths indicates a special kind of talent. And this was after he took the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf-G1 the previous year. Word was that the Coolmore gang was desperate to get him a Grade One win on dirt in this country, to improve his popularity and fee at stud, but he disappointed last month in the Cigar Mile-G1, and could only hit the board in the Dwyer S.-G2, the Travers S.-G1 and the Jockey Club Gold Cup-G1, though he was usually favored to win. The extremely handsome colt brought three million dollars as a Keeneland September yearling in 2016.

The international news and the national news continue to be the blame game: who did what, when, and to whom, and who’s lying (everybody) to whom (also everybody). But in thoroughbred racing, the blame game is something entirely different. Claiborne Farm’s young stallion, Blame, currently at number 18 on the leading sires list with only four racing crops, has offspring that continue to excel, and this weekend’s racing was no exception. It’s worth noting that, in the top twenty leading stallions, Blame, as a foal of 2006, is joined by only Uncle Mo, Lookin’ at Lucky and Quality Road, all stars in their own right, among much older sires, usually from the foal crop of 2000 or before.

Friday, November 23, 2018, proved once again that certain female families maintain their powerful DNA over generations, no matter what. The Grade One Comely S. was won by a daughter of Blame, who stands at Claiborne and has been coming on strong this year. Her name is Blamed, and she led gate to wire, as the favorite. Blame has a pedigree loaded with great dams, including Courtly Dee (by Never Bend), Con Game (by Buckpasser) and Special (by Forli), but as if that wasn’t enough, her dams’ side brings more female strength to the equation that created Blamed.

Mucho Gusto, the winner of the Bob Hope S.-G3 at Del Mar on Saturday, November 17, contributed his sire’s first graded stakes win. Mucho Macho Man currently ranks at number nine on the first crop sires list, with $499,811 in earnings. With only 70 named two-year-olds in his first crop, and 31 runners, Mucho Macho Man, who stands at Adena Springs in Kentucky, alongside his sire Macho Uno, has seven winners, and two repeat winners. His number of winners is at a respectable near 10% compared to his crop numbers, and Mucho Gusto is his second stakes winner, along with Mucho Unusual.