Category Archives: Bloodstock

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.

Say you had squirreled away four and a half million dollars somehow, and decided to buy the best mare your money could get you. The 2018 Fasig-Tipton November Sale and day one of Keeneland’s November Sale offered opportunity galore, in the glorious presences of Stopchargingmaria, Lady Eli, and My Miss Sophia.

Once the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile races have been run, an assessment of the leading freshman sires can finally be made, and this year, as usual, those results have skewed the leading freshman sires ranks, as Cross Traffic, with his filly Jaywalk (who also won the Frizette S.-G1) winning the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies-G1, making her a millionaire in the process, and bringing his first crop earnings to $1,942,157.

When Leofric, by Candy Ride, won the Grade Two Hagyard Fayette S. at Keeneland on October 27, many things were at work to guide him to victory, among them weather and mud, because the favorite, Hofburg, clearly labored. Owned by Landers Racing, LLC, bred by Peter E. Blum, trained by Brad Cox, and ridden smartly by Florent Geroux, Leofric inherited his sire’s proclivity for getting mudders, as well as having a pedigree that in so many ways mimics that of Candy Ride’s very best runner, the magnificent Horse of the Year Gun Runner, who is out of a Giant’s Causeway mare, and whose second dam is by Quiet American, making him 4 x 4 Fappiano.

A 70/1 long shot winning the Grade 1 Breeders’ Futurity S. at Keeneland on October 6 created a frisson of excitement for the crowd, trainer Ben Colebrook winning his first graded stakes, jockey Albin Jiminez ditto, and especially second crop sire Paynter, whose first two crops had not been setting the world on fire—until now. The colt, Knicks Go, took the Futurity with ease, full of run, eventually winning by 5 ½ in a win that was never in question.

When Parx has its biggest race day, with two million-dollar grade one races on the card, the Cotillion S. and the Pennsylvania Derby, the biggest guns come out. No surprise, then, that the jockey known by the nickname Big Money won both, on September 22, 2018, within the space of a single hour. Smith is certainly one of the greats of all time, and his brilliant ride on Midnight Bisou, which resulted in the disqualification of the previously unbeaten Monomoy Girl, and his confident, chilly hand ride on McKinzie, proved you can have no one better at the controls. Smith is simply the Master. Whether he’s riding for Baffert or Asmussen, betting on Big Money Mike is the ultimate no brainer in racing.

The 2018 Keeneland September Sale represented change in more ways than the obvious maximizing of book one to four days, the entire first week of the sale, in reality putting book one and book two together, shortening the number of entries sold per day, and even beginning the sale at one o’clock because of the torrential rain in the weekend preceding the sale, which inhibited buyers’ ability to examine the select yearlings. It would appear that 2018 reveals a shift in the tectonic plates of the yearling market, with new stars emerging and energizing both the averages and the total amount of receipts to Keeneland.