AFTER A FASHION

Warm spring weather arrived in Central Kentucky the other day. Exercise riders began to doff excess garb, thus revealing previously hidden "epidermal art". It makes one wonder if the only ones making money at the track these days are those who wield the tattoo tools. The recipients of these inky fashion statements, or should we describe them as victims, are not moving up in class a whole lot. The French have a derogatory word for this attitude, "deshabille'.

STAR SHOOT STAKES

It's been said before that the best deals are often ones that you don't make. Case in point with the recent Star Shoot Stakes at Woodbine, won by Brereton Jones homebred Biofuel. Jones tried to sell the Stormin Fever at auction but found no takers and brought her home. A fellow came along later and said that he was prepared to pay the $20,000 reserve price set by Jones. He had only to confirm the deal with a partner.

A day or so later the man admitted that he could not close on the transaction due to his partner's backing away. Jones took the filly back home and put her in training last year as a 2-year-old.
You guessed it, she went on to be named champion juvenile in Canada and her brilliant win in her 2010 debut bodes well for further glories.

Second in the Star Shoot was a Cactus Ridge filly which I purchased for Canadian owner Dan Robb, a former golf pro turned Vancouver businessman. After an l8 month search I found a filly for him that would fill the best. I heard about her from the consummate horseman and trader Roy Coffee of Lexington, KY. Roy is known for his keen eye to find prospects for improvement at all levels. His motto for his Blind Faith Farm is "Horses bought and sold daily".

In this instance I need a two-hour ride to Lebanon, KY to inspect a lovely black filly who worked a quarter mile over a three furlong training track. Roy had bought the filly for $1,200 at a Fasig-Tipton sale and I forked over $25,000 of Mr. Robb's money, content that I had found the one I could recommend without reservation.
She's earned some $100,000 and has a bright future.

A good horse, like gold, is where you find it. I have beaten the bushes and worked the backwaters of the Thoroughbred world for some four decades now. That's what makes this fun.

DERBY DRESSCODE

When noted thoroughbred artist Pamela Parker called Churchill Downs to inquire about a dress code on Kentucky Derby she was told:

“Wear a wetsuit!”

Nary a horse ran a furlong in :09.4 in the March Ocala Breeders Sales of two -year-olds in training this spring. That compares to 10 such burning up the track moves at this same sale a year ago. Common sense moderation seemed to rule the day.

There is something about California speed that takes over when consignors cross the Rockies. Four horses raced in :9.4 at Barretts and another matched that during the Fasig-Tipton Texas sale. It looks a bit loony to scorch the earth that way, especially in view of the dismal performance record of previous hot-doggers.

Gone Fishin’ proved a useful horse after putting up that time on the Keeneland turf.

But between that Dogwood Stable horse and the outlandish Green Monkey there were any number of speedballs whose best day was the date they were sold.

Maybe I’m biased because we topped the inaugural Barretts sale in 1989 with a Roberto colt who had the stands buzzing when he worked an eighth in, get this, :11.

When I am buying at juvenile sales I give such horses a wide berth while in search for prospects that do not need re-education camp after such an injudicious breeze.

SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES

Just getting back home from the sales was a bit tense a few weeks back. The Atlanta-Lexington puddle jumper was full up as usual when two burly inebriates plopped down in front of my season. Soon after takeoff one decided to light up a Marlboro and puffed away.

The flight attendant (Delta) handled the situation professionally, having taken the offending butt and quietly letting the pilots know what was going on. I kept a watchful eye on smoker No. One (the other guy passed out) in case there was trouble.

Law enforcement officers met the plane and removed the nicotine fiend without incident.Police interviewed me but never did follow up on the incident to news media.

The whole episode got me thinking...the Transportation Safety Authority will confiscate 3 ounces of water but allows passengers who have flammable lighter fluid in their possession. What sense does that make?

Former Kentucky first lady (and Miss America) Phyllis George was also a passenger on that flight. If there’s ever a senior tour for onetime Miss Americas she could still compete.

JUVENILE BEHAVIOR

Juvenile sales are in full stride at this writing. Your correspondent is shipping out with the morning tide (actually in an airplane) to do battle with the Somali pirates (pinhookers) who patrol the Florida shores in search of booty. Me, I’ll settle for a decent horse or two that’s worth the money.

The combat is not quite that bad but a whiff of piracy will always pervade the 2-year-old markets. It’s a mug’s game when seven figure prices can be extracted from gullible owners who think the difference of a fifth of a second can separate the men from the boys. The Green Monkey will not be forgotten for a long, long time and he was purchased by one of the smartest teams in the business.

There always seems to be a new angle at such sales. In their formative days juvenile sales served as liquidity for leftover stock that could not cut it in a yearling vendue.
A fast work was necessary to show a profit.

Sellers were fond of adding as much equipment to the horse as there was room for.
Shadow rolls were on almost every steed. Flesh colored blinkers were applied universally in hopes that the audience mighty not notice. Whips, sometimes even spurs were used to coerce one more tick of the clock.

The advent of high definition video means that attentive buyers would have ample opportunity to see the horses in a more natural state.

In vogue the past decade is the spread of “galloping out”. Most of this is a bogus attempt to sound like you have more horse than you do. Riders are now evidently ordered to stay down and milk another furlong out of their mounts.

As you might imagine, there are widely varied unofficial times reported . Some enterprising observers have taken to selling the product of their “gallop outs”.

Some of these guys couldn’t time a 3-minute egg yet they find believers ready to part with cash in hopes of having an edge.

I must confess that I would never be brave enough to see one of my horses exposed to injury by an unfamiliar furlong on the clubhouse turn.

A proper gallop out is highly desirable-I call it “natural gas”-when a horse is reaching out with no encouragement from the pilot. Those are the rare ones you want to pay attention to.

I’ve been doing this for decades and I developed some formulas that have produced some 40 stakes winners headed by Grade I winners Harmony Lodge, Bishop Court Hill and major winner Tricky Trevor.

It helps to be able to handicap the sellers. Make it a habit to deal with men and women who have proven they can turn out a sound horse.

You might want to have me on your side when it comes to buying an auction 2-year-old.

FINDERS KEEPERS

When Congaree was retired to stud after a brilliant racing career Stonerside manager John Adger commissioned me to round up a few mares that would complement the stallion.

I went straightaway to Toronto and came back with three Canadian stakes winners with a capital outlay of roughly $l00,000 for the trio (perhaps a little less with the currency differential).

Early returns indicate that our knack for finding top value in mares continues unabated.
The threesome of Brattothecore, La Grande Mamma and Leading Role earned a composite $l million from 62 starts in their racing days.

Soundness was the dominant theme of our search on behalf of Bob and Janice McNair.
Congaree’s fore legs were suspect, to say the least, and one could only ferret out lively prospective mates and hope. Canadian racing is conducted without analgesic nostrums such as Bute so it stands to reason that horses capable of stakes wins have displayed sufficient rigor to overcome some limitations in the sire’s makeup. Pretty elementary reasoning but it had worked splendidly a few years before when we helped launch the career of Canadian stallion Archers Bay.

Bratttothecore got off the blocks first when her City Zip colt named City Style won a stakes in Louisiana and followed it up with a placing in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf. He is now in Dubai with the Darley population which was included in the Stonerside sale of its entire Thoroughbred investment.

La Grande Mamma produced a Congaree colt named Kettle River who won back-to-back races at Santa Anita and Hollywood, in the process earning a berth in the weekend’s Sham Stakes. He faltered in that salty spot but is a horse that bears watching in the second tier three-year-old races.

Leading Role was placed in the Stonerside Texas program and has a couple of foals that are considered promising.

Our handiwork showed up in other venues from Los Angeles to Miami to Barbados in recent days. Sweet Vale is the dam of Sterwins who took the Barbados Gold Cup. I recommended the purchase of Sweet Vale who did not stand training after three starts.
She has outdone herself as a producer.

Bickerson has Canadian antecedents, too. Winner of Gulfstream Park’s Forward Gal stakes, her second dam is Lil Ol’ Gal who I happened to buy for a friend in my fledgling role as caretaker for the British Columbia stallion Bold Laddie.

Lil Ol’ Gal was about l4.2 hands, hence the name, but lightning fast. She broke the world record for 3 1/2 furlongs first time out. I bought her back for a healthy buck as a 4-year-old for John Franks and she went on to win the Ontario Fashion Stakes at Woodbine. The diminutive mare was a favorite of Franks’ broodmare band.
At Santa Anita, Harris Farm’s Red Sun ran his record to four wins in five starts. I bought her dam (by Affirmed) for Franks although she became one that got away during one of his periodic dispersals. Her four stakes horses have run out $1 million or so.

SIC TRANSIT GLORIA

Everyone seems to have a Tiger Woods story nowadays. This one is PG-13 so you can tell it to your kids.

In the spring of 1982 I was living on a small ranch in Central California. I had just been hired by ESPN to do the first live show of 4 1/2 hours from Churchill Downs on Kentucky Derby day.

Our producer was Scotty Connell, a NBC-Sports executive who had signed up with the fledgling cable network. Jim Simpson, Lou Palmer and I did the commentary.

Connell noted my California address and told me that he had signed up Sandy Koufax as a baseball announcer for NBC but it hadn’t worked out. Sandy was too private a person, he said, for network television.

Sandy lived a mile or so down River Road from my place near Templeton. Los Alamitos owner Ed Allred had a quarter horse ranch across the road from Rio Vista, a one time bustling stallion operation run by the Dollase family. Cardiff Stud was another neighbor.

Connell arranged an introduction to Sandy and we became fast friends who played late Sunday afternoon rounds at the Chalk Mountain muni in Atascadero. Sandy had recently left the Paso Robles country club, fed up with a wicked duck hook that shot his handicap up from scratch into double figures.

Chalk Mountain suited our purposes because we could play quickly and in complete privacy, a must for Sandy. We would have one beer afterward, never two, and baseball was not to be discussed.

One Sunday afternoon was different. The pro checked us in at the double-wide trailer that served as his shop.

“Take time to watch the kid on the practice tee,” he said. “You’ll be hearing from him one day.”

One swing was all it took for a 6-year-old to reveal himself as Tiger Woods, having a lesson with his father Earl. We watched him hit a few balls in silence and duly noted the

incipient talent which was already causing a buzz in California junior golf circles.

Next time I saw Tiger he was winning the 1997 Masters by 12 shots. Sandy and I bumped into each other less frequently after moving farther south to Santa Barbara.

Sad to see his name listed a year ago among victims of swindler Bernie Madoff.

Into every life some rain must fall.

GONE WITH THE WINDFIELDS

Lost amidst the fuss about the Overbrook Farm dispersal at Keeneland was the whimpered final dissolution of the Windfields Farm of Ontario, Canada. There’s a certain irony in the fact that Overbrook owed its success to Storm Cat, a descendant of Windfields’ immortal Northern Dancer.

My one and only face-to-face meeting with Windfields founder E.P. Taylor came in the spring of 1970 during the annual convention of the Thoroughbred Racing Association in New Orleans. I was the a cub reporter for the local daily and set out to Fair Grounds to arrange an interview with the most powerful man in Canadian racing circles, and soon the world.

Taylor was a bit abrupt when I approached with my request.

“What do you want to talk to me about ?” he said somewhat gruffly.

“I’d like to hear your thoughts on whether Nijinsky can win the 2000 Guineas and perhaps the Triple Crown,” I said.

“Pull up a chair,” he commanded.

His demeanor shifted at once and he was at his voluble best for the next hour or so, extolling the virtues of his champion 2-year-old until he was called to a meeting.

Nijinsky went on to sweep the arduous English Triple Crown, a feat unmatched in the intervening four decades.

Meanwhile, I moved to the West Coast of Canada and was setting up shop for a bloodstock career, augmented with print and broadcast work.

Taylor had a friend in the whisky business in Vancouver who sought his counsel. Capt. Potter was his name and he needed someone to help run a training center which he had gotten stuck with by some shady characters.

Mr. Taylor told him to give me a call. I was flabberbgasted.

Soon thereafter I was track announcer for Capt. Potter at his hastily conceived quarter horse track called Meadow Creek Ranch. That and other Meadow Creek duties hastened my learning curve considerably.

Taylor and Northern Dancer went on to conquer the world. Taylor had a confidant in Joe Thomas who ran the Canadian operation, abetted by British agent George Blackwell.

Soon the entire Thoroughbred universe was awash in Northern Dancer blood. The Windfields team decided that they needed some new strains to infuse their broodmare band.

Chosen were two winners of the English Derby, Snow Knight and Master Willie. Both of them rolled “snake eyes”.

Snow Knight was an unfortunate choice in that he was a notorious rogue who needed a small army of assistant starters and a long buggy whip just to enter the starting gate. Horses that ill-mannered rarely succeed at stud.

Master Willie sired horses unsuitable for racing in North America and was soon forgotten.

The vagaries of Thoroughbred breeding were demonstrated anew at Windfields, only this time on a positive note. The full brothers Viceregal and Vice Regent entered stud at the Oshawa, Ontario nursery.

Viceregal bred books of mares that befit a juvenile champion. His brother had to content himself with the overflow.

Vice Regent became a leading sire, of course, while his illustrious kin was exiled to France where he faded into obscurity.

Over the years I have had the pleasure and privilege of seeing the great stallions in person. Except for Northern Dancer, more’s the pity

The Thoroughbred world lost a charming character with the passing in October of Pennsylvanian Bert Linder. He was 93.

We crossed paths first at Saratoga during the 1998 Fasig-Tipton sale. I had been contracted to buy some yearlings for a flashy new player from Canada. One of my tenets in helping a rookie get started safely was to buy well-made fillies from deep families. If the filly can’t run much you have a chance to get your money back if some kinfolk show up and flesh out a prominent family.

That’s why I was sitting ready when Bert’s Tabasco Cat filly entered the auction ring as Hip #1. She was a real beauty and I thought we had booted the opening kick-off in style, buying her for $330,000. Before I could sign the ticket Bert was right there thanking me for buying the chestnut filly. He had a one-horse consignment so the day’s work was successful and cause for celebration. He hied his way to the bar while I worked my way through the bidding list.

The Tabasco filly turned out to be not particularly athletic so trainer Todd Pletcher and I recommended that the filly (named Ellesmere) seek some black type at Fort Erie, across the Niagara River from Buffalo, NY. She placed in a stakes as expected and was soon after retired to be bred.

Linder had gained an international reputation for raising top horses at his farm near Scranton. That’s coal country-anthracite or “hard” coal as opposed to the bituminous “soft” variety found in western PA where I spent my formative years. If a Pennsylvania school boy can spell both kinds of coal it is said that he can get into Penn State. Others end up at Slippery Rock.

Ellesmere’s second foal turned out to be a multiple stakes-winner and Keeneland track record holder. This fall she had out the Breeders’ Cup juvenile turf second in Bridgetown, who captured the Summer Stakes at Woodbine

Tabasco Cat proved to be less than North American breeders expected and he was shipped to Japan in short order.

These days Scranton is noted mainly for spawning Vice-President Joe Biden which may or may not be a good thing to know, depending on political persuasion. Secretary of State Clinton also claims Scranton relatives.

Be that as it may, the Linder legacy bred true to the very end.

PALSY WALSY 2.0

During one of my “writer’s block” episodes I was told by one of my few regular readers

to come up with some new material. “I’m tired of reading about Palsy Walsy,” said Padraig Campion, squire of Blandford Stud.

Sorry, Padraig, but I couldn,t help but notice that Palsy Walsy shows up prominently in the pedigree of that great Japanese mare Vodka, winner over colts in the recent Japan Cup.

Palsy Walsy is the second dam of Rousillon, sire of Tanino Sister, in turn the dam of Vodka.

Now that I’ve brought you up to date on one of my favorite mares I promise to generate some more lively fare during the grey wintry fortnight when the Thoroughbreds take their rest.