Posts Tagged ‘Lemon Drop Kid’

The Paulick Report is pleased to once again offer the pedigree insights of Edwin Anthony in the weeks leading up to the Kentucky Derby. Ed has lifelong experience in the Thoroughbred industry, has practical experience planning matings for his family’s stable and formerly as a pedigree adviser to Three Chimneys Farm. His perspective is straightforward and refreshingly opinionated, and I advise anyone interested in Thoroughbred pedigrees to pick up a copy of his book, “The American Thoroughbred (Volume One)”—available for purchase here.

In this first of a series of articles, he looks at the pedigree of Fasig-Tipton Fountain of Youth winner Eskendereya. – Ray Paulick

ESKENDEREYA (Giant’s Causeway—Aldebaran Light, by Seattle Slew)
By Edwin Anthony
I wrote a series of eight pedigree profiles for horses on the “Triple Crown trail” starting about this time last year, and recent Fountain of Youth (G2) winner Eskendereya will serve as the first horse in our series this season. It’s interesting to look back at the horses we profiled last year (Friesan Fire, Quality Road, Pioneerof the Nile, Dunkirk, I Want Revenge, Papa Clem, Chocolate Candy, Rachel Alexandra) to see how they fared.

Quality Road is obviously a top horse (he missed the Triple Crown with quarter cracks), while Dunkirk and Pioneerof the Nile were each able to place in one classic race, and I wrote a token piece about Rachel Alexandra because she looked like a very special filly, even though she had not won anything more than a G2 race at that stage.  Only a fortune teller could have predicted Rachel Alexandra’s Horse of the Year campaign after changing hands or the rapid ascension of Birdstone (sire of longshot classic winners Mine That Bird and Summer Bird) as a major classic influence.

Even though I have studied Thoroughbred pedigrees for going on 25 years, no one can get around the folly of bad luck, injuries in training, or the fact that many horses look dominant going nine furlongs (a mile-and-an-eighth) but simply aren’t up to the demanding task of running classic distances at a competitive speed.

That’s the mystery of stamina and genetics that we’re constantly trying to figure out.  Of course, even a horse that is capable of competing at classic distances still needs to put out the effort, and sometimes horses have off-days just like people.

If nothing else, we strive to learn about the strengths and limitations of the stallions and ancestors under discussion and hope to come out smarter on the other side.  At the very least, we want to learn what strategies are working in pedigrees, even if some of them aren’t up to the classic standard.  Who are the soundest horses, where is the stamina coming from, and what ancestors are best to inbreed to?  These are the answers we’re looking for.

Pedigree analysts (like myself) try to identify patterns in graded stakes results as a way of predicting the future.  Given that the Storm Cat line has been a poor source of classic winners, then you probably wouldn’t want to lean heavily on Storm Cat’s sons (or stallions out of Storm Cat mares) in your stallion recommendations for breeders that want to breed for the classics.  The Storm Cat line hasn’t had a winner of a Triple Crown race since Tabasco Cat in 1994, although Bluegrass Cat was second in the Kentucky Derby, Belmont, and Travers in 2006.  You should note that Bluegrass Cat is out of a mare by classic influence A.P. Indy and his dam is heavily inbred to the foundation mare La Troienne, including being from the Numbered Account (champion 2YO filly by Buckpasser) branch of that important family.

So, while the Storm Cat line is dominant in 2-year-old racing and in races contested at distances of 9 furlongs or shorter, it does not appear capable of producing classic types, unless there is a LOT of help on the dam side of the equation.  Of course, when you start to speak in these kinds of absolutes, a special horse can come along and provide us with the exception to the rule.

Storm Cat’s son Giant’s Causeway was a tough campaigner in Europe out of a good racemare by Rahy, with a second dam by English Derby winner and classic influence Roberto.  He was undeniably consistent and high class, winning a series of Group 1 races at more than a mile. In his final start, he gave classic distance specialist Tiznow a real run for his money in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, that being his only start on dirt.  So, Giant’s Causeway was sound, very fast, and capable of competing with top horses at the American classic distance of 10 furlongs (a mile-and-a-quarter).  This makes him an exception among sons of Storm Cat, as most of his sons that have found any measure of success at stud were much better at a mile or less and have passed on this penchant for speed among their progeny.

Giant’s Causeway has already sired Grade 1 winners in America over 10 furlongs like Heatseeker (Santa Anita Handicap), Frost Giant (Suburban), and Red Giant (NWR, Clement L. Hirsch Memorial Turf Championship), so you can see that if there is a son of Storm Cat capable of siring an American classic winner, then Giant’s Causeway is probably the one.

The runaway win by Eskendereya (by Giant’s Causeway) in the Fountain of Youth (G2) was more than visually impressive.  You could see that the horse really relished the opportunity to go two turns, and he is now 3 for 3 on the dirt, his only losses coming in his first start (a maiden event on turf at Saratoga) and a poor effort in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (G1), contested over the synthetic surface at Santa Anita.  He was reported to have a troubled trip in that race as well.

I have often thought that a true classic type horse is able to simply get into a steady gallop and carve out “12’s,” which is to say that he can consistently complete each furlong of a race in 12 seconds.  It becomes increasingly difficult to do with each furlong, as the muscles begin to tire, and Secretariat’s world record time of 2:24 in the 1973 Belmont (over 12 furlongs) is the best example of a horse being able to accomplish this feat over such a distance.  It’s not about an explosive move or “turn of foot” with classic horses; it’s steady horsepower over a distance.  Classic horses “stay” (as the Europeans like to say), while horses more suited to shorter distances simply run out of gas, unable to maintain a steady stream of “12’s” on the toteboard teletimer.

This is exactly what Eskendereya did to the field in the Fountain of Youth (G2)—he galloped them into submission.  After taking over after a half-mile in a soft 47.92, he completed six furlongs in 1:12.41, a mile in 1:36.54, with a final time for nine furlongs of 1:48.87, echoing the many 12-second furlongs before the last one.  So, like several other sons of Giant’s Causeway, Eskendereya looks capable of running a distance of ground as far as 10 furlongs at a competitive rate of speed.  Let’s look at the bottom side of his pedigree to check for more stamina.

Eskendereya’s damsire, Seattle Slew, won the Triple Crown and has been a very successful classic influence, with descendants like A.P. Indy (Belmont, Breeders’ Cup Classic), Bernardini (Preakness, Travers), Cigar (Breeders’ Cup Classic, Dubai World Cup), Lemon Drop Kid (Belmont, Travers), Mineshaft (Jockey Club Gold Cup, Suburban), and Slew o’ Gold (Jockey Club Gold Cup twice) serving as notable examples.

Alydar (second in all 3 Triple Crown races to Affirmed) is the sire of Eskendereya’s second dam, and beyond the fact that he sired two Kentucky Derby winners (Alysheba and Strike the Gold) and a Belmont winner (Easy Goer), Horse of the Year Point Given (Preakness, Belmont, Travers) was produced by a mare by champion Turkoman, he being a son of Alydar.

We know that inbreeding to the family of Almahmoud (second dam of both Halo and Northern Dancer) has been quite successful, and Giant’s Causeway is a very good example of this, as Storm Cat is a grandson of Northern Dancer and Rahy (his damsire) is out of a mare by Halo.  The pedigree of Eskendereya shows why a six-generation computer program is a good investment, as his third dam carries intensive inbreeding to the Almahmoud family as well.  His third dam is by Northern Dancer himself (giving Eskendereya “balanced” inbreeding to Northern Dancer—through a son and a daughter), and while his fourth dam was sired by the stout stamina influence Ribot (winner of the 12-furlong “Arc” twice) his fifth dam is actually the mare Cosmah, she being the dam of Halo and a daughter of Almahmoud. Thus, Eskendereya is not only inbred to Northern Dancer through  a son and a daughter, he is inbred to Halo’s dam, Cosmah, 6 x 5 and carries four total crosses of Almahmoud.

As the ancestors Northern Dancer, Halo, and their granddam Almahmoud get further back in pedigrees, this reinforcement strategy of crossing horses inbred to Almahmoud should continue to find success and revive their influence in classic pedigrees.  My parents bred and raced Preakness winner Pine Bluff (inbred 4 x 4 to Almahmoud), and I have noticed him working well with reinforcement of Almahmoud’s genes, crossing successfully with stallions like More Than Ready (by Southern Halo—closely inbred to Almahmoud), Menifee (by Harlan—closely inbred to Almahmoud), and Jules (from the Northern Dancer family and carrying Halo in his pedigree).  So, it seems to be a strategy that is paying dividends with stallions and mares already carrying inbreeding to Almahmoud.

Given the fact that Giant’s Causeway has already proven capable of siring runners that excel at classic distances, and the fact that Eskendereya carries a number of other classic influences in his pedigree (Seattle Slew, Alydar, Ribot, and intensive inbreeding to the influential Almahmoud family), I’d say that his classic prospects look very bright indeed.  His clear preference for dirt racing and ability to string together one 12 second furlong after another only boosts his stock, in my opinion.  If Eskenereya can arrive in Louisville with a solid Florida Derby (G1) effort under his belt, he should be a very strong contender.
 
Edwin Anthony was the staff pedigree consultant at Three Chimneys Farm for six years and has penned dozens of articles on pedigree research.  He also published The American Thoroughbred (Volume I) in 2008, which can be ordered via the banner ad link on this web page or on his web site at www.thoroughbredadvisor.com.

By Ray Paulick
Rallying eight or nine wide into the stretch under Mike Smith, Richard’s Kid ran down Einstein in the final yards to post a 24-1 upset in the $1-million Pacific Classic at Del Mar on Sunday. Favored Rail Trip finished third, Parading fourth and second choice Colonel John was fifth in the Grade 1 race for 3-year-olds and up going 10 furlongs on Polytrack. Bob Baffert trains the winner, a 4-year-old son of Lemon Drop Kid out of the Broad Brush mare Tough Broad. He was purchased earlier this year by Arnold Zetcher after racing in Maryland for Robert Meyerhoff and  trainer Richard Small.

“He loves this track,” Baffert said on TVG after the race. “I bought him for the synthetics, and he likes it.”

Richard’s Kid came into the Pacific Classic as one of the most lightly regarded starters in an 11-horse field that included multiple Grade 1 winners Einstein and Colonel John, along with Hollywood Gold Cup winner Rail Trip, 2008 Gold Cup winner Mast Track, and Global Hunter, winner of this year’s Grade 1 Eddie Read Handicap on the Del Mar Turf.

Tres Borrachos outran Mast Track to get the early lead, setting fractions of :23.16 for the opening quarter mile, :47.42 for the half mile and 1:12.53 for six furlongs. Richard’s Kid lagged second from the back, about 15 lengths off the lead. Approaching the far turn, Garrett Gomez tried to move Colonel John toward the leaders on the inside, but as the field rounded the turn, he was shuffled back, losing valuable position before reaching the stretch. 

As Colonel John was forced to retreat behind a wall of horses,, Einstein and Julien Leparoux were making a four wide move around the turn, then surged to the lead down the stretch, looking like a winner until Smith and Richard’s Kid came flying on the outside. It was a tough loss for Einstein, the Brazilian-bred by Spend a Buck who was racing for the first time in the colors of Frank Stronach’s Stronach Stable, which purchased the 7-year-old a week before the race.

The margin of victory for Richard’s Kid was a neck. He completed the 10 furlongs on Polytrack in 2:02.39 after a mile clocking in 1:37.37.

The win was the sixth from 19 starts for Richard’s Kid, who was bred in Maryland by Meyerhoff’s Fitzhugh LLC. His lone stakes victory before the Pacific Classic came in the ungraded John B. Campbell Handicap at Laurel in February, when he defeated eventual Grade 1 Whitney winner Bullsbay. He ran twice for Baffert and Zetcher, finishing seventh in the Eddie Read and second, beaten a nose by Unusual Suspect, in the Cougar II Handicap going 1 1/2 miles on Polytrack Aug. 5. Two bullet works since that race had him on edge for the Pacific Classic.

Baffert was asked on TVG if the Breeders’ Cup Classic would be in order for Richard’s Kid. “Of course,” he said. “Win and you’re in, right?”

Click here for video of the Pacific Classic and here to see the official chart.

I’ve always been surprised at the habits of many buyers at yearling sales…they sometimes remind me of lemmings marching to the sea, making decisions without logic or rationality. I once asked a leading buyer why he often spent so much money on yearlings by unproven first-year sires, a practice that is common enough to inflate the yearling average for those new sires. His response was simple: “They haven’t failed yet.”

That philosophy makes no sense to me, for it would seem far more pragmatic to look for undervalued proven stallions than to roll the dice on a group of newcomers whose chance of succeeding are somewhere between 5-10%.

Another unexplainable practice of yearling buyers is their disdain of foals born in the month of May. On average, it would make sense that May foals would be smaller than their January-April counterparts, so perhaps buyers at summer or fall yearling sales are simply unable to project how that smaller horse might look as a 2- or 3-year-old.

Some years ago, statistics accompanying an article I wrote for Bloodhorse’s MarketWatch newsletter, showed that May foals were only marginally behind earlier season foals in performance standards (stakes wins, money won), but their average yearling prices were much, much lower. Where I come from, that makes May foals a bargain.

Rob Whiteley, who operates the successful Liberation Farm breeding operation, came to the same conclusion in an article he wrote this week for the Thoroughbred Daily News. From the winning Kentucky Derby exacta of May foals Mine That Bird and Pioneerof the Nile to a review of May foals that have won Breeders’ Cup races, Whiteley makes a compelling argument that buyers should pay far more attention to May foals than they traditionally have. We’d like to thank Sue Finley of TDN for granting reprint rights of Whiteley’s article. – Ray Paulick

By Rob Whiteley
As a populist horseman, it makes me smile when a relatively obscure horse comes out of the hinterlands and beats up on a bunch of fashionably bred horses who are sired by generally over-priced, over-hyped, and over-bred stallions. And it turns my smile into a broad grin to observe that Mine That Bird is a mid-May foal.

To be fair, the valiant runner-up, Pioneerof the Nile, is regally bred and fully deserving of his cost of production. His bloodlines and hefty stud fee came through in a brave display of talent and determination, and those who played him unsuccessfully in the exotics only have themselves to blame for not taking home a big piece of the track. Like the item we look past in the front of the refrigerator, it was right there to see. Pioneerof the Nile is also a May foal, and if you had played a May foal exacta, you would have received $2,074.80 for a $2 exacta box.

(Ed. Note: A $2 exacta box with all of the May foals in the Derby would’ve cost $40. Atomic Rain (Smart Strike), Regal Ransom (Distorted Humor) and third-place finisher Musket Man (Yonaguska) are all May foals as well. A $1 triple box on the quintet would’ve set you back just $60, and returned $20,750.30)

In light of the continuous racing success achieved by May foals year after year, I am at a loss to rationally understand how that success fails to translate into the sales scene where May foals, as a group, bring approximately 35 percent less than their counterparts. For some in-grained reason, rooted in hearsay and perpetuated by the typical word of mouth momentum that spreads other horse industry falsehoods and myths, May foals get a bad rap at the sales, and are often discounted accordingly in the ring. This is such nonsense. The stigma on May foals that floats around on the winds of ignorance has no basis in fact.

It can even be persuasively argued that May foals actually have a slight advantage over other foals, as May foals are born according to a horse’s innate and natural spring-time predispositions, and with the most favorable environmental conditions.

Savvy buyers who keep up with the details of racing know that May foals, as a group, race as successfully as foals born in other months, and better than foals born in January. And the sharpest horsemen and pinhookers know that a few days or even weeks generally make little difference in a horse’s early development.

The most important factors in a horse’s ability to perform early involve genetically based precocity, balance, athleticism, and mental maturity, not date of birth. Each horse has its own genetically wound clock, and horses have wide-ranging differences in the rate that they develop, no matter which month they might be born in. Like foals born in January or February or any month, some May foals may be forward enough to zip along at two-year-old sales, while others may not be mature enough to race effectively until the middle of their three-year-old years, or later. Horses, like humans and other mammals, follow their own genetic blueprint.

When it is their time to perform, however, May foals truly hold their own, even as two-year-olds.

Except for the month of January, the fewest number of foals are born in May, yet they account for 10 percent of Breeders’ Cup Juvenile colt and filly champions. Furthermore, as May foals mature, their success rate in certain top level venues can be jaw-dropping. May foals have won a stunning 50 percent of the last 10 Breeders’ Cup Distaffs (including, Azeri, Round Pond, Spain, and Escena). And May foals have won over 25 percent of all Breeders’ Cup Mile races.

Despite the impressive frequency with which May foals find the winner’s circle in big races, however, a May foal may not win the Preakness this year. Instead, a magnificent January foal named Rachel Alexandra may be brilliant enough to outrun the boys, no matter when they were born (if she can adjust to a new groom, a new trainer, and new routines). But the Belmont, please take note, is entirely a different matter because of the extraordinary potency of the May foal factor.

The May foal factor is the strongest available predictor of Belmont success–far stronger than the most sophisticated figs or Beyer numbers–because May foals, incredibly, have won nearly 40 percent of the last 15 runnings of the Belmont (including, Afleet Alex, Lemon Drop Kid, Thunder Gulch, Touch Gold, Victory Gallop, and Mine That Bird’s own daddy, Birdstone). Therefore, given the historical dominance by May foals in this mile-and-a-half event, and given the Bird’s paternal family connection and the probable presence of steadfast Pioneerof the Nile, we could even be looking at the same May foal quinella we witnessed in the Derby. In any event, it is time we give May foals the respect they deserve, at the sales and on the track.

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