Posts Tagged ‘shug mcgaughey’

We are pleased to introduce a new weekly feature today, the Paulick Report Forum brought to you by Breeders’ Cup. Every Wednesday, we’ll talk with a Thoroughbred industry player about the game we all love, trying to get a better understanding of where we’ve been and where we may be headed. One thing I’ve learned throughout my years in this industry is that nothing comes easy. We are a sport and a business fraught with divisiveness, incoherence and confusion. But at the same time we are blessed to have many participants with great intelligence, insights and dedication. In short, we never know where the next good idea may come from.

We hope you will read each week’s Forum, offer your thoughts on the subject being discussed, and suggest to us other areas where we can advance the discussions that need to take place to get our industry moving in the right direction once again. Thanks to the Breeders’ Cup for their sponsorship of this process. 

It surprised me when Christophe Clement said that he has spent half of his 44 years in the United States. Maybe it’s the heavy French accent he still retains, or simply the blur of the years going by so quickly. But the third-generation horseman has made America his permanent home since 1991. He’d spent a couple of years here in the 1980s, working for Taylor Made Farm and trainer Shug McGaughey, before returning to Europe, where he served for four years as assistant to Luca Cumani in Newmarket, England. Earlier in his life, he had apprenticed for the master horseman Alec Head in Chantilly.

Clement, coming off an outstanding year when Gio Ponti won two Eclipse Awards for the Ryan family’s Castleton Lyons as turf male and older male champion, is preparing the 5-year-old son of Tale of the Cat for a possible run at the $10-million Dubai World Cup. He’s looking at a prep race at Tampa Bay Downs on turf in February prior to taking on the world’s best over the Tapeta Footings surface at the new Meydan racetrack in Dubai. Gio Ponti is coming off a second-place finish to Zenyatta in the Breeders’ Cup Classic over the Pro-Ride synthetic track at Santa Anita.

In this, our first Paulick Report Forum brought to you by Breeders’ Cup, Clement provided some insights about the sport of Thoroughbred racing and how it’s changed during his lifetime.

What is it about international racing that is important to you?
First of all, with the Dubai race I can give you 10 million reasons. If it was a million-dollar race, I wouldn’t be going. I would be going instead to the Santa Anita Handicap. In the case of the Dubai World Cup, the purse has a lot to do with it.
 
But international racing is important. I’m just a trainer, but if I was a breeder or an owner, I would say it is very important for the breed to know which horse is the best and which sires are better. I saw an article in the TDN that said, as recently as 20 years ago, 80% of the world’s leading stallions stood in the United States. Today that number is 50%. The United States does not permeate world breeding the way it was 20 years ago.

From a personal standpoint, I don’t get as many fillies or mares sent from Europe to race here and then be bred to American stallions. Their owners are keeping them in Europe.
 
Why the shift?
A couple of things. First there is medication. People refuse to talk about it, but a lot of people in Europe still don’t want to breed to U.S. sires because those horses raced on medication. A lot of Europeans do not understand why we continue to allow medication while the rest of the world is doing OK without it.

That’s one of the factors. It is an issue for some people. There are two things I would like to see changed. I am convinced Grade 1 races should not be handicaps. It’s not healthy to use weight to try and beat the best horses. Allowance conditions are fine. This is something Bobby Frankel and I talked about, and Bobby was against handicaps in Grade 1s. I also believe there should be no medication in Grade 1s because we use these races to improve the breed.

So why do we continue to permit it?
I don’t know. Every track is different. There is no federal authority. No racing commissioner. The Graded Stakes Committee took grades away from Pennsylvania because they failed to do the proper testing, but there is limited means to enforce national rules. I’m just a trainer. These are some of my thoughts. I’m trying to win a race tomorrow.

You said there were two major reasons for the shift in stallion power away from the U.S.
Right. Secondly, the two groups, the Maktoums and Coolmore, have given European breeders access to some very good stallions because they are retaining some of the best racehorses. Twenty or 30 years ago the world’s best horses came to Gainesway—horses like Lyphard, Riverman, and Blushing Groom. This year, apparently no American farms bid for Sea the Stars. 20 years ago an American farm would have. Aside from Giant’s Causeway and Kingmambo, it’s been quite a while since an exciting European horse came to the United States as a sire. The top milers in Europe are no longer coming here, either.

What training methods have you adapted from your European background?
I am more American than European. I’m 44 and have spent more time in this country than anywhere else. But I’ll say this. When Sir Michael Stoute or Andre Fabre wake up in the morning they have a choice of tracks on which to train their horses. Here it’s the main track or the training track. Those guys have a much wider choice for their horses.

We should have access to all surfaces: dirt, turf and Polytrack.  If you have a good dirt track, like in New York, a good turf course, and a good Polytrack surface to race or train over on days when it’s very wet, it would be very popular. But the problem is who pays? It would be very expensive. In an ideal world, that’s the way it would be. A dirt track should be safe if maintained the right way. Turf is safe, and off the turf races could be run on a Polytrack.

You recently cut back on the number of horses you have in California. Is it because of the problems with Santa Anita’s surface?
It’s Mother Nature. I’m not against Santa Anita. They did everything they could. Wherever you are, you have to deal with Mother Nature. It’s been very wet out there. One reason Gio Ponti came back East is I found that the flight to Dubai will be easier from Florida than California.

In the United States all trainers think they are track superintendents, but the track superintendents know their job. There is no ideal surface 365 days a year. Bob Baffert was really negative on Polytrack, but he’s such a smart guy and a good trainer he’s really adapted. He’s doing great on that surface.

What can American trainers learn from others around the world?
When you work for the people I’ve worked for, you learn that change is not always negative. People in racing don’t like change. Change is not always a bad thing. We should be more open minded about change. A typical thing is the synthetic tracks: trainers should be more open minded. Of course it will not be perfect from day one, but it is ridiculous to be so against it, just as it is ridiculous to be against dirt racing. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. The Kentucky Derby is on dirt and should remain on dirt, and the Belmont Stakes is on dirt and should remain on dirt. But we shouldn’t exclude Polytrack from our racing because it represents change.

Finally, how do you feel about Rachel Alexandra’s owner Jess Jackson’s recent comments that the field for the 2009 Breeders’ Cup Classic was not nearly as good as the 2008 race when his Curlin was defeated?
I think it’s just another reason that he should have participated in the race.

Copyright © 2010, The Paulick Report

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By Ray Paulick
Over 20 years ago, during a trip to Japan to ride Pay the Butler in the Japan Cup and participate in the World Super Jockeys competition, jockey Chris McCarron was asked to speak at the Japan Racing Association’s jockey school, where teenagers with professional riding aspirations are taught about the sport, about horses and about life. McCarron was impressed by what he saw, and returned home vowing to someday help start a similar school in the United States.

“We’ve got the best racing in the world,” he said. “Yet we’ve never had a place to formally train for a job in the industry as a jockey. There are riding schools around the world. Panama has the most famous one, but there are others, including one in Newmarket, and the oldest one in the world was established in South Africa.”

Following his retirement in 2002, Hall of Famer McCarron ramped up his efforts and sought support for the idea of a jockey school, something the late Hall of Fame Bill Shoemaker toyed with during the latter stages of his career. He met with a group that included Keeneland president Nick Nicholson, who had worked with Shoemaker on the concept, and with seed money provided by Keeneland found a home for the school within the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. McCarron called it a “match made in heaven.”

The North American Racing Academy was launched in the fall of 2006, with a first-year class of 11 students who would spend the next two years in the classroom, getting hands-on training from McCarron and be placed in an internship with a top trainer. The 11 students were selected from more than 50 applicants, and eight of them completed their studies, getting an associate degree. Subsequent classes included 10 students that enrolled in 2007 (six graduated), 17 in 2008 (16 are on target to graduate this spring), and 11 enrolled in the fall of 2009. In addition to those enrolled to learn how to become jockeys, the 2008 enrollment class included eight students on what McCarron calls the “horseman’s pathway.”

The North American Racing Academy has a staff of four. McCarron, the director, lectures in the classroom and offers hands-on lessons; there is a second full-time instructor; a barn manager; and a director of program facilities. The NARA is based at the Kentucky Horse Park and uses the Training Center on Paris Park classroom work.

Cost to students ranges from $132 per credit hour for Kentucky residents to $425 per credit hour for out of state students. Seventy hours are required for an associate’s degree.

The latter half of 2009 was a bittersweet time for McCarron, who was devastated to see one of NARA’s early graduates, Michael Straight, severely injured in a spill at Arlington Park. The final month of the year brought some good news when Ben Creed became the first NARA graduate to win a riding title, when he led all jockeys at the Turfway Park holiday meeting.

Creed is an example, McCarron said, of how students can really blossom during their on-track internships. “He surprised the heck out of me,” McCarron said. “He was not very far along when he was here, but he interned in California with John Sadler and came back a lot  more polished. He really came along in a short period of time. Ben is one of those guys like me who had no previous experience at all with horses. He would not have been one of my picks at this time last year to stand out.”

Trainers involved in the internships include Todd Pletcher, Jonathan Sheppard, Shug  McGaughey, Nick Zito, Wesley Ward, Doug O’Neill and Tom Proctor, among others. Interns are asked to gallop and breeze horses, clean tack and help around the barn. “I want them to know as much as possible about what it takes to get a horse ready to race in the afternoon,” McCarron said.

McCarron said he is “ecstatic” with the launch and early progress for the North American Racing Academy (which was not named a “riding” academy because he wants it to include programs for prospective grooms and trainers as well as jockeys).

He has even bigger plans for the school’s future, including a campus at the Kentucky Horse Park and possible expansion to a second division in the Ocala, Florida, area that would be part of the the Central Florida Community College System.

For more information, click here to visit the web site of the North American Racing Academy.

Copyright © 2010, The Paulick Report

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By Ray Paulick
I had always been intimidated by trainer Bobby Frankel until I had the opportunity to spend some time with him in Tokyo in 2001 when he sent Amerman Racing Stable’s Lido Palace there for the second running of the Japan Cup Dirt.
 
With just that one horse to care for in Japan, he was more a tourist than a horseman that week. Unmarried at the time, he brought a former assistant trainer, Fred Cogan, as his guest (the Japan Racing Association allows each trainer to bring a spouse or guest at the JRA’s expense), and the three of us wound up palling around for much of the week, talking more about life than horses.

The lobby of the Keio Plaza Hotel was our gathering place, where it seemed there always was a wedding going on or one about to happen. Frankel was fascinated by the fact so many Japanese couples had Western-style weddings, and on the drive to the track one morning he opened a discussion about religion, wondering how a Buddhist society yielded so many weddings that looked like Christian ceremonies in America.

“What religion are you?” I asked, knowing that he was born Jewish.

“I’m one of those…what do you call them…they don’t really believe in anything.”

“Atheist?” Cogan asked.

“No, no,” he said. “I’m just not really sure….you know…aga…aga-something.”
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“Agnostic?” I said.

“Yeah, that’s it,” he said. “Aga-nostic. I really don’t know what to believe. How can anyone really know, you know what I mean?”

The discussion continued about religion and prayer, and Frankel volunteered that there was only one time in his career that he asked God for some help in winning a horse race, when Keeper Hill ran in the 1999 Spinster Stakes at Keeneland. The filly was owned by John and Alice Chandler of Mill Ridge Farm and trainer Shug McGaughey. “I made a deal with God,” he said, “that if Keeper Hill won that race I would donate all of my winnings to charity. He kept his end of the bargain and so did I.”

I didn’t ask Frankel why he chose that particular horse and race to pray to a God he wasn’t sure existed, but I had my suspicions. Shortly after Keeper Hill had won, there were rumors that the filly was given a milkshake before the race (a loading of bicarbonates), something that might not have gone over very well with Alice Chandler, who had been leading the fight to tighten Kentucky’s then-lax medication rules.

“Keeper Hill…wasn’t there some story about her getting a milkshake before the Spinster?” I asked Frankel. He didn’t say yes or no, but his answer told me all I needed to know. “It wasn’t illegal,” he said, stretching that last word out in a way that only a native New Yorker could.

He was right. Milkshakes weren’t prohibited by the Kentucky Racing Commission until 2001 (they were banned in every other state, except Louisiana), and there were many people, including a number of veterinarians, who felt they were good for horses, since it was a natural substance that prevented lactic acid buildup and kept a horse from tiring, which is when many injuries occur. Frankel, if he did have a milkshake administered to Keeper Hill, didn’t break any rules.

Frankel admitted during the course of another conversation that he would use every legal edge available to win a race, as long as it didn’t do any harm to the horse. While in Japan that year, he checked with JRA officials to see what type of racing plates could be used for Lido Palace. “If I lost by that much,” he said, holding his thumb and index finger an inch apart, “and didn’t take advantage of whatever was legal, I wouldn’t be able to sleep.”

Lido Palace ran a clunker in Japan, finishing far behind Kurofune in a mystifying performance. I don’t think Frankel slept very well that night, and it wasn’t because of jet lag. Over breakfast the next morning, he said he thinks he messed up when he tightened the girth on Lido Palace, cinching it so tight the horse might have had trouble breathing properly.

Frankel was as competitive as anyone in the sport, celebrating the wins in style but also suffering through the losses. He was always looking for an edge, but drew the line if the result could be harmful to his horses. During his record-setting year in 2003 when he won 25 Grade 1 races and set a new earnings mark for trainers, rumors ran rampant that he was “juicing” his horses with a blood-doping agent called Epogen.

I called him, told him about the rumors I’d been hearing, and asked if it was true. “How stupid do you think I am?” he said. “I’ve got the best training job in this business with Juddmonte. You think I would do something to risk that?

“That shit kills horses,” he said. “I don’t use any of that stuff–anabolic steroids–anything that’s harmful to a horse.”

The loss of Frankel leaves a big void in our sport. He was as colorful as anyone I’ve ever known. His record of accomplishment speaks for itself and brought him fame around the world, gaining him entry into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame.

But his love for the horses he trained will punch Frankel’s ticket to heaven—if there is such a place. After all, who really knows?

Copyright © 2009, The Paulick Report

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Even with no Grade 1 races offered this weekend, there are still a number of competitive graded stakes to be run in Kentucky and New York. Keeneland closes its meet on Saturday with the running of the G3 Fayette, for three-year-olds and up going 1 1/8 miles over the Polytrack surface. Vying for favoritism will be Blame, coming off a second-place effort in Louisiana’s G2 Super Derby, and the Shug McGaughey-trained Parading, who comes back to Kentucky after a California campaign that yielded off-the-board finishes in three Grade 1 events. Parading won the Ben Ali (G3) this year at Keeneland’s spring meet. Medjool and Giant Oak have scratched.

Churchill Downs opens its doors on Sunday and the spotlight will be on juveniles in two Grade 3 stakes, the Pocahontas, for fillies, and the Iroquois, for colts and geldings. Both races are one-turn miles on the dirt. There are no stand-outs in the contentious Pocahontas field, but look for good showings from Sassy Image, Tiz Miz Sue and Happy Week. Running Bride is three-for-three at Hoosier Park which also makes her a factor here. 

The Iroquois is also wide open; the morning line favorite at 4-1 is Dublin, trained by Wayne Lukas. Dublin won the Hopeful (G1) but ran fifth out of six starters as the odds-on favorite in the Champagne (G1). Uh Oh Bango and Three Day Rush are coming off minor stakes wins.

Racing changed venues in New York this week and the Aqueduct graded stakes schedule includes Sunday’s G3 Long Island Handicap, for fillies and mares, three years old and up at 1 ½ miles on grass. In the field of seven, Tom Albertrani’s trainee, Criticism, is the one to beat. The 5-year-old daughter of Machiavellian has three wins this year, all performed in wire-to-wire fashion. Most recently, she finished second to Pure Clan in the prestigious Flower Bowl Invitational Handicap. This is expected to be Criticism’s final race before heading to the breeding shed.

By Ray Paulick
Anyone who has been with us at the Paulick Report since our June 2008 launch knows that I have been critical of Ogden Mills Phipps as one of the Thoroughbred industry’s leaders, or to borrow a phrase from the late John Gaines, a “self-appointed guardian of the Turf.”

One thing I’ve never questioned in my own mind, though I probably have never written it here, is that the Jockey Club chairman better known as “Dinny” loves this industry as much as anyone and has always acted in what he believes to be in the industry’s best interests. What those actions are and have been is where he and I hit the fork in the road.

This has been a tough year, personally, for Dinny Phipps as he has battled some health problems, and if the old axiom is true that the outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man, I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing the Phipps Stable continued success in 2009 and beyond. That stable, carefully developed over generations of both horses and the family that has owned and bred them, is quietly having a very good year in terms of success in American Graded Stakes, with three AGS winners of four graded stakes. Sure, it’s not quite like 1988, when Dinny’s late father, Ogden Phipps, directed the stable to one of the most amazing years in racing history, when Personal Ensign, Easy Goer, Cadillacing and other Grade 1 winners carried private trainer Shug McGaughey and the Phipps family to a sweep of the Eclipse Awards in outstanding trainer, breeder and owner categories. Five years later, McGaughey won five Grade 1 races on the Jockey Club Gold Cup card at Belmont Park, led by Miner’s Mark’s triumph in the Gold Cup itself.

The three 2009 Phipps Stable AGS winners (Parading, by Pulpit; Vacation, by Dynaformer; and Gone Astray, by Dixie Union) put this relatively small but select outfit in a four-way tie for third with three other homebreeding operations ( as opposed to commercial breeders), Sheikh Mohammed’s Darley Stable; the Juddmonte Stable of Saudi Arabian Prince Khalid Abdullah; and the stable operated by Virginia-based Edward P. “Ned” Evans. The leader, with five AGS winners of 2009, is Robert and Janice McNair’s Stonerside Stable.
I don’t really think it’s any coincidence that the leading breeders of AGS winners are outfits designed to produce horses for the racetrack as opposed to the sale ring. Are there any lessons that commercial breeders can gain by more closely studying how these private operations have functioned, developed their broodmare bands, and plan their matings? Perhaps.

Looking at Bloodhorse.com’s list of leading breeders by money won, Stonerside ranks the highest of the five leaders by AGS winners at fifth on the money list behind Adena Springs, Eugene Melnyk, Brereton Jones, and William S. Farish. Stonerside, which was sold to Darley when the McNairs opted to get out of the business, also has the most starts of the five (604). Evans is sixth on the money list from 437 starts; Juddmonte is eighth, with 217 starts; Darley is 11th, with 423 starts; and Phipps 22nd, with 206 starts.