A pre-Cup Lull

Real Writing on Racing 💯

One thing I love about the Fall is playoff baseball in the day time. One thing I dislike about Fall is the few weekends of limited graded stakes racing action prior to the Breeders Cup. Not that racing can’t still be compelling without graded stakes, especially the short field ones, but we focus on those races here at the GIC Digest because they have the mostly recognizable names, hence the most interest. That said there were a couple of good stakes last weekend including a HUGE steeplechase race (the grade I, $250,000 Grand National Hurdle) from Far Hills in New Jersey which was won by a trainer named Shark!

⭐️ Last Friday afternoon marked the return to the races of Kentucky Derby day finale winner, Strobe. The son of Into Mischief crushed a good field of maidens in his debut, jockey Florent Geroux basically sitting chilly on him after streaking out of the gate and setting scorching fractions (21.73-45.34-56.93-1:08.71) for an easy score. Among those in that field were this years Vosburgh (Gr II) winner Elite Power, who has improved quite nicely since his third place effort on Derby day. This was easy work for Strobe who moved to the lead under minimal urging, set relatively soft fractions while unchallenged and coasted home as much the best. There was some crazy social media talk post-race about Strobe wheeling back in the Breeders Cup Sprint…which is just crazy talk. I’d imagine that he would be looking at the Malibu (Gr I) at Santa Anita with some sort of bridge race in-between.

🏅 The Sycamore (Gr II), the Keeneland Friday afternoon feature, was a deep field full of many of America’s top turf marathon veterans competing at the 12 furlong distance. The winner was Highland Chief (Ire) who benefited from a perfect, ground saving trip crafted by John Velazquez for Graham Motion. Umberto Rispoli guided Temple to a good second place finish with Highest Honors rallying after slow start to be third. Balthus (Ire), Red Knight and Arklow all encountered traffic trouble at some point as is wont to happen in these bulky field turf marathons. Favorite Mira Mission, fresh off of breaking my heart once again in the Sword Dancer (Gr I), was three wide all three turns, which is an impossible trip.

🌟The Twitter-verse was swooning after Sunday’s unveiling of Julia Shining in Keeneland’s 6th, a MSW for 2yo fillies going about 7f on the odd Beard Course set up. The Stonestreet homebred, a full sister to Malathaat, is trained by Todd Pletcher (who interestingly enough chose to ship her to run at Keeneland, not Baqueduct, after having trained all summer at Saratoga and the Pletch was in attendance Sunday), broke with the pack yet spent most of the first furlong and a half in retreat from the kickback from those in front of her. Luis Saez got the Curlin filly in gear heading into the turn, though she was caught at least 5 paths wide. She then proceeded to power past most of the field despite losing a ton of ground, and when straightened away in the stretch, she collared the leading pair and finished up professionally. The final time was not very fast despite the pace being solid, plus it seemed like an ordinary group at best, making the calls for her to be entered in the Breeders Cup Juvenile fillies in 18 days, silly. Clearly Julia Shining is a talented prospect but she literally had to be steered to the middle of the track before she’d run forward, this is still a work in progress.

💰It’s stud fee season which is always interesting. I enjoy seeing what the new stallions will be standing for and checking out the hot sires, seeing how high they will rise. Spendthrift released their 2023 fees last week, they have a long lineup of studs at their central Kentucky facility, and there are some familiar names among their roster. Most notable is 2021 Sprint Champion Jackie’s Warrior who is looking to wrap up another Eclipse award in a few weeks as he attempts to find his way to the winners circle after the BC Sprint. He is listed at $50,000 for his initial season which was about 10k more than I thought he would be but the Spendthrift guys are pros and know how much demand exists. It’s a bit disappointing to see Cyberknife will be retired after the BC Classic as he consistently improved through the year and would be a major player next year as a four year old. He won the Arkansas Derby (Gr I) & Haskell (Gr I) and was placed in the Travers (Gr I) and Pennsylvania Derby (Gr I) but in a year when some top horses with stronger credentials are headed to stud, I wish he was returning to the track next year. At WinStar, Constitution was raised from $85,000 to $110,000 on the basis of strong sales (29 yearlings sold for 250k at Keeneland Sept alone, with a $1.8 million dollar high). That is a lot of hope for a stallion that has sired one superior North American runner (Tiz the Law) through 4 crops of racing age (Americanrevolution is a grade I winner in 2021 but has been just fair in 2022), though it’s hard to imagine that all those buyers will be wrong. He currently only has 4 graded stakes winners in 2022 (all grade III’s) and two of them won weak grade III’s at 12 and 14 furlongs on the dirt respectively. His fee going up 30% despite an absence of even a single horse ranked among the division leaders reminds one that the bloodstock market often operates separately from the racing world. A positive note about Constitution is that in an era that idolizes speed, he is siring the anthesis to the precocious, early running, two year old burners that everyone falls over themselves to buy. Life is Good stands his initial season for 100k unless he were to win the Classic, which would likely trigger an increase. Nashville is at $15000 for his first season at stud, a rapid son of Speightstown, he never quite fulfilled the early promise that he showed but has a nice family and certainly was fast. Darley has a couple of new faces at Jonabell Farm this Fall. Speaker’s Corner, who looked like a world beater till he got smacked around a few times by Flightline and Life is Good, never recovered that grade 1 winning form that we saw in the Carter (Gr I) and races leading up to it. The son of Street Sense will be standing for a fee of $20000. Mystic Guide is another that will be standing his first year next spring, the son of Ghostzapper only raced once (no races in 2022) after his biggest win, the 2021 Dubai World Cup. He might suffer from an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mentality and sons of Ghostzapper have found little success as stallions. We will talk further about these fees as more farms announce their 2023 fees. Have any thoughts? The comments section is open!

🎞 As the Breeders Cup fields start to take shape I want to introduce our YouTube channel (GoinginCircles Podcast Network) which will have videos of all of the contenders races, including the European contingent, which will be ultra-tough in most of the grass races. So far we have a catch-all Euro horse playlist that we will divide up into different races once the fields are more solid, the BC Classic and BC Distaff though by the time pre-entry day arrives, we should have different playlists for all the individual races. You can check out our page HERE and subscribe for free and get access to all of our content (which will be growing soon)!

🏇🏻 I’m heading to Kentucky this weekend for next week’s Fasig- Tipton October yearling sale (Monday -Thursday). Will be looking for racing’s next superstar (that fits the budget…so no sales toppers) though I’m sure settling for a graded stakes winner will be acceptable! I’m sure that I will sneak over to Keeneland for a few races at some point so anyone that’s around, I’d love to meet up! Just send me a email at Goingincirclespodcast@gmail.com or hit me up at @cannonshell on Twitter or DM on Facebook.

The amazing Princess Rooney in the inaugural BC Distaff