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Announcements
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Posts
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By Wandering Eyes · Posted
Bob Ehalt, for America's Best Racing, handicaps the field of nine 3-year-olds entered in the Jan. 1 race at Oaklawn Park.View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
Jamie Ness, who will finish 2025 as the season's leading trainer by wins, will begin a seven-day suspension Dec. 31 for a controlled medication violation.View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
This week's racing on radio, television, and streaming schedule compiled by America's Best Racing.View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
Bob Ehalt, for America's Best Racing, handicaps the field of nine 3-year-olds entered in the Jan. 1 race at Oaklawn Park.View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
The turn of the year always prompts us to look both forward and back, along with Janus, the god of two faces for whom January is named. And that provides a perfect context for Goal Oriented (Not This Time), graduate of a farm with an unrivalled past-and one that has dynamically reimagined its future. On the one hand, the GI Malibu Stakes winner stands for continuity and heritage. Co-bred and raised by the oldest continuously operative Thoroughbred farm in the Bluegrass, he extends one of its most patiently cultivated families. At the same time, his emergence accelerates a regeneration that has already produced a fourth Kentucky Derby winner nourished on the limestone of Runnymede Farm, a model for anyone striving to meet the commercial demands of today with land, bloodlines and lore inherited from master horsemen of the past. Goal Oriented is the latest blossom of a family tree rooted in Kazadancoa (Fr) (Green Dancer), in whom the late Catesby W. Clay bought a stake as a 3-year-old in 1981. Her sister The Dancer (Fr) had been placed in the Oaks at Epsom the previous year, and their dam was half-sister to Runaway Bride (GB), dam of Blushing Groom (Fr). (How nice, whenever people take pleasure and care in the naming of what would prove to be significant horses: Blushing Groom by Red God out of Runaway Bride, herself by Wild Risk out of Aimee.) The Dancer, incidentally, has since united this family with that of the top Japanese stallion, King Kamehameha (Jpn), as third dam. Kazadancoa, who won once in France before her export to the United States, had made a tepid start as a broodmare when Clay bought out his partners at the 1989 Keeneland January Sale, at $30,000. That proved one of the best decisions of his long life. For a start, Kazadancoa produced three graded stakes winners of her own, including one that broke the 6.5f track record at Hollywood Park and another who herself produced a Grade II winner. But what really made Kazadancoa's reputation as a matriarch was the legacy of two daughters who respectively achieved little or nothing on the track. An unraced daughter of Wavering Monarch became dam of five-time graded stakes winner/GI Kentucky Derby runner-up Tejano Run (Tejano), and another Grade II winner besides; granddam of elite juvenile winners either side of the water, in Spring in the Air (Spring At Last) and Palace Episode (Machiavellian); and third dam of another, Sweet Loretta (Tapit), besides two Group scorers in Europe, notably the Classic-placed Laughing Lashes (Mr. Greeley). And then there was Kazadancoa's final foal, a daughter of Saint Ballado delivered in 2000. Named Sacre Coeur, she won a turf maiden in a curtailed career and had just been covered by Divine Park when her dam died in 2011, at the venerable age of 33. Shortly after Sacre Coeur was confirmed in foal, her sophomore daughter by Afleet Alex, Bizzy Caroline, got on a roll: after breaking her maiden at the Keeneland spring meet, she won a Churchill allowance by seven lengths, and then the GIII Regret Stakes. Though she subsequently fell a little short in Grade I company, she added the GIII Mint Julep Stakes back at Churchill the following year. Bizzy Caroline's talent helped her half-sister by Divine Park realize $160,000 as a yearling. That service would soon be reciprocated in spectacular fashion, with the younger sibling turning out to be none other than turf champion Lady Eli, winner of five Grade Is. With that upgrade behind her, an Uncle Mo filly out of Bizzy Caroline made $1.1 million at the 2018 September Sale. Unfortunately that filly never made the track, and nor were any of the mare's other foals setting the world alight. But the Runnymede team had clocked Not This Time's strong start and, with his fee still only $40,000, chose him for Bizzy Caroline's 2021 cover. The resulting colt rode the Not This Time wave, realizing $425,000 at the September Sale-and his name, of course, is Goal Oriented. After playing only a supporting player around two turns, his success in a dirt sprint helps to confirm the versatility of a sire whose recent accomplishments on turf would have made him very eligible to draw out the abundant chlorophyll in this family. And Runnymede, likewise, has cosmopolitan reach. Certainly the farm's affinity with Europe has not diminished since Brutus Clay, extending his family's stewardship into a fourth generation, hired the energetic Frenchman Romain Malhouitre as general manager in 2013. By that stage it had become clear that Runnymede would have to adapt again, as it has done so often since 1867. The genetic roses were pruned; a bunch of new clients were engaged, including Grandview Equine and a Big Brown mare named Mage; and partnerships cultivated with Haras d'Etreham. The dividends at the sales have become conspicuous, but every transaction remains underpinned by a trust that reflects unchanging standards of probity and horsemanship. These, far more than mere acreage and bloodstock, were the most prized legacies of Catesby Clay, who died in 2024 at 101. How proud he would be, to see that the decency, modesty and intelligence ingrained into his son-who operates Runnymede on behalf of seven siblings-can hold out so productively against the challenges of this ruthless commercial era. As a result, an old-school farm with a medieval name has struck a perfect balance to become one of the most goal-oriented forces of the 21st Century Bluegrass. The Law and the Profits One of the first signs that Tiz the Law was going to put legs into his stock was the pinhook that transformed a $30,000 daughter from his debut crop, sold at Saratoga's New York-bred sale in 2023, into a $600,000 2-year-old. That filly proved fairly slow-burning, needing five attempts to break her maiden, but has now amply vindicated her purchase as La Brea Stakes winner Usha. Usha | Horsephotos That Grade I breakthrough sets a perfect seal on Tiz the Law's consolidation with his first sophomores, and will duly reassure the owners of the 274 mares who last spring made him the busiest stallion in the land. If that felt like a startling overreaction to a bright start by his first juveniles, it certainly revealed him to have found a persuasive commercial niche. His fee for 2026 remains $30,000, incidentally, after his third crop of yearlings retailed at a median $90,000. Tiz the Law would appear to deserve plenty of credit for moving Usha's page up in the world, albeit her dam Animal Appeal (Leroisdesanimaux {Brz}) was a fairly talented turf sprinter. She, too, took a little time to get her act together-claimed for $25,000 when third on debut-but got on a roll as a 4-year-old, emphatic winner of allowance races at Belmont and Saratoga before running third in a stakes at the Spa. All six of her named siblings made the racetrack, and five were multiple winners if at an ordinary level. As so often happens, however, the breeders of Usha discarded her dam (acquired for $35,000 on her retirement) at what has turned out to be the turning point. Animal Appeal was sold to Rachid Brothers for just $9,000 at the 2023 Saratoga Fall Sale-halfway through the pinhook cycle that would transform the value of the daughter sold in the same ring three months previously. (The mare appears to have meanwhile been exported to Saudi Arabia.) A tough break, for sure, but the fact is that cautionary tales of this kind can end up costing small breeders a lot of money. They tempt us to hang on, just in case a mare's drift into mediocrity is lucratively reversed the moment we give up. In the vast majority of cases, however, we end up throwing good money after bad. Fighting His Corner with Honor If it's hard enough to get your head around Tiz the Law's book last spring, then how about the total of 19 who dignified Honor A.P.with a visit? It was with due nervousness that we last week awarded him silver on our “Podium” for four-figure stallions in our ongoing series on Value Sires for 2026. You might think that Honor A.P. has enough on his plate, without that additional curse. But he responded immediately, and heroically, with two black-type winners last Saturday: Counting Stars in the Year End Stakes at Oaklawn, and Hollywood Import in the Heft Stakes at Laurel. His second crop of juveniles, which also includes Bashford Manor Stakes winner Romeo, has laid down an impressive marker given that they should thrive with maturity and a second turn. His first sophomores meanwhile include Grade II winner Margie's Intention and the sidelined A.P. Kid, who won the Pennine Ridge Stakes at Saratoga by six lengths. In total Honor A.P. has eight stakes winners from just 94 career starters, compared with 12 from 165 for Tiz the Law, and nine from 186 for another soaraway rival in McKinzie. When the tide recedes so far, so quickly, it's hard to turn things round. But this perennially underrated horse, in his second career as in his first, has the class-whether in physique, pedigree or performance-to reward those who keep the faith at an insulting fee of just $7,500. The post Breeding Digest: An Old Farm Oriented to New Goals appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article
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