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    Value Sires Part 6: Proven Sires

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    Coach Splashes Home in Pippin

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    • Nothing like claiming your second lifetime win in a graded stakes at Saratoga, especially so when your last time on the board was a year ago at the venue. A pricey $600,000 OBS March juvenile purchase in 2024, Italian Soiree (Uncle Mo) came with big expectations and her connections refused to throw in the towel despite their filly not hitting the board in the last five starts at the black-type level. Her 2025 attempts included a Feb. 8 seasonal bow in the Suncoast Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs where she ran fourth as MGISW La Cara (Street Sense) ran off the screen. Gone until Apr. 27, she returned to the turf in New York when contesting the Memories of Silver Stakes and ran fifth as undefeated MSW Laurelin (Ire) (Zarak {Fr}) continued her streak. She was well beaten last out June 8 during the Belmont Stakes Festival when trying her luck in the six-panel Jersey Girl Stakes against another salty field of stakes fillies. While her team believed in her, the betting public opted to look elsewhere here, and Italian Soiree went off carrying chilly 14-1 odds as the second longest shot on the board. Coaxed out but content to track from third, she was patiently handled through the bend by Luis Saez and when he asked the question, rally she did. Taking command a sixteenth out after being forced to wait on traffic in front of her, she inched away from the longest shot on the board, SP Laurice (Bolt d'Oro), to win by a length. GSW Abientot (Not This Time) came from last to claim third after hitting the near-side stall at the break. “We had worked her on the turf, and she went to Canada and ran really well and even at Keeneland against some of the top turf fillies in the country, but the distance was always the question with her,” said Tonja Terranova, assistant to trainer John Terranova. “The owners had [Kentucky] Oaks vibes, as everyone does, and we tried to stretch her at Tampa [in the Suncoast] and had a little bit of a tough trip. But this is obviously what she wants to do.” Terranova added that the Memories of Silver performance had a noteworthy excuse, saying, “She had trouble. She almost fell. She was hit severely and Johnny [Velazquez] just wrapped up on her, so that was the reason that it didn't look that impressive on the grass that day.” When asked about a next target, Terranova said, “Let's just see how she is. She's a lighter filly so we let her tell us when she keeps her weight and when she's going to run.”   Pedigree Note: Italian Soiree is the second in her family to claim black-type behind full-brother Be Better. From their dam's last five offspring, four are full-siblings and all of them are winners. The lone half-brother Forced Errors (City of Light) was placed as a 3-year-old. Social Call, a half-sister to GSW Old Time Hockey (Smarty Jones) from the female family that produced MGISW Scat Daddy (Johannesburg) and his full-sister GSW & GISP Antipathy, has not had any foals since Italian Soiree. Her 2025 Forte foal was stillborn. Friday, Saratoga CORONATION CUP S.-GIII, $175,000, Saratoga, 7-11, 3yo, f, 5 1/2fT, 1:02.21, gd. 1–ITALIAN SOIREE, 120, f, 3, by Uncle Mo 1st Dam: Social Call, by Smart Strike 2nd Dam: Grat, by A.P. Indy 3rd Dam: Likeable Style, by Nijinsky II 1ST BLACK TYPE WIN, 1ST GRADED STAKES WIN. ($290,000 Ylg '23 FTKJUL; $600,000 2yo '24 OBSMAR). O-Hit The Bid Racing Stable, Morplay Racing LLC and Randall Hartley; B-Repole Stable, Inc. (KY); T-John P. Terranova II; J-Luis Saez. $96,250. Lifetime Record: 8-2-1-0, $227,048. *Full to Be Better, SW, $346,180. Werk Nick Rating: A+. Click for the eNicks report & 5-cross pedigree. Click for the free Equineline.com catalogue-style pedigree. 2–Laurice, 120, f, 3, Bolt d'Oro–Major Z, by Candy Ride (Arg). 1ST GRADED BLACK TYPE. ($75,000 Wlg '22 KEENOV; $80,000 Ylg '23 KEESEP; $460,000 2yo '24 OBSAPR). O-Bregman Family Racing LLC; B-Vehbi Hakan Keles (KY); T-George Weaver. $35,000. 3–Abientot, 124, f, 3, Not This Time–Ready Ready Ready, by More Than Ready. ($210,000 Ylg '23 KEESEP). O-Tracy Farmer; B-Killora Stud, LLC (KY); T-Mark E. Casse. $21,000. Margins: 1, NK, 3/4. Odds: 14.60, 14.80, 3.10. Also Ran: Cloe, Gata Brazil, Make Haste (GB). Scratched: Flat Out Time, Spirited Boss, Twirling Beauty, You'll Be Back. Click for the Equibase.com chart and the TJCIS.com PPs. VIDEO, sponsored by FanDuel TV. The post Pop the Corks: Italian Soiree Pulls the Shocker in Coronation Cup appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article
    • SARATOGA SPRINGS — Before the young horse with the easy-going disposition even stepped on the track at Saratoga Race Course Friday afternoon, just about everyone knew the story behind Dr, Agne (Into Mischief), who is out of Lady Eli (Divine Park). When the 2-year-old colt powered to the finish line and won the seven-furlong, $100,000 maiden special weight, the story came full circle. Dr. Agne, trained by Cherie DeVaux, is named for Dr. Robert Agne, who died at the age of 54 on Labor Day of 2015 after being hit by a car while cycling in Vermont. Dr. Agne was instrumental in the recovery of Lady Eli, who recovered from laminitis in 2015 and later became an Eclipse Award winner. Dr. Agne worked on Lady Eli along with Dr. Bryan Fraley of Fraley Equine Podiatry in Kentucky. DeVaux, then an assistant for trainer Chad Brown who conditioned Lady Eli, was with the filly every step on her long journey back. When Dr. Robert Agne died, DeVaux said she wanted to one day name a horse for him. And here we are. The horse came to her barn in April after he was scratched out of an auction. He was then bought privately by a group that included some of Lady Eli's owners. One is Sol Kumin, whose Sheep Pond Partners owned Lady Eli. The widow of Dr. Robert Agne, Carrie, made the trip to Saratoga from Asheville, North Carolina, to see this special horse debut It was emotional. There were hugs between Carrie and DeVaux in the box seats when jockey Jose Ortiz got Dr. Agne home. There were tears from Carrie in the winner's circle. There may also have been some from DeVaux, but they would be hidden behind a pair of sunglasses. “Oh, my God,” Carrie Agne said, when asked what was going through her mind when Dr. Agne struck the front inside the eighth pole, “he might pull this off!” Carrie Agne, widow of Dr. Robert Agne, embraces trainer Cherie DeVaux after Dr. Agne's emotional debut win at Saratoga | Sarah Andrew Then, after a pause and a tear: “Bob had such heart. He loved racing, everything about horses. He gave his all.” Owned by Kumin's Madaket Stables LLC, Twin Brook Stables and Belladonna Racing LLC, Dr. Agne was foaled in Kentucky. He is the first foal from Lady Eli to run in the United States. The race was originally scheduled to be run on the inner turf at a mile but heavy rain on Thursday night forced it to be moved to the main at seven furlongs. “I knew he would be fine,” DeVaux said. “I felt like he would be ok, just getting a race under his belt. I was not surprised that he could win. Against dirt horses, it might be a lot different.” Sent off as the 7-2 third choice, Dr. Agne held off a late charge from 2-1 favorite Epic Desire (Uncle Mo) and Irad Ortiz Jr. and got to the wire first. Dr. Agne ran the seven furlongs in 1:25.97 and paid $9.70, $3.80 and $2.90. When the colt is next seen, DeVaux said it will be on the grass. Lady Eli, after getting back to the races, was the 2017 Eclipse Award winner for champion Turf Female. While allowing this victory to settle in, DeVaux said she was more nervous for Carrie Agne, who was making her first visit to Saratoga since 2015. “For me, we do this, we have a lot of 2-year-olds,” DeVaux said. “I try to manage my expectations with each of them accordingly. I wanted everything to go well for Carrie. This is like her first soiree, and I wanted to make her proud.” The post Saratoga Maidens, Presented by Keeneland: Dr. Agne with an Emotional First Victory at Saratoga appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article
    • In discussing the evolution of his StrideSAFE wearable sensor, Dave Lambert turns to a tufty-haired German philosopher called Arthur Schopenhauer, who described new truths as a play in three parts. “First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.” Lambert has had the rejection and a little bit of ridicule, he said. “Some people have thrown rocks at me,” he added, one recent afternoon via Zoom in a brightly lit corner of his Kentucky home, a small bronze horse as his virtual companion. “But it's getting around to universal acceptance now.” If the bronze had been of the flesh-and-bone kind and trained in Kentucky these past couple of years, chances are it would have worn Lambert's StrideSAFE wearable sensor, used on every horse in every race in the state since May of 2023. Thanks in huge part to this blanket program in Kentucky, StrideSAFE has now been used on over 55,000 individual starts, providing a rich trove of data to understand just how best to use this system to identify the Holy Grail of racing welfare–those horses that exhibit no visible lameness but harbor a brewing problem that could turn catastrophic without intervention. The equation is simple: “screen, scan, save.” Use a wearable sensor like StrideSAFE to screen for early potential injuries. Scan the horse for problems. Then if something shows up, give the horse the necessary time off. It has reached the point where StrideSAFE is now able to identify in which leg the brewing problem is located, and even the type of pathology, the sesamoids versus the condyles (the end of the cannon bone making up part of the fetlock), said Lambert. Brewing injuries in the fetlock are notoriously hard to diagnose. David Lambert with trainer Dale Romans | StrideSAFE In a recent TDN letter to the editor, trainer Dale Romans shared his story of a stakes-level trainee that StrideSAFE had flagged for being at increased risk of injury in its right-front sesamoid in its last race, as well as a flag in the start prior. The horse was visibly sound, but given the StrideSAFE readings, Romans sent it for a precautionary PET scan, which indeed detected worrying bone remodeling in the right-front sesamoid bone. “This horse is now resting for 90 days and is expected to make a full return to training pending a clean recheck. Without StrideSAFE, we wouldn't have caught it,” Romans wrote. Nevertheless, the racing community at large is still proving reluctant to more broadly adopt these wearable technologies, said Churchill Downs' equine medical director, Dr. Will Farmer. “We've come a long way. We've learned a lot. I know StrideSAFE has learned a lot,” said Farmer. “My biggest push with this is that I really would like our horsemen to engage with it.” What would help, said Lambert, would be to start viewing the sensor as a veterinary tool rather than simply a training aid. As Lambert describes it, “this is about developing a new level of finesse in veterinary medicine.”   The Evolution of StrideSAFE StrideSAFE is a wireless iPhone shaped bio-metric sensor that fits into the saddle cloth. It captures a variety of measurements while a horse is breezing or racing, like its acceleration and deceleration, its up and down concussive movement, and its medial-lateral motion (movement side to side). David Lambert | StrideSAFE As Lambert and his team's understanding of what StrideSAFE can do has evolved, so has the way they relay its information. In earlier iterations, it worked on a traffic light system, with a green for all-clear, a yellow for caution, and a red for possible danger. Since then, Lambert and his team have refined the system to use a risk factor calculation from one to five, with five the category in which a horse is most at risk of a fatal or career ending injury–nearly 300 times more likely than horses that fall within risk category one. StrideSAFE has now been used on some 55,000 individual starts at 13 racetracks around the country. Of the 55,000 individual starts–many of them in Kentucky–about 65% of the horses have been given a rating of one, about 25% were classified two, and the remaining 10% fell in the three, four and five range. Furthermore, during that time, 152 horses suffered catastrophic injuries. “We have [StrideSAFE data for] nearly 400 career races from those 152 horses,” said Lambert. “So, we have longitudinal records on those horses, which is a massive data set.” Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to run the profiles of the horses in this database, Lambert and his team have been able to more thoroughly and quickly refine their machine to better understand which horses are at heightened risk of injury and why. The most telling rendering of StrideSAFE's efficacy perhaps best lies in individual cases. Lambert is preparing about eight or nine of them for a paper in a peer-reviewed journal. Lambert tells the story of a one-time Derby prospect, who even as early as May of his two-year-old year was flagged by StrideSAFE during his breezes. The horse then won two of his races in the fall of that year, but in doing so, StrideSAFE showed that something again was amiss, despite being visibly sound. Equine athlete with StrideSAFE | StrideSAFE By the time January rolled around, the connections decided to scan the horse, the findings of which indicated he would need 60 days off. But before returning to work, subsequent PET scans and X-rays showed a major problem in the left-front condyle, along with bone remodeling in the other three fetlocks for which time-off was also recommended. “He was sound to the eye throughout all of that,” said Lambert. “But they operated on it and screwed it [the left front]. He's come back to the races and run three times, had a green flag each of the three times since.” With all this data under his belt, Lambert has a growing belief that potential problems can be picked up as far back as a year prior to any serious injury occurring. As Lambert tells it, something occurs that causes the horse serious enough initial pain to show up on StrideSAFE, but which is still not visible to the human eye. “The horse learns to live with it. The problem will heal a little bit. That's when some bone remodeling goes on. It'll get more stable, doesn't hurt so much. It doesn't show you a strong red anymore. It shows a category two or three instead of a category four or five,” said Lambert, stressing how this isn't a set in stone timeline of pathology. “But as you get closer and closer to the fatal race, the pain can actually be diminishing because the condition is healing to some extent and stabilizing. But it's still there,” said Lambert. “That's a new way of thinking about these things.”   Kentucky Program Such chronology in the pathology of an injury wouldn't surprise Farmer, he said. “Looking at the necropsy program, we know that these are repetitive use injuries. These aren't singular events. And that fits that idea. It's logical,” he said. “They're either going to adapt to the issue, or they're going to adjust their strides and we can pick that up with the sensor, but we may not be able to pick it up at the jog,” said Farmer. This tallies with one of Farmer's main takeaways from the two years that StrideSAFE has been deployed in Kentucky–a program paid for by the tracks. According to Farmer, Churchill Downs has invested nearly $1 million in piloting the technology at its Kentucky tracks. StrideSAFE's findings, Farmer said, support the overwhelming wealth of evidence that catastrophic injuries aren't caused by a bad step but rather are the accumulative wear and tear over repetitive races and workouts. “There are horses that we see, they start off as 'ones,' then they go 'twos,' then 'threes,' then 'fours.' And then they ultimately have some diagnostics done, or they end up with a fracture,” said Farmer. StrideSAFE device | StrideSAFE As such, StrideSAFE offers “a very unique opportunity” to find the “needle in the haystack,” said Farmer, giving trainers “insight into what's coming down the pipeline before the horse fractures,” or worse, suffers a catastrophic injury. “Rather than it being a fracture, they can get ahead of it, change training patterns for a period of time,” said Farmer. “The goal is to keep horses safer, healthier and in the racing population longer.” Despite the promise, acceptance among the racing community is still limited. “The truth is that unfortunately, we don't have many trainers engaging with it,” said Farmer. “For this to really take that next step, we need that trainer engagement.” Part of the problem is that the information collected by StrideSAFE isn't currently processed and sent back to the trainers in an easily accessible form, said Farmer. “They need to make it as easy to have access to, whether that's a push–like a text push–with a report, or a reminder. That's something StrideSAFE needs to work out, how the information is relayed,” said Farmer. For StrideSAFE's part, they're working on a new password protected interactive website for trainers to access, with data on the welfare of the horse, as well as its performance. “In particular, the way in which they fatigue in a race,” Lambert said. But Lambert is beginning to see the communication issue from a slightly different angle–that the diagnostic component to the utility and effectiveness of StrideSAFE makes it a veterinary tool primarily. “We're getting very sophisticated information about musculoskeletal health, and it's the vets that need to be the ones that manage that and learn about it,” said Lambert.   AAEP Study StrideSAFE is one of six wearable sensors currently being used in an ongoing study out of the American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP). The others are Alogo, Arioneo, Equibase/Stable Analytics, Equimetrics and Garmin. The goal, said Langsam, is to see which of these technologies can most accurately detect the sort of hard-to-detect emerging injury that requires intervention, said Dr. Sara Langsam, AAEP racing committee chair. Beyond the sesamoids and condyles, think buck-shins and small chips in the joint. “At the end of the study, we would pass forward this information to HISA [the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act Authority], and they would potentially roll out some sort of integration into the entire industry,” said Langsam. Dr. Sara Langsam | AAEP WEB Each of the sensors are being used on at least 100 two-year-olds throughout this year during high-speed workouts. Over 700 individual horses are enrolled. Each horse that breezes is issued a green, yellow or red rating, with a 48-hour window for the study participants to receive the results. As on ongoing study, there are no concrete findings right now, said Langsam. The study focused on two-year-olds for several reasons. One was to minimize the variables in the study by using a cohort of horses that haven't already accumulated a lot of pre-existing wear and tear. Another is that two-year-olds offer the best opportunity to intervene as injury progresses. “We know that about 40 percent of the two-year-olds are going to get an issue. They like to get mild injuries that may take them out of training, but [which are] less catastrophic in general,” said Langsam. They're hoping to have some kind of conclusion ready for a public airing by the first or second quarter of 2026, said Langsam. “A lot of low hanging fruit has already been conquered. Technology is going to be the next step to help us get even lower [fatalities]. And while zero is ever achievable or not, that is always the goal,” Langsam said. “And this is just one part of the technological sphere that's going to help us move forward. It's exciting.” The post StrideSAFE Update: A New Level of Veterinary “Finesse” appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article
    • Rangatira has thrown 'Caution To The Wind' and pitted all 3 of his star Pacers against the Very Best tonight. In a bold move in Race 4 tonight at Albion,  his NZ Rep PINSEEKER for Jonny Cox, along with Better Eclipse and Aroda are being sent around against the Winners of the Last 2 Interdominion Grand Finals  in superstar pacers Don Hugo and Leap To Fame.  Ranga is the current BOAY Interdominion Draft Comp leader but is likely to 'Come a Gutsa'  taking on the BIG boys in the NZ How Bizarre type fashion.  Here's the teams and RACE number for tonight. Getting under way  Race 2 about 7.30 NZ time. Ranga :  Better Eclipse , Aroda , Pinseeker (all in race 4),  Taylad to Use + Arcee Phoenix (both race 5) The Galah : Turn It Up R2, Don Hugo R4, Speak The Truth R6,   Gus  + Golden Sunset (both race 3)  TAB4ever : Wispa A Secret R2, Catch A Wave + Jimartee (both race 4) Bet N Win R3, Parisian Artiste R5. Gamma :  Sure Thing Captain + Petes Said So (both race 2), Nyack R4, Love Gun + Aldebaran Acrux R5. Brodster : Max Delight R2, Cya Art + Beach Ball (both race 6), Eurokash + Zealous Spur R3, Constantinople R5. Mikey :  I Break the Line + Tango Tara R2, Free Thinker R6, Naot as Promised R3, Oscar Bonavena R5. Chiefy : Rakero Rebel , Dougs Platter, Captains Knock (all race 6), Tims A Trooper R2,                       and Chief's trotters London To A Brick R3, and Harry Stamper (for Anthony Butt) in race 5.   POINTS UPDATE  after ROUND 1  BOAY Interdominion. Ranga   61 points,        The Galah   56 points,     TABman  51  points,      Gamma  45 points Chief Stipe   35 points,       Brodster  33 points,        Mikey    28 points    Points for tonight's 5 Heats will be added here as the races go . Good Luck to All Runners !!     
    • 8th-Monmouth, $51,275, Msw, 7-11, 3yo/up, 1m, 1:38.40, ft, 1 length. NEW MAGIC (c, 3, Curlin–Magic Dance {SW & GSP, $191,083}, by More Than Ready), sluggish from the gate as the 5-2 second choice, quickly found himself far out of it into the first turn as the far more experienced race favorite Bridoza (Khozan) dueled on the front with Atrocious (Ghostzapper) through the quarter in :23.63. Making an early move to catch up with the field through a slowed-down half, the Three Chimneys homebred then had to shift out wide to keep coming and was up into contention by the time the leaders swung for home. In a four-wide calvary charge to the line, New Magic finished up best to deny Bridoza by a length. Magic Dance, herself a half to MGISW and $4.4m FTKNOV broodmare buy Guarana (Ghostzapper), has since produced back to back fillies by Gun Runner in 2024 and 2025 respectively. Lifetime Record: 1-1-0-0, $31,500. Click for the Equibase.com chart or VIDEO, sponsored by FanDuel TV. O/B-Three Chimneys Farm, LLC (KY); T-Chad C. Brown. The post Three Chimneys Homebred New Magic Last To First In Monmouth Debut 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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