Duignan Jr. Building On Rock

[Wandering Eyes]

“Come on now, attention at the back!”

But let's make a plea for indulgence, should any of the law lecturers at University College, Dublin, happen to find one student uncharacteristically distracted on resuming his course in September. Because whatever broad principles of contract may yet require elucidation, there are extremely good reasons why Freddie Duignan could find his thoughts straying to the value of a signature even then being scrawled on a document, 4,000 miles away in Kentucky.

“My first day back in class is the first day of the September Sale,” Duignan explains. “So I will probably be in a lecture, the day he sells. I suppose I'll just have to follow it online and try to keep quiet when they drop the hammer, whether it's good or bad.”

Obviously he wouldn't have planned things this way, but then nor did he exactly plan the transaction that has brought this impending one to our attention.

That was also at Keeneland, in November 2022. Even though Duignan was then only 16, he already felt thoroughly at home in the sales environment. As the son of Gabriel (“Spider”) and Aisling Duignan, he has long been familiar to their many friends in the Bluegrass community-whether made through their own Springhouse Farm; Spider's collaboration with Pat Costello at Paramount; or Aisling's work at Coolmore. More importantly, young Duignan felt just as comfortable among the horses themselves.

“That was how I was raised, every time we sat round the dinner table the talk always revolved around horseracing. And at breakfast, and lunch, and everything in between. So I always had some interest, from the get-go, and it just grew and grew as I got older.”

In fact, it all came to Duignan so naturally that already as a 14-year-old he was not discouraged from an experimental pinhook. He showed an immediate aptitude, his first punt being a $10,000 Oscar Performance weanling deep in the November Sale of 2020. He was sold in the same ring the following September for $100,000 and, under the name Act a Fool, ran up a sequence of four as a sophomore, culminating in the Hawthorne Derby.

Suitably emboldened, here was Duignan prospecting weanlings to bring back the following September. His mother would take a piece of something, so would one or two others, but it was again going to be the young man's call.

The one he adored was Hip 892, a Not This Time colt in the Warrendale consignment. He was probably too blatant to be missed, but they would follow him through just in case. And in the back of their minds they were also mindful of the fact that the colt's dam, a once-raced daughter of Bernardini named Rockadelic, would be following him onto the rostrum directly afterwards.

“Obviously we really liked the foal, so we looked at her as well,” Duignan explains. “And she was a very nice mare, by probably the best broodmare sire around right now, and out of [dual Grade I winner] Octave (Unbridled's Song). And in foal to McKinzie.”

Sure enough, the foal went way beyond reach at $310,000.

“That was out of our price range,” Duignan recalls. “But then the mare was stalling at $100,000, so we said we'd hit her once. And we got her. It hadn't really been the objective, but we were just going to make sure she didn't slip through the cracks.”

The project started well when Rockadelic's McKinzie colt sold in the equivalent sale, the following November, for $100,000. He made a promising debut at Gulfstream in June, winning a photo only to be disqualified for interference. By that stage, however, the Not This Time colt had already transformed the page.

He had duly advanced his value as a pinhook, sold to Winchell Thoroughbreds for $450,000 at the September Sale. They named him Magnitude-and, after one or two uneven performances as he developed, he proved a revelation when romping by almost 10 lengths in the GII Risen Star Stakes. Suddenly Duignan found himself with the dam of one of the Derby favorites.

“Last year was my first over in Dublin, so I was in Ireland when he won the Risen Star,” Duignan says. “I was just blown away, I didn't expect him to win like that.”

The excitement admittedly proved brief, Magnitude soon being sidelined by an ankle chip, but he proved his Fair Grounds exhibition to be no flash in the pan when resuming earlier this month with another runaway success in the Iowa Derby. As a fresh horse, he will ask a new question of crop leader Sovereignty (Into Mischief) in the GI Travers Stakes on Saturday.

Just a couple of weeks after that, a Bolt d'Oro half-brother will be gratefully taking any updates into the September Sale as Hip 888.

Magnitude | Horephotos

“It's great when a young mare has already shown that she can throw a nice product,” Duignan says. “And she seems to have proved it again, because this one seems to have pretty similar qualities to Magnitude. He's a nice, big, pretty horse. He's with us at Springhouse and coming along nicely in his prep, seems to be handling everything well and strengthening up. Hopefully he'll keep progressing. The mare has a very nice weanling by Jack Christopher, and is back in foal to Not This Time.”

No surprise there, obviously, but Duignan is taking nothing for granted. While others of his generation are entering the business via lavish international programs, he has been no less privileged to receive his own education, by sheer osmosis, in a domestic environment that just happens to be suffused with the insight and example of one of the sharpest couples in the game.

So when it is suggested to Duignan that he has shown a Midas touch with both his first pinhook, Act a Fool, and now his first mare, he has an unsurprisingly level-headed response.

“It may look like that,” he says. “But look, both my parents been very helpful and steered me in the correct direction. I hope they're very happy to have a kid interested in what they're doing. I've just tried to absorb as much as I can. Even as a boy I would get to go to the sales with friend, and we'd sit in the back ring looking at horses going through. And I'm so lucky to have been able to follow my dad around, looking at foals, learning why some make his shortlist and others don't. My parents have always tried to point things out: 'See how this horse uses his shoulder when he walks,' or 'See how this one's over at the knee.' And of course they have so many friends in the business, who've all been really helpful as well.”

Even this fairytale mare, after all, has already reiterated the axiomatic unpredictability of the Thoroughbred: Duignan had barely 48 hours to enjoy the possibility of Magnitude wearing a blanket of roses before being abruptly brought back to earth.

“Steve Asmussen is a great trainer who will give him the best chance of getting on the big stage,” Duignan says with a shrug. “It was obviously the right call and Magnitude came back with a 105 Beyer the other day. Hopefully he can have a good second half of the season. It's the nature of the game to have ups and downs, horses will get hurt or have bad luck in a race. Things will happen and you just have to take them in your stride.”

So here's a young man with the right attitude as well as the right grounding, should he wish to persevere with the same vocation as his parents. Like his older sister, who is likewise studying law (in Georgia), he's sensibly giving himself options.

“I love UCD Dublin,” he confirms. “There are loads of racetracks nearby, which I try to get to for the big days at least. While I've been going round the sales for years already, I've loads still to learn. For my first mare to be doing this, obviously it's all downhill from here! It will be tough to top this. But surrounded by the people that I am, I won't be short of good advice.”

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