Transcontinental Implications

[Wandering Eyes]

Derby day. Okay, Epsom Derby day, to you guys. But to an Englishman it remains the venerable template for all the many and marvellous variations round the world. Most years, you would be too preoccupied with the Belmont–but there is a week between the two this time, and hopefully you can catch the race.

Not just to revisit the crazy demands it makes of the runners. Epsom is notoriously the very last thing from a level playing field, though paradoxically it is precisely its idiosyncrasies that identify the diverse assets in a stallion prospect you would want to replicate in the breed. But also because this year’s race should invite any international horseman of imagination and enterprise to take a step back, and recognise that the most Old World race of all once again stands in need of help from the New. And that spells opportunity, whether you are in Kentucky or Kildare.

Fact is, European bloodstock has painted itself into a corner. On the one hand, commercial breeders have washed their hands of the Derby, and other races that require Classic quality, claiming that they can’t afford to compete with the big owner-breeders who duly dominate today’s field. They will point to the fact that only three of the runners ever went to auction, and that one of these appears to have been expensively retained by his breeders anyway. While Galileo “only” accounts for three this year, he is the grandsire of another three, and damsire to another two. Eight out of 12, then; and of the remainder one is by his half-brother.

On the other hand, there is a self-fulfilling element to this defeatism. So many mares are nowadays sent to what are perceived as “commercial” sires–i.e. fast, precocious runners who are affordably unproven-that competition at the Classic level is diluted. Send all those mares to Galileo’s allegedly uncommercial son Nathaniel (Ire), and how many other Enables might he have? The sire of Golden Horn (GB) (Cape Cross {Ire}), equally, ended up at €20,000. Instead everyone throws hundreds of mares at rookie sprint sires on the assumption that they are getting aboard on the ground floor with the next Dark Angel (Ire) (Acclamation {GB}). That’s the best case scenario and, of course, extremely unlikely. And, with all due respect, even then you are not going to get yourself a Derby horse.

So what happens next? The answer could be right there in today’s field, albeit it may not turn out to be very legible in the unusually soft conditions. For the two dominant colts, going into the race, are both by sires based outside Europe.

Saxon Warrior (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn}) is the result of Coolmore’s own difficulties with the saturation of their stock by their champion sire. Not everyone, of course, could afford Japan’s phenomenal champion as an outcross option. Some of us suspect that he will ultimately prove only the headline Japanese source of class and stamina for European breeders who discover they have sold off their genetic family silver. For the time being, however, only he could really justify such the logistical and financial challenges involved.

From what remains a fairly small sample in Europe, he also has the chance in the Prix du Jockey-Club tomorrow [see Sid Fernando’s column in Friday’s TDN], with Study Of Man (Ire) (Deep Impact {Jpn}); and it may yet prove that the sidelined September (Ire) (Deep Impact {Jpn}) would have been able to win the Investec Oaks yesterday, too.

And then there is Roaring Lion (Kitten’s Joy), bought at Keeneland for $160,000 (video with his consignor, Mark Taylor). His sire hardly qualifies as the most outrageous gamble for a horse to export to European grass. Again from limited opportunities, he has already shown that his hegemony on American turf is a legitimate indicator of his worth as an elite international sire.

Deep Impact, likewise, has largely made his reputation through stock racing on turf. But he is a son of Sunday Silence, out of a daughter of Alzao (Lyphard)-himself, with Northern Dancer and Sir Ivor as his grandsires, condensing the regeneration in European pedigrees credited to dirt-running Kentucky stallions in the 1970s and 1980s.

Certainly it would be highly fitting if a Keeneland yearling could win the Derby on the 50th anniversary of Sir Ivor’s ground-breaking success [see Tuesday’s piece in the TDN]. For we could be embarking on a new turn of the wheel in more ways than one. Just as Vincent O’Brien lit a new path for the European breed with Sir Ivor, the first Epsom Derby winner bought at auction in America, so his son-in-law (and partner in the Northern Dancer revolution) John Magnier has already made the reputation of War Front (Danzig) and the late Scat Daddy (Johannesburg) as cosmopolitan, crossover sires.

He is fortunate, naturally, that he can afford to fly Group 1 mares to Deep Impact. But what both Saxon Warrior and Roaring Lion demonstrate is that commercial neglect of eligible Classic stallions in Europe is leaving the field open to prospectors who are either based or prepared to shop elsewhere.

Okay, so it’s a two-way street. Recent graded stakes success by European migrants to California (Euro-breds Reign Over SoCal Turf) attests to the gaps in given racing environments. But nobody needs reminding of the sensational impact of American stock at Royal Ascot in recent years.

While those of us who cherish the St Leger as the most historic of all races would be delighted to see Saxon Warrior proceed to a Triple Crown, it would be disappointing if that made him less likely to wind up in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. But who knows? Perhaps we might yet see two Triple Crown winners, from either side of the ocean, square up in that race. Justify (Scat Daddy), for his part, would have been perfectly eligible as a Classic prospect in Europe. Grandsons of Sunday Silence and Johannesburg respectively, and you’re going to tell me they were each born for one surface and one surface only?

Be that as it may, the bottom line is that the insularity, myopia and avarice of European breeders is giving the American Thoroughbred a fresh chance to run up the blindside. The crowning idiocy is that you still hear European horsemen dismissing American blood not just with lazy generalisations about medication, but also as being bred in a single dimension of speed.

If they bothered to study the keynote Kentucky rosters-and this applies both to the established sires, and to the young guns-they would be forced to recognise that the median fantasy, for breeders using them, is to breed a Triple Crown horse. Just scroll through the Kentucky lists and ask yourself how many of them would be more likely to get you a Classic type than the fast-buck speed icons of the European marketplace.

Today’s race need not be the moment that forces more Europeans to think about these things properly. Conditions, as already noted, may lead to an old school slog and another crown for Galileo or his ilk. That would not alter the overall trend.

Edifying efforts are being made in Britain to improve the commercial feasibility of horses bred to stay. But progress, in that regard, will take a few years at least. And for now, if the Derby remains the pinnacle for a European 3-year-old, then anyone breeding or buying in Kentucky should be aware that there is room at the top.

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