Chris McGrath

Why The Long Face?

Sue Finley — Fri, 26 May 2023 18:42:53 +0000

As and when he finally quits riding the kids to sleep, at least John Velazquez doesn't have to worry about a next career. Because what he did in Baltimore last week showed him to have everything it takes to lead a cortege. Not just the restrained tempo, but also the way he reliably maintained all dignity and decorum while Irad Ortiz Jr. came lurching out of the procession in his usual unruly fashion.

Veterans Would Have An Instant Solution

Sue Finley — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 17:06:30 +0000

Coming from a culture where most wagering stipulates a fixed dividend, in the startling event that your horse happens to see through his part of the deal, I tend to view the morning line on American races as named for the hangover evidently being suffered by its compiler.

Missing The Point

Sue Finley — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 18:57:04 +0000

They used to say that all roads lead to Rome. Now they all seem to lead to Louisville, whether you're starting from the desert or up the road in Florence, Kentucky. Some of us, even so, still miss the forgotten turnpike long favored by horsemen of the old school. In fact, there are times when I fear that we might actually have found ourselves on the road that is notoriously paved with good intentions.

This Side Up: Veterans’ Day at Oaklawn

Katie Petrunyak — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 18:35:24 +0000

On a weekend when we temporarily suspend our search for the adolescent Thoroughbred maturing sufficiently to beat his peers on the first Saturday in May, let's celebrate the fulfilments that remain available later in life–whether on two legs or four.

This Side Up: Tapping At That Derby Door Again

Katie Petrunyak — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 18:12:44 +0000

We had the Forte (Violence) bit last week. Now for the piano. The champion juvenile resumed his sonata in virtuoso fashion, reprising themes established in its first movement with familiar verve.

Lessons From A Polish Donkey

Sue Finley — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 21:40:03 +0000

I must admit that this whole business of getting wiser as you get older is giving me a little trouble. Somehow I only seem able to nail one half of the deal-albeit, so far as that goes, I'm definitely making rapid, daily progress.

This Side Up: Third Coast Supplies Extra Dimension

Sue Finley — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 16:55:46 +0000

The world we share with these amazing animals may be an ever-changing one, but its mysteries abide. We consider ourselves ever more knowledgeable, ever more certain, riding the slipstream of science. Yet how much do we truly know, when Afternoon Deelites holds out for all those years and then waits just six days before following his owner to whatever shore may (or may not) lie beyond the horizon of life?

For This Road, the `Knight’ Will Need Armor

Sue Finley — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 20:44:40 +0000

No matter where you start from, the choice on Saturday is the same for everyone: do you head southeast, or Southwest? Okay, if you happen to be in Key West, you'll uniquely have to head a little way north to join the party in Miami. For many of us, however, the compass needle will instead be quivering towards to the GIII Southwest S.

This Side Up: Lecomte Starts a New Cycle

Katie Petrunyak — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 21:48:18 +0000

And so we begin anew. The GIII Lecomte S. always warms the heart: it's like noticing the first buds on the bare trees, as the quiet midwinter promise–familiar, expected, miraculous–of another spring to come.

Style and Substance to Light Up Cigar

Sue Finley — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 21:32:17 +0000

Strictly, it's the very reverse of what he's doing—which is actually to revert from two turns to one. In a sense, however, the return of Zandon (Upstart) to Aqueduct on Saturday will bring things full circle.

Where The Ice of Fashion Melts

Sue Finley — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 19:55:04 +0000

What do these stallions have in common: Competitive Edge, First Samurai, Include, First Dude, Majesticperfection, Midnight Lute and Noble Mission (GB)? Okay, so you could also add A.P. Indy, Into Mischief, Lope de Vega (Ire), Medaglia d'Oro and Quality Road to the mix. But you would hope so, too, if you happen to be one of those highly paid advisors who tell their patrons that the only way to start a breeding program is with most expensive covers around.

Would This Really Be Such a Stupid Gamble?

Sue Finley — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 15:10:18 +0000

“Now why did I do that?” For some of us, the more painful that question becomes, the easier the answer. It'll be right there in that empty bottle, greeting you on the table in the morning. For those of you whose conduct has more complex influences, however, apparently there's a handy publication out there called The Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. And you thought horse pedigrees were a niche interest.

Higher Stakes But No Less A Gamble

Sue Finley — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 17:46:21 +0000

Well, that was one even I managed to see coming. With sterling bleeding at the bottom of the stairs, the most expensive yearling transaction of 2022 was duly enacted at Tattersalls this week.

It was always going to be a wild market: Keeneland had shown the big spenders to remain impervious to war and inflation, while the local currency had been set aflame after new leaders sent home the babysitter and started playing with fiscal matches.

Arc Only One End of the Rainbow

Sue Finley — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 19:11:28 +0000

Even in a market like this one, weirdly insulated from economic and geopolitical chaos, trading Thoroughbreds will always remain a precarious business. Speculators never hesitate, then, to pounce whenever the odds appear skewed temporarily in their favor. Sure enough, with the dollar squeezing other currencies dry, around one in eight of the yearlings sold at the Goffs Orby Sale this week is said to be heading to the U.S.; and they'll have plenty of company out of Tattersalls next week.

Striking Gold Never a Formality

Sue Finley — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 17:23:08 +0000

In this business, simply “doing the math” would stop us right in our tracks. Luckily, we have algebra on our side. A daunting equation can always be rescued by that helpfully vague variable, 'x', the unquantifiable ardor of wealthy people: their competitive instinct, their sportsmanship, or simply their outsized egos. At the top of the market, after all, the dollars they spend are not the same as the dollars used by the rest of us to buy coffee or gas. It's not like “real” money at all. But that doesn't mean it can't be subject to a scale of values.

The Court of King James

Sue Finley — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 16:07:58 +0000

Even as the British Turf grieves a revered sovereign and, in the same person, its most cherished and indispensable servant, I hope you'll forgive me for instead reflecting on the loss, only the day before, of someone she would have loved to be typical of all her subjects: a horseman, and true countryman, who divided his time between the international bloodstock circuit and an old rectory in rural Yorkshire.

Will Travers Stars Stick to the Script?

Sue Finley — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 19:32:30 +0000

Our sport thrives on anticipation; our business, on outcomes. But actually it can take a while to unpick one from the other—especially when even a race as storied as the GI Travers S. is not just an end in itself, but also a potential means to viability for the whole program of whoever is lucky enough to own the winner.

Baaeed News is Good News

Sue Finley — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 16:49:52 +0000

I guess the whole point is that ours is a world apart, a sanctuary from the cares of the “real” one. But it still feels unnerving, to see a new cycle of the sales calendar open with such blithe indifference to a wider consensus that the global economy is scrabbling along the top of a precipice.

Oasis or Mirage

Sue Finley — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 15:30:37 +0000

In this instance, you really can't say that the grass is any greener on the other side of the fence. Take your dystopian pick: the floods of Kentucky, or the desiccation of Europe, where I've just returned from a vacation that seamlessly united the city parks of England and Italy in the same wasteland, with just a few bleached spikes still protruding from the baked, ashen earth.

This Side Up: The Vital Quest for New Joy

Sue Finley — Thu, 28 Jul 2022 15:23:07 +0000

Polite but perfunctory. That was pretty much the tone in which people tended to praise Kitten's Joy while he was with us, and I guess it should be no different now that he's gone. Even so, it strikes me that his loss has been inadequately lamented. Not just in his own right, as an avowed turf stallion who freakishly contrived two general sires' championships in North America; but also, virtually unremarked, as a final straw in what has over the past nine months become an outright catastrophe for the enlightened minority persevering with grass breeding in Kentucky.

Iron Legacy Will Never Rust

Katie Petrunyak — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 22:44:40 +0000

He's a rebel with a Causeway. But he is a rebel, all the same; or a maverick, at least; an outlier. Certainly we can't expect everyone to train horses like Kenny McPeek, nor indeed to buy them the same way. Apart from anything else, most people simply wouldn't be good enough.

Renewal Starts at Grass Roots

Katie Petrunyak — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 18:43:03 +0000

If this is seeing the future, then maybe it really will work. Among all these tiny, straggling groups negotiating the arid wastes of the dirt stakes program, we finally reach a true oasis in the GI Caesars Belmont Derby Inv.

Desert Turns Up Heat On Parched Calendar

Katie Petrunyak — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 18:15:02 +0000

In the end, things work because they work. We try stuff, often if not always with the best intentions, and see whether it gains our trust. Lived experience, among horsemen and fans, will eventually tell us whether an experiment has failed or whether, once every generation or so, we might have struck a game-changing seam of gold. The Breeders' Cup was one such; and, who knows, maybe a similar hostility from vested interests will ultimately prove the furnace in which HISA can be forged into another.

Back to Arcadia

Sue Finley — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 18:18:36 +0000

So we get another day of sun, after all, out in La La Land. It was not so long ago that a night without end appeared to have descended on Santa Anita. Like Ryan Gosling's character in the film, fighting his quixotic rearguard action on behalf of jazz, we were clinging to the wreckage of a culture renounced by 21st Century society. “I'm letting life hit me till it gets tired,” he protests to his sister. “Then I'm going to hit back. It's a classic rope-a-dope.”

Past Specters, Present Ghosts

Sue Finley — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 16:19:24 +0000

How poignant that, in this of all weeks, the two most breathtaking winners on Belmont day should both have prompted comparisons with Ghostzapper, whose GI Breeders' Cup Classic at Lone Star Park in 2004 was surely the greatest Thoroughbred performance ever on Texan soil. Because while the whole racing world came to Dallas that day, it appears that there will be no reciprocal embrace when it comes to the standards sought—not just federally, but internationally—to give American horseracing credibility in the contest for public engagement in the 21st Century.

Passport to Victory

Sue Finley — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 19:27:35 +0000

Heritage, as a substitute for internationally adequate prize money, is literally priceless to the nation that cradled the Thoroughbred. Nowhere is this more apparent than at Royal Ascot, where prestige and pageant will next week again draw not just global attention but also global participation. As a result, this most definitively English of occasions has in recent years become ever more cosmopolitan.

A Long Fellow, and the Longest Reign

Sue Finley — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 20:28:44 +0000

The bit that most concerns us, naturally, is that the race is not to the swift-albeit ours is a business that will also disclose, fairly reliably, that nor is the battle to the strong; bread to the wise; riches to men of understanding; or favor to those of skill. “Time and chance happen to them all.”

Ready For Our Close Up?

Sue Finley — Fri, 27 May 2022 18:00:19 +0000

“Wait a minute, haven't I seen you before? I know your face… You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.”

“I am big. It's the pictures that got small.”

The Tough Get Going

Sue Finley — Sat, 21 May 2022 13:05:22 +0000

This Side Up: The Tough Get Going

Katie Petrunyak — Fri, 20 May 2022 15:27:12 +0000

I'm pinning my faith in Happy Jack. Not to win, obviously, even after a Derby so outlandish that it still confounds the handicapper's genius for rationalizing the most unaccountable events with the invincible benefit of hindsight.