Chris McGrath

A fairly quirky notion, perhaps, but let's just give it a little rein. Because it was in California that Collected reached his peak on the racetrack, including when beaten only by the Horse of the Year in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic; and it is also in California that he has been making his name in his second career. Is it conceivable, then, that his stock may be inheriting some aptitude peculiarly adapted to the demands of the West Coast theater? Regardless, his cumulative resonance among Californian breeders certainly gives...

Horses long ago tutored Eoin Harty in the kind of coincidences that defy rational explanation, as we'll discover when reaching the story of Well Armed. But losing both parents inside a week, in February, was maybe not quite as bewildering as it may seem. As Harty says himself, after 66 happy years together, perhaps the reason his father followed his mother so quickly was not so much a heart attack, as a broken heart. As a fifth-generation trainer, Harty owed not just personal but professional formation to his Irish genes....

"As a baby, he was mean," recalls Vickie Hewitt. "When we were prepping him for sale, as a short yearling, he would charge the door, ears back, rearing up." How they handled him on Cambrey Farm, back then, may have a lot to do with the fact that Trendsetter (Modernist) heads to the GIII Peter Pan Stakes on Saturday as a breakout winner of the GIII Lexington Stakes. "We didn't step in there and start yelling at him, or raise our hands," Hewitt recalls. "We'd be very patient. You don't...

We know that the majority of stallions, in this day and age, get their biggest and best books precisely when we know least about their competence. But the other side of the same coin is that very few breeders stick around should a stallion fail to seize that first, fleeting opportunity. Just as well, then, that a historically underachieving group of rookies has got its act together with its maturing first crop, to the extent that four have managed to get a son into the GI Kentucky Derby gate. Collectively,...

This is a story about young friends: some who have become a little less young, but who have kept themselves from growing too old, too soon, by supporting and mentoring the next generation. Poignantly, however, it starts with a man who was himself cruelly denied his share in that gratifying, repeating cycle among horses and horsemen. Because it was his lamented friend Alex Scott who, hearing that Luke Lillingston was off to New York, made an introduction that proved critical to his career. "This was, what, 38 years ago now,"...

So this week it was Not This Time who landed two big punches: a 13th career Grade I scorer, Claret Beret, in the Apple Blossom Handicap; plus the Grade II prize named for his own sire Giant's Causeway, through In Our Time. If Not This Time and Into Mischief are going to slug it out all year long, they will of course be drawing on the same well--each extending a different branch of Storm Cat. How do you trademark that horse's legacy? Well, a couple of years ago we tapped...

It's what keeps everyone going: the chance that somewhere out there may be a single horse capable of transforming your whole career. For most, of course, the quest yields no more than near-misses: horses that don't quite work out, for one reason or another, but that hopefully show enough to get you noticed, keep you in the game. Every now and then, however, somebody turns up a real game-changer. Every now and then, along comes Mage. Before turning up the 2023 GI Kentucky Derby winner, Ramiro Restrepo's eligibility to describe...

Steve Landers knows a salesman when he sees one. And here comes a burly young man, into the paddock at Oaklawn, holding out a hand. "Mr. Landers," he said. "I'm Brad Cox." This was a good decade ago, when Cox was still trying to get established. So he made his pitch. If Landers could keep him in mind for a horse or two, he sure would appreciate it. "Well, I like to see somebody swim out to their ship, instead of waiting on it to come in," Landers says now....

I've never understood this business of Dry January--the one month when those of us who take a glass of cheer are most grateful for a little respite from the dark and cold. Okay, maybe not a problem in California, but those of you battling all that snow and ice will surely see the merit of Dry February instead. It's shorter, for a start; and ends with the days lengthening and spring tangibly in the air. It's perfectly natural, however, for stallions to have a dry January. Certainly nobody will be...

There's a special feel about this place: very different from some of the bigger farms around Lexington, with their miles of fencing leading to wide horizons. Here trees fill the undulations like green mist, and then there's this gem of a house, faithfully reproduced from a much older one in New Hampshire that Dede McGehee came across in a book one day. Hummingbirds flit into the flower baskets on the veranda. Overall, Heaven Trees Farm feels very apt to its name. "Except when I looked into it, it turned out...

Needless to say, some people are always going to chase the fast buck. In the main, however, we all know this to be the longest of games. You can't drive the green from every tee; nor should you panic if your first drive lands in the water. There are 17 more holes to go. For Jane Lyon and her late husband Frank, one of the least fulfilling days in their Turf journey must have been the GI Matron Stakes of 2005. They had just made an expensive gamble to restore...

"I think this filly's cheating on me." Well, if that was the opinion of a Hall of Fame trainer, who could argue? Least of all a woman, in the male-dominated Bluegrass of the mid-1970s. But Headley Bell remembers that when Frank Whiteley Jr. sent Nicosia (Gallant Romeo) home to Mill Ridge, his late mother Alice Chandler was not ready to give up. After all, this was a daughter of Nicoma (Nashua), whose previous foal had just won a Grade I; and Alice's husband, Dr. John Chandler, suggested that maybe the...