Chris McGrath

Assuming that you, too, have by this stage marvelled at the tenacity, balance and athleticism of Alex Cruz in winning a race despite losing both irons leaving the gate, at Emerald Downs last weekend, then perhaps you might also have been prompted to reassess our prejudices against the seat of the 18th Century guardsman. To the modern eye, the long-shanked equitation of those days appears ludicrous: awkward, stilted and, above all, inimical to the freedom of the horse's movement. We think of the elevation of the modern jockey, as popularized...

After 40 years, and standing seventh in the all-time Churchill Downs win list, it looks as though Greg Foley might just be getting the hang of this training game. Heading into the fall, he has already won more prizemoney than in any campaign since starting out in 1981: $2,335,202 and counting, from 33 winners at 19%. And the bases are loaded, too. For instance, the pair that condensed Foley's maturing momentum in finally becoming his first and then immediately his second Derby starters, Major Fed (Ghostzapper) and O Besos (Orb),...

The cyclical nature of our business, from the foaling shed to the race program, invites a length of perspective that can only be of comfort in times of trouble. This, too, shall pass--even a global pandemic. And if COVID disrupted our routines in 2020 as seldom before, with a September Derby and no Saratoga Sale, we appear determined to make as seamless a resumption as its lingering challenges allow. Trade at Saratoga last month was eerily close to 2019. Of 180 hips into the ring for Fasig-Tipton's Select Sale, 135...

Three years ago this week, at the September Sale, I was privileged by as powerful a reminder as I'd enjoyed in a long time as to why this is such a great business. Not in the sale ring itself, watching the billionaires puffing out and locking antlers, but just sitting in the pavilion lobby with a guy who had been born in a one-room house to teenage parents--and had spent the intervening seven decades accumulating the kind of riches, being contingent on a mighty intellect and noble heart, that would...

In an age that takes such relish in discovering offense where none is intended, I suppose we will eventually have to stop referring to a "Graveyard of Champions". Never mind that most horsemen would perceive a fairly benign destiny in themselves being laid to rest in Saratoga, with the implicit likelihood of an exit--a Parting Glass, indeed--achieved by some excess of bliss or excitement. For the squeamish tastes of today, the metaphor is doubtless becoming a little too sanguinary. Be that as it may, there's no denying that Saratoga's long...

It's the kind of tale that might prompt a listening barman to catch the eye of one of the regulars and give a wink. Sure you have, pal. A Texas-bred Commissioner filly? You hear that, folks? This guy has a $22,000 2-year-old RNA with a Hall of Fame trainer. And she's the top turf sophomore filly in America. Well I guess it must be your round, buddy. But nobody needs to tell Joseph F. Graffeo, himself the son of a bartender, the kind of odds being confounded by Con Lima,...

Everyone knows how the system works; how lavishly choreographed is the promotion of new sires. Center stage is cleared, the footlights are turned up, the make-up and costume departments go into overdrive. But we also know that most of them will go out there, clear their throats nervously, and murmur a few lines that barely qualify them, in the longer term, for a place in the back row of the chorus line. Every now and then, however, one of these rookies steps up and you sense within moments that a...

Could happen, you know. Within the random weavings of the Thoroughbred, after all, it's always tempting to discern some pattern suggestive of a coherent, governing narrative. And if Silver State (Hard Spun) were to win the GI Whitney S., and in the process happened to become the 9,446th winner saddled by his trainer, it might well feel as though 35 years of skill and endeavor, processed daily through random fluctuations of good or bad luck, have all led logically and inexorably to this pinnacle. The trouble is that whoever came...

She's the one, all right. The one and only, in fact--at least up until now. Who knows? Perhaps Neil Pessin's exemplary achievements with Bell's the One (Majesticperfection) might yet reward him with another Grade I winner or two. But after a lifetime in the game, and 36 years since saddling his first winner, he's neither expecting nor even desiring to transform the intimate scale of his operation. "You know, I don't get jealous of anybody," Pessin says. "I'm very happy with where I'm at. I've been successful with the numbers...

So the big question is whether the out-of-town jocks, in the heat of a $1-million battle for the GI TVG.com Haskell S., can master the instinct to reach for the whip? If any lifelong flagellants are anxious of their self-discipline, then they need only play back the 1988 running and remind themselves how Laffit Pincay, Jr. coaxed Forty Niner home, in withering heat, by a nose from Seeking the Gold. The whip is unsheathed, for sure, but so seamlessly with the horse's own efforts that the overall effect is like...

She's still only 28, and it isn't three years since she started training. Yet a first graded stakes success for Anna Meah last weekend was welcomed with a depth of perspective extending both forward and back. On the one hand, she has always been a woman in a hurry: however crammed the automobile she drove south from Washington in December 2012, her heart set on finding a backstretch job in California, the years since have been no less packed with experience. Indeed, the veteran trainer of a small string at...

What a singular coincidence, and literally so, that two of the best horses recently bred in Canada--and that has never been a negligible distinction--should both have only one eye. True, the origins of Hard Not to Love (Hard Spun) and Mighty Heart (Dramedy) could scarcely be more diverse. The 2019 GI La Brea S. winner, who was retired a few weeks ago, graduated from one of the most admired breeding programs in North America, which routinely sends yearlings to Keeneland as coveted as any making a shorter trip from the...