Chris McGrath

Thursday, Chris McGrath covered the first half of the Kentucky stallions with first yearlings. Click here to read about Justify, City of Light, West Coast, Mendelssohn, Good Magic, Bolt d'Oro, and Always Dreaming. The second part appears below. ACCELERATE (Lookin At Lucky--Issues, by Awesome Again) has also been trimmed to $17,500, at Lane's End, having already been our "gold" value pick of the intake at an opening $20,000. Whatever made him attractive then has scarcely diminished in the meantime, given that he was never going to appeal to those fast-buck...

As we all know, the more a stallion has to prove, the more the market indulges him. As each intake shows more of its hand, however, breeders become progressively more nervous of young sires disproving judgements that are themselves typically more concerned with the anticipation of demand at the sales, than of any potency they may (or may not) be able to recycle on the track. In this third instalment of our survey, then, we begin our descent of the slippery slope with the first group to offer a hint...

What an interesting crossroads we reach with the next group of young stallions in our survey. On the one hand, you have this new dynamic in the marketplace, with Spendthrift increasingly welcoming blue-chip prospects to build on its blue-collar successes. Yes, these may be looking to build more conventional, fee-based careers, as opposed to relying on the type of innovative promotions that helped Into Mischief evolve from a source of cheap commercial speed into the champion sire of a Kentucky Derby winner (who has himself now joined the roster, of...

He has trademarked the move, his name reliably invoked whenever a horse picks off his rivals with the kind of flair that luminously separates him from the herd. Yet just about the only time I ever saw one glide through an elite field with quite the same extraterrestrial contempt as Arazi (Blushing Groom {Fr}) in the 1991 GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile was the following May, at the same track, when that nimbus-among-the-shadows exhibition was reprised along the backstretch by a horse called... Arazi. His discovery of mortal limitations, both in...

For the first half of this story, please visit yesterday's instalment. Precocity may not be the first thing you'd have in mind from Tom's d'Etat (Smart Strike--Julia Tuttle, by Giant's Causeway), who enters service at WinStar at $17,500 after only really seizing our attention at the age of seven. Nonetheless, he represents one of the most promising prospects of the intake. For a start, he's by a sire of sires out of a graded stakes-placed Giant's Causeway mare whose own dam was a full-sister to Candy Ride (Arg). And nine...

Welcome to our annual survey of covering options in Kentucky for the forthcoming breeding season. As usual, we'll start with the rookies and work our way through the preceding intakes, before trying to eke out some value among the more established stallions. A wholly subjective exercise, clearly--so apologies if your fellow doesn't make our "value podium." Every farm is understandably sensitive about the reputation of its stallions, for whom opportunity can be so fleeting and about whom fashions can swell or fade on the flimsiest grounds. We'll do our best...

What is it, beyond our obvious bond in the Thoroughbred, that most vitally comprises the fabric of the Turf? It's a question answerable in too many ways, requiring definition of too many intangibles, to be easily condensed. But I think we'll get somewhere close if we ponder the retirement this week of Stan Hough, an old-school horseman of a type largely overwhelmed in the era of the super-trainer. And especially because his departure from the stage coincides with the removal of two key features of the scenery: Calder Race Course,...

It's a tough game, selling nominations; and, except for those sparkly new stallions, getting tougher all the time. So we should have every sympathy with the farms trying to drum up custom. True, WinStar doesn't hold back in introducing Paynter on his homepage as "one of the most popular and courageous runners in racing history." But if that's a pretty heady claim, even for a horse whose recovery from desperate illness so captured the hearts of the racing public, then the son of Awesome Again has certainly moved the conversation...

"When you figure it out, let me know." Those were the parting words of a highly esteemed breeder this week, after we exchanged a few thoughts on the diminishing viability of stallions once they have covered their first book of mares. Not that "diminishing," as an adjective, is really equal to the case. I suppose you could diminish down a lift shaft, but it wouldn't be the first word that would occur to you in the time available. Spoiler alert: I haven't figured it out. But I think I know...

Bought yourself a mare in Lexington this week? Good for you. You have kept the faith. In many cases, that will be because you have seen it all before: you've ridden out bumps in the economy, and eked out value from these stoical and enduring creatures by borrowing their impassive engagement with the patient rhythms of Nature. It's a long game, after all, one that will absorb pandemics and presidential cycles like a passing April shower. But even the longest journey starts with a single step. And many of you...

In these days of wilful division and reluctant separation, perhaps the wider world could for once learn something from our own community. For while our preoccupations may be frivolous, relative to such momentous challenges as the securing of democracy or public health, they do at least inculcate precisely the kind of calm forbearance most needed, right now, to quell the hysteria and despair infecting national wellbeing. It's pouring with rain? Go feed your horse and clean out the stall. Middle of a heatwave? Go feed your horse and clean out...

Less is more, they say. Don't worry, that's not a facetious observation on the counting of votes. It's just that some of us still feel that the expansion of the Breeders' Cup into a second day, in 2007, somewhat diluted its trademark intensity. A couple of years previously they had faced a similar calculation, in Britain, about adding a fourth day to the Cheltenham Festival: would the guarantee of another lucrative full house, at this phenomenally popular climax of the jumps season, represent a legitimate trade-off for the inevitable erosion...