Chris McGrath

You can't really resent someone hoarding the ammunition, if he only needs it because he's being forced to play Russian roulette. That's pretty much how things are for all those new, unproven stallions who corral such huge books of mares. Yes, I remain ever aggrieved on behalf of those quiet achievers who never get commercial traction, despite results that will almost invariably prove beyond their emerging rivals. But I do feel increasing sympathy for the young guns, because their margin for error is zero. They have to land running, or...

It's the baby I can't get out of my mind, try as I might. Maybe you feel it shouldn't have been out at all, on such an evening and in such a place: sitting there in its diaper, on a table, under the adoring smiles of the good-looking couple who had brought it into the raucous bar. But then the infant looked very much at home, alternately raising a glass of bourbon and a cheroot to its lips. Only in L.A.; only on Halloween. On closer inspection, of course, the...

So long, old big head. Most who fit that description are good; just not quite as good as they think. But you showed an indomitability rooted, not in arrogance, but in an awareness that the odds of life are seldom easy; that the crown must be earned, not just ceremonially conferred. In your case, it just needed a little extra by way of circumference. The retirement from stud of Tiznow (Cee's Tizzy), announced this week, is poignantly timed. In a few days' time, a fresh name will be carved on...

Do these things really even out? Who knows? All you can say for certain is that the satisfaction, as and when the wheel turns back in your favor, is all the more profound; and that any neutral, accordingly, should be rooting for Tim Yakteen at the Breeders' Cup. Like most horsemen, the Californian trainer has learned a wholesome fatalism. He doesn't dwell on what happened seven years ago this week. After all, he has based a whole career on the lessons available in experience of every kind, good and bad--whether...

You have to shake out a lot of grit from the riverbed before you glimpse that glint of gold. John Ropes started panning just about 40 years ago. He had a girl working for him at the time whose father, Andy Smithers, trained in Canada. When Ropes told her that he'd decided to buy a racehorse, she tried to save him. "No," she implored. "I'm telling you, don't do it." Ropes was adamant. He had always loved horses. His parents took him racing as a kid in Miami and, though...

As we have come to expect, in a trading environment that nowadays owes so much to their boss, it was the guys at Spendthrift who first put their heads over the parapet. This week, anyway. To be fair, the original lead actually came from Chuck Fipke--a match for the unorthodoxy and initiative even of B. Wayne Hughes, and prepared way back in the spring to waive his 2020 stallion fees altogether. Fipke reasoned that his entire pitch was to small breeders, who were already looking down the barrel as the...

When Ettore Sottsass was asked which of his many diverse achievements had given him most satisfaction, he gave a shrug. "I don't know," he said. "Life is a permanent project. It's a passage from one thing to another." The Italian designer and architect transcended disciplines in a fashion not dissimilar to his compatriot Federico Tesio, whose singular genius was as stimulated by his furniture workshop as by his breed-shaping stud farm. And there's a corresponding breadth of engagement to the man who wrote to the widow of Sottsass, asking permission...

We often talk of stallions who have had to earn their stripes. And there's no doubt that Dialed In has uncomplainingly completed every drill necessary to get his first Grade I insignia stitched onto his uniform, by Get Her Number in the American Pharoah S. at Santa Anita a few days ago. By the time the son of Mineshaft set up shop in 2013, his qualifications as favorite for the 2011 Derby had rather faded from memory. He had run down Shackleford (Forestry) in the GI Florida Derby, but their...

The adage reckons a picture to be worth 1,000 words. Of course, as has been remarked, that means 1,001 words must be worth more than a picture. (On which wiseguy basis, I will generously trade this column for that Rembrandt in your loft.) But then it might take something closer to 1,000 pages to record everything the owners of Thousand Words (Pioneerof the Nile) have experienced over the past year. This colt gave a literal quality to their topsy-turvy fortunes when rearing and toppling in the Derby preliminaries, sending Bob...

Of all the oddities shoehorned into the 2020 calendar, a Jim Dandy on Derby day felt like one of the most incongruous. In a regular year, this Grade II race serves as a midsummer crossroads for sophomores with an eye on the GI Travers: a chance either to regroup, after participation in the Triple Crown series, or to test the water after missing the Classics through immaturity or injury. At least this latter function was maintained, this time round, in the coming-of-age of 'TDN Rising Star' Mystic Guide (Ghostzapper), a...

"The Homeboy, I call him: the Louisville Homeboy." Bruce Lunsford gives a proud chuckle. "With Tommy, and Brian, we've made it an all-Louisville crowd. So that's kind of fun. In fact, when we laid out a plan, one of the good things was that we could get all the way to the Breeders' Cup without leaving Kentucky. I think that's an advantage, but who knows?" One thing he does know: he would prefer to cede the limelight to those unsung horsemen, Tom Drury, Jr. and Brian Hernandez, Jr. But if...

If anything, you would think it the very last thing that might appeal to one who has spent decades acquainting himself, at viscerally close quarters, with all the things that can go wrong with a Thoroughbred. Yet here he is, sharing the same vicissitudes as those clients for whom--weighing the ups and downs of their trade--his veterinary skills so long served as a vital fulcrum. As one of the original partners of the Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital, Dr. Scott Pierce could scarcely have gone into breeding with fewer illusions....