Study Hard

Another foaling year has begun and I truly have learned to go into each season with a "brace yourself" mentality as any long-term breeder realizes it is the only way you can keep your sanity year after year. This season, we continue to tackle the flock to the big-book first years and proven sires while breaking out the crystal ball to try to guess which of the bubble horses will succeed when their progeny hits the track. If any of you have ever participated in Geoffrey Russell's freshman sire contest,...

In terms of upcoming centenaries, the good news is that we should be favored with plenty of Marilyn Monroe movies. True, her most enduring contribution to equine sport was to exclaim, in Some Like It Hot: "Water polo! Isn't that terribly dangerous?" "I'll say," replies Tony Curtis as the fake millionaire. "I had two ponies drowned under me." In the Thoroughbred world, therefore, we will instead be honoring another immortal female born in 1926. Through the next year, in fact, it might be fun to make a specific note of...