believe it or not, the 3-year-old champion still has not been decided, nor even voted on

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buckpasser, california chrome, classic form, evaluating champions, kauai king, shared belief

Before the Belmont, and especially in its aftermath, there has been considerable discussion and analysis of the quality and ranking of the leading 3-year-old colts. There is, however, no question who’s the best gelding in the crop: Shared Belief.

Last year’s divisional champion at 2, Shared Belief was a natural prospect for the Triple Crown but was knocked out of the classics with a foot problem. When the son of Candy Ride returned to competition in a six-furlong allowance against older horses a month ago, he showed his old flair, and the champ indicated that he is not going to hand over his Eclipse mantle without a battle by an emphatic victory in the July 5 Los Alamitos Derby.

Unbeaten in five races, Shared Belief stands as a serious challenger to California Chrome, who won a pair of classics in the absence of the dark brown son of Candy Ride and who is now having some time off before being trained for the Breeders’ Cup Classic, which will again be at Santa Anita.

The possibility of a showdown between juvenile champion Shared Belief and the wildly popular Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner is a great prospect for racing. It’s a great story; it’s interesting and dramatic.

The situation also recalls the 1966 Triple Crown and its resolution. That year’s Kentucky Derby and Preakness were won by snappy colt bearing the name of Kauai King (by Native Dancer), and he accomplished the double with some elan before finishing fourth in the Belmont Stakes. Is this sounding familiar?

The situation becomes almost eerily similar because the champion juvenile colt of the preceding year was Buckpasser, owned and bred by Ogden Phipps. Buckpasser was knocked off the Triple Crown trail in early 1966 by a serious quarter crack and did not return to competition until early June.

Buckpasser returned with an emphatic triumph over older horses in an allowance.  Then Buckpasser went on a tear through his contemporaries and older horses, finishing the year a thoroughly proven champion and the first million-dollar winner as a 3-year-old. Among the victories Buckpasser amassed, which eventually numbered 16 in a row, were successes over every major challenger to his supremacy, including Kauai King.

Time and commentators perceived that the 3-year-olds of 1966, foals of 1963, were quite a good group, with other major winners including Abe’s Hope (Better Bee), Advocator (Round Table), Amberoid (Count Amber), Boldnesian (Bold Ruler), Buffle (Zenith), Crème dela Crème (Olympia), Graustark (Ribot), Impressive (Ambiorix), Stupendous (Bold Ruler), and the leading fillies were Lady Pitt (Sword Dancer), Natashka (Ribot), Native Street (Native Dancer), Marking Time (To Market), Moccasin (Nantallah), and Priceless Gem (Hail to Reason).

Since only half of 2014 is past, it is far too early to dismiss the crop of 2011 as either better or worse than Buckpasser’s lot.

One thing is certain. There are more than a few good horses on the sidelines from this crop who are taking the steps to return to the races, and perhaps their best form is yet ahead of them. Among the list of such colts who were fancied for the Derby, the top prospects include Cairo Prince, Honor Code, and Constitution, while Tonalist and Danza also have highly competitive form to challenge the highflyers of the division.

But they better put their running shoes on.

Shared Belief is progressing very well with his return to racing, and his next start is expected to be the Pacific Classic at Del Mar. That race will be an interesting challenge for a horse who still needs to prove a good deal, and the gelding’s effort in that race will tell the racing public several things. First, it will place Shared Belief in some context with the older horses, and second, it will show us his form going 10 furlongs, farther than he has raced to date by a furlong.

Considering how well Shared Belief handled dirt at Los Alamitos while racing nine furlongs in 1:47.01, it seems doubtful another furlong will be an impediment. But the challenges are his to overcome, and in so doing, to prove whether he is the type of racer who was unlucky to have missed the Triple Crown.

And we fans of and contributors to the most beautiful sport have six months of fun and excitement to look forward to.

*The preceding post was first published earlier this week at Paulick Report.

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best non-winner of the triple crown

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afleet alex, buckpasser, classic sires, damascus, dr. fager, keiblog, kelso, native dancer, non-triple crown winners, point given, risen star, sire dominance, sire influence, spectacular bid, sunday silence, thoroughbred breeding in japan, tim tam, Triple Crown, zenya yoshida

There’s been a bit of chat on the interwebs and hinterblogs about who was the best colt not to win the Triple Crown. Most of the consideration has been on Spectacular Bid, Point Given, Afleet Alex, and to a lesser extent (if you can believe it) Sunday Silence.

All were smacking good racehorses, as were Risen Star, Tim Tam, Damascus, Native Dancer, and a few others who never made the Triple like Buckpasser, Dr Fager, and Kelso. Yet we can argue till we faint dead away, and nobody can prove which was the absolute best. But I can, however, tell you which was the best at stud (although Afleet Alex has many chapters left to write): Sunday Silence.

The winner of two-thirds of the Triple Crown, the BC Classic, and Horse of the Year, Sunday Silence was much better than that when put to stud in Japan as the supreme legacy of the great breeder Zenya Yoshida.

Simply put, Sunday Silence was the best stallion in the history of Thoroughbred breeding in Japan, and he became known as one of the best in the world, although few of his offspring left the most lucrative racing and breeding program in the world.

Although lost relatively young, Sunday Silence still rules the breeding world in Japan. As evidence of the stallion’s absolute dominance, Keiblog notes: “every single horse in [tomorrow’s Japan Derby] field is related to Sunday Silence. 16 are by stallions whose sire is Sunday Silence. Cresco Grand and Belshazzar have Sunday Silence as their broodmare sire.”

Amazing.

There are several reasons for Sunday Silence’s success in Japan, not least being that his physique and character suited their racing program so well. But don’t let anyone tell you it was because he was playing in a sandlot. The Japanese have world-class racing, and their stock races impressively when taken into other environments.

The old black pest* was simply the best.

*(I was a fan of Easy Goer)

blame: new ky stallions for 2011

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arch, bc classic, blame, broadway, buckpasser, champion older horse, complimentary mating, courtly dee, female families, haynesfield, new stallions for 2011, physique in racehorses, quality in racehorses, rough shod, seeking the gold, thong, zenyatta

Blame (2006 b by Arch x Liable, by Seeking the Gold)

Claiborne $35,000

With his first two mares covered confirmed in foal this week, Blame is continuing his new career with the quiet and untroubled success he demonstrated during his seasons on the track.

Neither a star at 2 nor a Triple Crown colt at 3, Blame did not catch the headlines of many in his age group until his continued victories propelled him to be one of the contenders in the division among older horses last year. Then victory in the Whitney over Quality Road put the bay son of Arch at the top of the tree.

Blame stubbed his toe in the Jockey Club Gold Cup, when Haynesfield got awful brave on the lead, and Blame didn’t manage to run down the chestnut son of Distorted Humor Speightstown.

That set the stage for Blame to be almost overlooked in the buildup to the BC Classic, when all eyes and news outlets were focused on Zenyatta. So Blame earned more fame in the last two minutes of his racing career than he found in the preceding two years. No fault of his; that’s just how it worked out.

A really handsome horse, Blame is the type to be of great interest to breeders. The son of Arch stands over a lot of ground, has plenty of bone with well-defined tendons, is neither coarse nor gross in body type, and has the scope that made him a natural 10-furlong horse.

In physical type, he shows much more the influence of Buckpasser through his broodmare sire Seeking the Gold, a son of Mr Prospector out of Buckpasser mare Con Game.

I was expecting more evidence of Kris S and Hail to Reason in the horse’s physique, judging from the power Blame showed on the racetrack, but he is much more finesse and finely tuned precision in the flesh. He has a very good head with a game, bold eye, and the quality from Seeking the Gold and Buckpasser shines through.

Also, Blame has a great pedigree. On top, the family is the great Helen Alexander/King Ranch female line from Courtly Dee (by Never Bend) through her champion daughter Althea (by Alydar). Seeking the Gold comes from one of the several great Phipps families, this through Broadway, dam also of champion Queen of the Stage and her very high-class brother Reviewer (both by Bold Ruler). And the bottom line is Claiborne’s own Rough Shod through Thong, Special, Bound, and Liable.

Nice.

Since standing Thong’s full brother Ridan in the mid-1960s, Claiborne has stood only one stallion from this family: the Northern Dancer horse Topsider from the branch of Rough Shod through her daughter Gambetta.

In selecting mares for Blame, he will move up mares needing quality. He would be assisted by mares with more speed, which never goes out of fashion, and lines complimentary to the families above (say Forty Niner, Northern Dancer, Caro) could add some spark to the resulting offspring.

in the barn with eddie neloy

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adjudicating, bold lad, bold ruler, buckpasser, claiborne farm, dispute, eddie neloy, jim hilling, lovely morning, numbered account, phipps family stable, queen of the stage, resolver, reviewer, time for a change, training methods, vitriolic, wheatley stable

Trainer Jim Hilling from California lent me some fascinating insights into the training methods and successes of the great conditioner Eddie Neloy, who trained the Phipps family horses from the early 1960s until Neloy’s death nearly a decade later. For a portion of that time, Hilling was part of Neloy’s training team.

In that time, Neloy conditioned champions such as Buckpasser, Queen of the Stage, Vitriolic, Bold Lad (through part of his career), Numbered Account, and others.

One morning in May 1967, Neloy started a pair of 2-year-olds on their paths to becoming racehorses at the track. The two fillies were named Bravissimo (1965 Bold Ruler x Batter Up, by Tom Fool) and Lovely Morning (1965 Swaps xMisty Morn, by Princequillo).

A pair of outstanding young prospects, the two fillies teamed up to jog and gallop in company, later progressing to galloping alone. These were baby steps in the larger program to allow each young race prospect to show her talents. Neloy doubtless saw more than the bare record indicates because neither had much impact on the racing news during their time in training.

From three seasons of training, Bravissimo was a winner on the racetrack from nine starts, unlike her two full brothers Three Bagger and Bold Hitter. The latter was unraced but became a useful regional sire and sired a top-class juvenile colt in Dimaggio.

Sent on down the line to other breeding programs, Bravissimo did acceptably well. She produced stakes-placed Bravo Native (by Restless Native) and Late to Rise (by Executioner).

Lovely Morning, on the other hand, earned rather a different response. She never made a start, but surely Neloy had seen something in her early work because she retired to stud for Wheatley Stable at Claiborne Farm and went immediately to the top of the tree. Her first two foals were by Bold Ruler (sire of Lovely Morning’s half-brothers Bold Lad and Successor). These were also the last two crops by Bold Ruler.

Lovely Morning’s first foal was the colt First Dawn, a winner four times, with nine placings from 28 starts. Aside from soundness, there might well have something good there because the mare went to the Bold Ruler stallion Reviewer for her third live foal, which was named Resolver.

The bay filly was third in the G1 Matron and G2 Alcibiades as a juvenile and finally managed to squeak home first in a stakes as a 4-year-old.

As a producer, Resolver became a very important producer, with Flamingo Stakes winner Time for a Change (Damascus), Champagne winner Adjudicating (Danzig), and Kentucky Oaks winner Dispute (Danzig) the top items in an exceptional producing career.

let’s inbreed to buckpasser

Tags

buckpasser, busanda, claiborne farm, derby pedigree, inbreeding, Kentucky Derby, lassie dear, numbered account, ogden phipps, super saver, tom fool, uncommitted

For the inbred set, the pedigree of Kentucky Derby winner Super Saver offers some thrills. The classic-winning bay colt is inbred 4x5x5 to 1966 Horse of the Year Buckpasser.

A 1963 son of Horse of the Year Tom Fool out of Suburban Handicap winner Busanda (by Triple Crown winner War Admiral), Buckpasser was a marvelous racehorse, even better than his glittering pedigree. Champion of his division at 2 and 4, he was at his full powers during his overpowering 3-year-old season in 1966, although a quarter crack kept the big bay out of the Triple Crown (one of the quirks of fate that helped prolong the drought of TC winners between Citation and Secretariat).

Bred and raced by Ogden Phipps, Buckpasser won 25 of 31 starts, earning more than $1.4 million in three seasons of racing.

Retired to stud at his birthplace, Claiborne Farm, Buckpasser was a really good sire, although no replacement for Bold Ruler. Among Buckpasser’s first crop to race was champion juvenile filly Numbered Account, who is the fourth dam of the Kentucky Derby winner in the direct female line.

The other Buckpasser daughters in Super Saver’s pedigree are Lassie Dear, the second dam of Horse of the Year AP Indy (broodmare sire of the Kentucky Derby winner), and Uncommitted, the dam of Wavering Monarch, paternal grandsire of the Derby winner.

So Super Saver is inbred thrice to Buckpasser through three high-class daughters. What did you expect, a colt to throw a wrench in the works?

biomechanics: what it can do and can’t

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aptitude, biomechanical analysis, buckpasser, graustark, northern dancer, raise a native, slip anchor

More breeders have been turned off by unrealistic claims for biomechanical evaluations than most anything else.

The process is fascinating for those interested in statistics, is sometimes immensely enlightening for breeders, and offers some captivating options for looking at horses from a different perspective.

But biomechanical analysis will NOT give anyone a silver bullet to kill the game. Nothing is that easy. And breeding racehorses is complex, puzzling, exhilarating, and humbling. There are so many facets that nothing is going to solve the equation and resolve all the variables.

Which, if you like the sport, is a good thing.

One of the things that biomechanics does give us is an outline of the different types of racehorses and the individual strengths that allow them to succeed under different conditions. The horses with the best biomechanical balance tend to be the most versatile, and they also tend to be more consistent in reproducing their form.

For instance, in a race with a very strong pace, a horse with a good balance of stride and power can lay reasonably close because of its efficient stride, without burning too much energy, then power for home as less efficient horses tire.

In contrast, the horses who are not so balanced in their mechanical qualities but who are nonetheless very finely tuned in respect to stride or power can be exceptional horses. English Derby winner Slip Anchor, an exhorbitantly talented stride racer, needed to be ridden gusto to give him maximum use of his exceptional stride and place his opponents in the predicament of having to go with him or having to try to catch him. At his best, that was nearly impossible.

While Northern Dancer and Raise a Native are examples of mechanically balanced Type I horses from the 3-year-old crop of 1964, two leading members of the 1966 crop of 3-year-olds were more specialized. Buckpasser was a Type II,  with emphasis for power in his mechanics, and Graustark was a Type II who had more stride. Each was a tremendous athlete and became an important sire, and both were quite close to the Type I center.

As stallions who were very popular, and experienced considerable success, Buckpasser and Graustark are examples of what a more specialized stallion can accomplish at stud, and these two horses indicate the various aptitudes present in the Thoroughbred.

But it was not poor genetics or planning that made it difficult for Buckpasser and Graustark to breed on in the male line yet succeed more greatly as sires of broodmares. Instead it was opportunity. Their sons, who were more specialized and somewhat farther from the norms of the breed than their sires, had fewer opportunities to cover mares compatible with their specialized traits. The daughters of Buckpasser and Graustark, however, were well suited as mates for biomechanically balanced, high-class horses such as Northern Dancer, who had extraordinary success when crossed with Buckpasser mares, for instance.