136TH PREAKNESS STAKES : BITTER SWEET

Forestry - Sire of Shackleford
(Photo : Taylor Made Farm)

EMPERORS PALACE READY TO RUN SALE
6 November 2011

Mick Goss
Summerhill CEOThe outcome of America’s Triple Crown second leg did not quite go to the script. Team Valor’s Animal Kingdom was supposed to keep his crown ambitions alive by winning the Preakness too, but was unable to shut down the front running Shackleford in the space of 9 furlongs, failing in a quick diminishing half length.

The Americans have a strange structure to their triple, the Kentucky Derby at 10 furlongs, then the Preakness at nine, and the Belmont at twelve, all in the space of five weeks. This writer backed Shackleford to win the first, only to be proven wrong (even in the face of Barry Irwin’s strong predication he had the winner in Animal Kingdom), as the former was unable to carry his speed for the full ten furlongs at Churchill Downs. Which suggests that unless they have another as-yet-unrevealed three-year-old of greater talent, Animal Kingdom looks the proverbial shoe-in for the Belmont. So much for the bitter.

The “sweet” lies in the redemption by Shackleford of his sire, Forestry, who once commanded a stud fee of $100,000 at Taylor Made Farm. Over coffee with Frank Taylor a fortnight ago, he hoped (against hope, I suspect) for the very outcome Shackleford delivered on Saturday, and it’s a fair bet we’ve seen the last of Forestry (sire of the world’s best miler of 2008, Discreet Cat, among others) at $12,500.

Even sweeter, Summerhill has a quite magnificent, spectacularly related filly by Forestry in its Ready to Run draft for November. As we said last week, in life, timing is everything.

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