The TDN reports that both were rated on 130 pounds by the panel of international handicappers, their deadlock coming as a result of New Approach’s six-length success in the Champion Stakes (Gr1) in October at Newmarket and Curlin’s exploits on the dirt when winning the Dubai World Cup (Gr1)at Nad Al Sheba in March as well as the Stephen Foster Handicap (Gr1) at Churchill Downs in June.
New Approach, who also took the Epsom Derby (Gr1) and Irish Champion Stakes (Gr1), was registering his second championship in the rankings, having dominated the two-year-old division in 2007, while Curlin was upped by two pounds from last year’s mark, when he shared the top dirt honors with Invasor.
Raven’s Pass (Elusive Quality), who also raced in the colors of Princess Haya of Jordan when rounding off his three-year-old campaign with successes in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes (Gr1) at Ascot in September and Breeders’ Cup Classic (Gr1) on Santa Anita’s Pro-Ride the following month, was a pound behind the dual champions on 129, while His Highness the Aga Khan’s Zarkava (Zamindar) was next best with a rating of 128. That was enough to secure the unbeaten Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe (Gr1) heroine the title of the world’s champion of her sex; it’s the highest achieved by a filly or mare since Miesque.
Languishing three pounds behind that stellar performer were Jerome Moss’ unbeaten Zenyatta (Street Cry) - rated the top dirt female on 125 pounds - and the Wertheimer Brothers’ fellow Breeders’ Cup heroine Goldikova (Anabaa).
Garry O’Gorman, senior Irish handicapper and co-chairman of the group of handicappers and racing secretaries who form the World Rankings Supervisory Committee, paid tribute to the distaffers of 2008. “This was a year of exceptional fillies,” Garry O’Gorman said. “Last year, I was excited by Darjina, Rags to Riches and Peeping Fawn, but these have blown them out of the water. Zarkava has been rated the best French filly since Miesque, Goldikova is the best female miler in 10 years and Zenyatta is the best filly in North America this century. Zenyatta and Goldikova both stay in training. Goldikova could emulate Miesque with back-to-back Breeders’ Cup Miles, while we can only dream how good Zenyatta might be.”
Of the remainder, Susan Magnier and Michael Tabor’s five-time Group 1 winner Duke of Marmalade (Danehill) was top of the older horse category on turf with a rating of 127 pounds, while IEAH Stables’ Big Brown(Boundary) was the best sophomore on dirt courtesy of his victories in the first two legs of the Triple Crown. The 123-rated Midnight Lute (Real Quiet) and Sacred Kingdom (Encosta de Lago) shared the top sprinters’ title, while the European trio of Conduit (Dalakhani), Yeats (Sadler’s Wells) and Septimus (Sadler’s Wells) were together on 122 pounds in the stayers’ division.
For the fifth time in 10 years, it was Aidan O’Brien who was responsible for the highest-rated two-year-old colt after Derrick Smith, Susan Magnier and Michael Tabor’s Mastercraftsman (Danehill Dancer) inched the category with a rating of 122 pounds courtesy of his Phoenix Stakes (Gr1) success at The Curragh in August. He eclipsed the same ownership’s Prix Morny (Gr1) and Middle Park Stakes (Gr1) winner Bushranger (Danetime) by a pound, with Paul Reddam’s Racing Post Trophy (Gr1) hero Crowded House (Rainbow Quest) on 120 pounds. George Strawbridge’s unbeaten Rainbow View (Dynaformer) headed the two-year-old filly division with a mark of 118, three pounds clear of Khalid Abdullah’s Prix Marcel Boussac (Gr1) winner Proportional (Beat Hollow).
Matthew Tester, the British Horseracing Authority’s two-year-old handicapper, reflected on a below-par set of ratings for the juvenile crop of 2008. “The mark of 122 is unusually low and results from the lack of an outstanding performance over the year,” he said. “The last time it was below 123 was in 2003 with Bago. I expect Mastercraftsman to become a multiple Group 1 winner, but you’ve got to respect Crowded House. Rainbow View always looked like being the one to beat, and she got her rating from winning the Fillies’ Mile (Gr1). I am totally confident John Gosden will do a suitable job, and I expect her to have a fantastic year.”
The only man at November’s Breeder’s CupWorld Championship of Racing to come away with two victories, was Stronghold and Russian Revival’s trainer, John Gosden. Here’s a man who graduated from Cambridge University still confused about his future, and took a year off working in agriculture in Venezuela. The son of a distinguished horseman in his own right, the late Towser Gosden, John soon realised that despite a mind better suited to a professorial calling, he was going to devote his life to a career with horses.
That this was a choice of unusual wisdom, has been evidenced often enough, and the events at the Breeder’s Cup simply re-emphasised the extent of his tactical astuteness.
The intricacies of the turf and the exploitative strategic value of a life spent in observation and interpretation, was what made the difference for Princess Haya’s charge Raven’s Pass, in the big event on the card, the Breeder’s Cup Classic where he tore down the colours of the world’s highest ranked racehorse of the time, Curlin. This is Gosden’s account of how it happened……
“I learned a lot when I was on a show in the early 80’s with Eddie Arcaro, Bill Shoemaker and Charlie Whittingham. I was just a kid, but they were talking about riding on different surfaces – dirt, turf, firm turf, to loose wet turf, cuppy tracks, tighter tracks and so on – and they pointed out the most important thing was that if you want a horse to accelerate in the latter part of a race it has to be able to get hold of the track more than anything else, which is why on a cuppy track, or on a track that isn’t tight, or on loose turf it’s very hard to do that. The key thing about Santa Anita is that with the surface they are on now you can put your foot down and really spring off it.
The one thing that was very clear to me about Curlin, good horse though he is, he wins races by grinding them into the ground. He’s a relentless galloper. He just gallops and gallops, and like all dirt horses he’ll go the last quarter slower than the first but he’ll just stay on. That was where he was vulnerable, because if you can sit on him – and he was drawn beside us, so the game plan was always to track him – and you are still travelling at the quarter pole you are in business. We’ve got a turn of foot, and he hasn’t. We have what European horses are trained for – acceleration – and he hasn’t. Goldikova has it and Henrythenavigator has it. That’s where we caught him. I don’t think he’d ever had two horses come either side of him and I think it shocked him, and it shocked the jockey too, because he was in the perfect spot. On that surface a horse can really show you a burst of speed. We call that class in Europe. In dirt races you don’t see it happen. You think it’s happening but it’s an optical illusion. What it means is that the horse in front is dying and the other one is just staying on at the same pace. That’s why he was vulnerable, and that’s why we went for that race.”
(article by Graham Dench, Pacemaker December 2008)
Grand Prix motor racing is a sport followed by tens of millions around the globe, and its aficionados will tell you that it’s the tactical aspect of the sport that attracts them. Truth is this, and thus most times, it’s the fastest car that gets you home, provided there’s a modicum of competence behind the wheel. Motor racing is a limp fish though next to horse racing when it comes to the complexities behind the tactical appraisal of the possibilities of a contest, and it’s people like John Gosden and our own Mike de Kock, who separate themselves from the ordinary through their instinctive wisdom.
Lane’s End Farm in Versailles, Kentucky, will see the addition of reigning Horse of the Year, Curlin, for the 2009 season. Curlin will be joining his sire, Smart Strike, who currently stands at William S. Farish’sLane’s End.
The four-year-old colt out of Sherriff’s Deputy, by Deputy Minister, will stand for $75,000.
The Thoroughbred Times reports that Curlin retires as the leading earner in North American racing history with a bankroll of $10,501,800, gleaned primarily from seven Grade or Group 1 wins, including the 2007 Preakness Stakes (Gr1) and Breeders’ Cup Classic (Gr1) and 2008 Emirates Airline Dubai World Cup (UAE-Gr1).
The stud deal was finalized while majority owners Jess Jackson and his wife, Barbara Banke, await a court ruling whether to approve their private offer to buy out the 20% interest of minority owners Shirley Cunningham and Bill Gallion.
“The Jacksons are due great credit for allowing our sport to enjoy this great champion as a four-year-old,” Farish said. “Many would have retired him after winning the Breeders’ Cup Classic and Horse of the Year honors as a three-year-old. Curlin’s performance on the track, his pedigree, and his conformation make him the most exciting sire prospect to retire in many years. We are honored to have him join his champion sire, Smart Strike, at Lane’s End.”
Smart Strike was the leading sire in North America last year when Curlin capped his championship season with a four-length victory in the $5 million Classic at Monmouth Park. Curlin’s triumphs in the Dubai World Cup, Stephen Foster Handicap (Gr1), Woodward Stakes (Gr1), and Jockey Club Gold Cup Stakes (Gr1) have helped push Smart Strike to the top of the general sire’s list again this year.
“After a stellar racing career, Curlin is now in a position to carry on his iron horse bloodlines at Lane’s End, the premier stallion farm in the nation,” Jess Jackson said. “He is one of the best examples of the breed - fast, strong, and durable. I predict he will make a substantial contribution to our sport through his gene pool, and I am looking forward to seeing his foals compete and possibly exceed his unequaled race record.”
Bred by Fares Farm Inc., Curlin will join 1992 Horse of the Year A.P. Indy and 2003 Horse of the Year Mineshaft on the Lane’s End roster. Curlin, who finished fourth to Raven’s Pass in the Breeders’ Cup Classic on 25 October in his final start, likely will be a top candidate along with Zenyatta in this year’s balloting for Horse of the Year. He would be the first back-to-back winner since Cigar, the 1995 and 1996 Horse of the Year who Curlin surpassed at the top of the all-time earnings list.
“Curlin made his mark in the history books in so many ways: as a classic winner, as a colt who traveled to Dubai and captured the Dubai World Cup, and who returned to take three more Grade 1 races and tally record earnings,” trainer Steve Asmussen said. “His physical and mental attitude is unparalleled and he retires perfectly sound.”
IEAH Stables and Paul Pompa Jr.’s GI Kentucky Derby and GI Preakness Stakes winner Big Brown(Boundary-Mien, by Nureyev) has been retired after suffering an injury yesterday at Aqueduct.
The Thoroughbred Daily News reports that the injury happened during a six-furlong work on turf in company with GI Breeders’ Cup Mile winner and fellow Rick Dutrow Jr. trainee Kip Deville(Kipling). “It looks like he grabbed a part of his foot and tore off a large chunk,” said IEAH Co-President and Co-CEO Michael Iavarone. “We have no choice but to retire him. There’s nothing else we can do.”
Big Brown had been expected to complete his racing career with a much-anticipated match-up against reigning Horse of the Year Curlin(Smart Strike) in the October 25 GI Breeders’ Cup Classic before heading to stud next year at Three Chimneys Farm. Iavarone admitted that the timing of the injury, rather than its severity, caused Big Brown’s retirement. “It’s not a devastating injury, as far as the long-term future of a racehorse,” he said. “It’s a devastating injury for a horse that’s preparing for a race in 12 days. The area where the injury is takes a long time to heal. There is not a lot of blood flow to that area, and it takes a lot of time for that flesh to repair itself. When you’re looking at a race that is 12 days out and an injury that will probably require 60-90 days, and with a deal that you have to turn your horse over to Three Chimneys December 31, we didn’t have a choice.”
Asked if he regretted the decision to send the Derby winner to stud next year, Iavarone said, “I’d like to run him as an eight-year-old, but under the terms that we structured with Three Chimneys, unfortunately, I’m not going to get the enjoyment of that. As much as I’m a fan, I also have to look at it as a business. I needed to find the place to stand Big Brown, and the place we were most comfortable with was Three Chimneys. As part of the agreement, they wanted to stand the horse as a four-year-old, and we capitulated using both our racing fan side and our business mentality.”
Pinhooker Eddie Woods acquired Big Brown as a $60,000 FTKOCT yearling. He was purchased by Hidden Brook for Paul Pompa Jr. for $190,000 out of the 2007 Keeneland April sale. Big Brown made only one start as a two-year-old, romping home by 11 1/4 lengths over the Saratoga turf last September.
IEAH bought into the colt after that impressive effort, but well-publicized foot issues kept the colt on the sidelines until March. He resurfaced with a 12 3/4-length demolition job in a March 5 Gulfstream allowance and the hype quickly followed.
Big Brown lived up to all the superlatives, taking the March 29 GI Florida Derby in just his third start. Arguably, Big Brown’s finest moment on the track came on the first Saturday in May. Making just his fourth start and breaking from the far outside post in the field of 20, Big Brownbounded clear impressively down the storied Churchill stretch to win the GI Kentucky Derby by an authoritative 4 3/4 lengths. His star continued to ascend with an easy 5 1/4-length triumph in the GI Preakness Stakes, and Big Brown was heavily favoured to sweep the Triple Crown races in the GI Belmont Stakes. But, on a sweltering day in the Big Apple and battling a quarter crack, the colt was eased in the stretch of the 1 1/2-mile Classic. Big Brown rebounded with a win in the August 3 GI Haskell Invitational Stakes at Monmouth, and ended his racing career with a win over the Oceanport turf in the September 13 Monmouth Stakes. He retires with seven wins in eight starts and earnings of $3,614,500.
Michael Iavarone gave much of the credit for Big Brown’s success to Rick Dutrow, saying, “This horse came to Rick with well-documented foot problems, and he got more out of this horse then I think any trainer in the world would have.” Despite his impressive accomplishments, Iavarone thinks Big Brown was only getting better. “I don’t think we’ve ever gotten to the bottom of Big Brown,” he said. “He never had the ultimate conditioning leading up to the Kentucky Derby because he battled these little issues. But he developed a heart as big as his physical ability. I think if we ever got to the point that he could have put the two together, we would have seen something that would have been breathtaking. I think he showed it in the Derby and the Preakness, but he was winning those races on raw ability. I think we were beginning to see him develop as a professional racehorse. And it kills me to get this close and not to see it happen.”
Thursday, May 5, 2011 
