SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 2021 READY FOR 'PRIME' TIME IN THE HOLY BULL THIS SIDE UP: ONE 'TDN Rising Star' Prime Factor (Quality Road), a blowout maiden winner sprinting on debut at Gulfstream Dec. 12, heads LAST APPLE FROM straight to the big leagues in Saturday's GIII Holy Bull S. THE COX ORCHARD The WinStar Farm and CHC Inc. colorbearer, a $900,000 Keeneland September yearling, worked a bullet five furlongs in :59 4/5 (1/13) at Todd Pletcher's Palm Beach Downs base Jan. 23 in preparation of his two-turn debut. Prime Factor is out of a half-sister to fellow 'Rising Stars' Speightster (Speightstown) and West Coast Swing (Gone West) as well as SW Paiota Falls (Kris S.). His second dam Dance Swiftly is a full-sister to Canadian Horse of the Year and U.S. Eclipse Award winner Dance Smartly. AIt=s kind of that time of year where you have to see where you are,@ Pletcher said. AHe was brilliant in his debut and has trained sharply since then. We kind of considered going into an allowance race, but that never materialized. It=s always a big step to go from maiden race against winners, giving up experience, but he can hopefully overcome it.@ Cont. p8 Hot Rod Charlie galloping at Santa Anita last month | Horsephotos IN TDN EUROPE TODAY by Chris McGrath VAUGHAN EMBRACING HIS NEW KENTUCKY HOME How aptly we talk of our walk of life as the Turf. Because Former Newmarket-based trainer Ed Vaughan is preparing raising a horse is just like raising a lawn. Take a microscope out to have his first American runners from his new base at Keeneland. Click or tap here to go straight to TDN Europe. there, if you like, but no human being has actually seen grass grow. Yet one morning toward the end of winter, the birdsong sounds different and you realize you left your coat on the peg without thinking about it. And you look at that lawn and, no argument, it's time to take the mower out of its stable. That moment remains a long way off, for many, but Saturday all can share a cheering sense that the vital forces of Nature are perceptibly astir in the sophomore class of 2021. Because both coasts, in their southernmost exposure, provide comfortingly familiar staging posts on a journey that we resume in growing hope, through the striving of science, that our world may be slowly settling back on its axis by the first Saturday in May. Gosh, it certainly seems an age since Tiz the Law (Constitution) and Thousand Words (Pioneerof the Nile) respectively won the GIII Holy Bull S. and GIII Robert B. Lewis S. The unprecedented detours on the Triple Crown trail, in the meantime, have taught us afresh how the cyclical challenges we set the adolescent Thoroughbred, long enshrined in the calendar, assist horsemen from one generation to the next in consistent measurement of the breed. Cont. p3 PUBLISHER & CEO Sue Morris Finley @suefinley [email protected] SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT Gary King @garykingTDN [email protected] EDITORIAL [email protected] Editor-in-Chief Jessica Martini @JessMartiniTDN Managing Editor Saturday, January 30, 2021 Alan Carasso @EquinealTDN Senior Editor Steve Sherack @SteveSherackTDN Racing Editor Brian DiDonato @BDiDonatoTDN Deputy Editor Christie DeBernardis @CDeBernardisTDN Associate Editors Christina Bossinakis @CBossTDN Joe Bianca @JBiancaTDN News and Features Editor In Memoriam: Ben Massam (1988-2019) ADVERTISING [email protected] Director of Advertising Alycia Borer Advertising Manager Lia Best Advertising Designer Amanda Crelin Advertising Assistant/Dir. Of Distribution Rachel McCaffrey Advertising Assistants Amie Newcomb Kristen Lomasson Photographer/Photo Editor Sarah K. Andrew @SarahKAndrew [email protected] Brandywine Farm supported champion and Spendthrift sire Vino Rosso with four mares Social Media Strategist in his first year at stud in 2020. We visit the first two to hit the ground at Brandywine, a Justina Severni filly out of Shine Time and a filly out of Sparkling Champagn, in the first episode of our Associate Producer new YouTube series ‘Foalin’ Around.’ Through this series, we provide a Katie Ritz behind-the-scenes look at the youngest members of our industry. | Autry Graham/Spendthrift Director of Customer Service Vicki Forbes TODAY’S GRADED STAKES [email protected] ET Race Click for TV 1:10p Kitten's Joy S.-GIII, GP TJCIS PPs TVG Marketing Manager 1:50p Toboggan S.-GIII, AQU TJCIS PPs FS2 Alayna Cullen @AlaynaCullen 2:10p Claiborne Farm Swale S.-GIII, GP TJCIS PPs TVG Director of IT & Accounting 3:46p Forward Gal S.-GIII, GP TJCIS PPs TVG Ray Villa 4:18p Sweetest Chant S.-GIII, GP TJCIS PPs TVG [email protected] [email protected] 4:50p Holy Bull S.-GIII, GP TJCIS PPs TVG 5:33p San Pasqual S.-GII, SA TJCIS PPs TVG WORLDWIDE INFORMATION 6:37p Robert B. Lewis S.-GIII, SA TJCIS PPs TVG International Editor Kelsey Riley @kelseynrileyTDN [email protected] European Editor Emma Berry [email protected] Associate International Editor Heather Anderson @HLAndersonTDN Newmarket Bureau, Cafe Racing Sean Cronin & Tom Frary [email protected] 60 Broad Street, Suite 100 Red Bank, NJ 07701 732-747-8060 | www.TheTDN.com TDN HEADLINE NEWS • PAGE 3 OF 19 • THETDN.COM SATURDAY • JANUARY 30, 2021 Cont. from p1 It's not just individual racehorses that come under examination, after all. Each resembles the blades of grass that together make up the lawn. For many of us, the interest lies in the way their roots are entwined--and what that can teach us for future cultivation. All families evolve through the same, patient rhythms; through horsemen responding to the prompts of Nature. Sometimes these harmonies yield lush, seamless swathes; but there are also occasions when some sparse or choked tangle of briar will nourish a blossom as sudden and brilliant as it appears unexpected. In both cases, the underlying, seasonal processes are just the same. Take two horses whose contrasting antecedents bring them similar opportunity in these races. The Courtlandt Farms homebred Greatest Honour (Tapit), who represents the Shug McGaughey barn at Gulfstream, could be named a feasible Classic type when still in the womb. Two of his first four dams are Broodmares of the Year, and the family has duly been seeded by such venerable distaff influences as Street Cry (Ire), Deputy Minister and Blushing Groom (Fr). Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow), on the other hand, made $17,000 as a short yearling. In the two years since, however, it has become feasible to recognize a born aristocrat in the horse reappearing at Santa Anita. Cont. p4 Greatest Honour this week at Gulfstream | Ryan Thompson TDN HEADLINE NEWS • PAGE 4 OF 19 • THETDN.COM SATURDAY • JANUARY 30, 2021 This Side Up cont. knowing himself doomed by illness, Cox staged his second He owes that transformation, however, to exactly the same dispersal in 2018. It was deeply poignant for everyone involved, diligence, patience and expertise that first created the line but he was the kind of gentleman who wanted to leave tracing from Best in Show now to Greatest Honour. In fact, Hot everything shipshape for his family. At Keeneland that Rod Charlie is the final bequest of a man who--with the help of November, 20 head of horse made $3.7 million--including those storied farms, Claiborne and Hermitage--was perhaps the $240,000 from WinStar for Indian Miss (with an Into Mischief most accomplished small breeder of his generation. cover). Cont. p5 Edward A. Cox, Jr. operated what we nowadays call a boutique program. Yet he was co-breeder of Woodman (Mr Prospector); partner in Swale (Seattle Slew); and breeder of Marquetry (Conquistador Cielo) and star European miler Shaadi (Danzig). His Turf career comprised two cycles, with a hiatus between 1998 and 2006. Soon after his comeback he sent Bill Landes, the long-serving Hermitage manager, over to the January Sale to give $250,000 for Glacken's Girl (Smoke Glacken), who had won her only two starts as a juvenile. Cox sent her to Indian Charlie; and the resulting filly, Indian Miss, to veteran Chicago trainer James DeVito. Indian Miss showed ability but also had to be retired after only two starts, because of a chip in her knee. Cox would have culled her for $10,000, but nobody had more than $5,000 so he experimented with matings that wouldn't necessarily have occurred to everybody: Eskenderaya, for instance, in her second year; Oxbow in her fifth. Mitole clinched his championship in the 2019 Breeders' Cup Sprint Her son by Eskendereya made just $20,000 as a yearling. Then, Horsephotos TDN HEADLINE NEWS • PAGE 5 OF 19 • THETDN.COM SATURDAY • JANUARY 30, 2021 This Side Up cont. and showed due toughness and class when sixth, first and What a great buy that turned out to be. For the colt by second in his Triple Crown series. But that stuff is obviously far Eskendereya was none other than Mitole, who had disappeared too worthy for the commercial guys, and Dennis O'Neill was able after winning a couple of stakes the previous year. His to get the colt for $110,000. subsequent return and championship campaign saw Indian Miss A tolerable yield, no doubt, through eight months--but Feld return to the same sale, this time round, to be cashed in to OXO deserved better yet for his acuity. Because he not only found a Equine for $1.9 million. half-brother to an imminent champion for just $17,000; he also Her value had been enhanced, moreover, just a couple of days sold on a potential Derby horse. Cont.