Gormley Takes up Twin Legacies
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FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 2021 GORMLEY TAKES NEW YORK TRAINER ORLANDO NODA FINED $5,000 by Bill Finley UP TWIN LEGACIES According to a ruling released Wednesday, trainer Orlando Noda has been fined $5,000 by the New York stewards for "action detrimental to the best interest of racing." According to a report in the Daily Racing Form, which cited multiple sources, Noda was seen being overly aggressive with a horse during morning exercise recently in Saratoga. When reached by the TDN, Noda declined to comment and referred questions to his attorney, Drew Mollica. "The commission rendered a fine and the allegation is not clear to me yet," Mollica said. "I am still investigating, but I have spoken to Mr. Noda and he vehemently denies any actions that could have caused such a sanction. We are in the fact-gathering stage right now and we will defend this vigorously. At no time did he ever do anything to suggests a sanction of this magnitude." Cont. p6 High Oak | Adam Coglianese IN TDN EUROPE TODAY by Chris McGrath OAKS TREBLE FOR PEERLESS SNOWFALL While it's obviously an extremely poignant day to be reflecting English and Irish Oaks winner Snowfall (Jpn) (Deep Impact on a breakout success for one of the youngest stallions at {Jpn}) provided yet another wide-margin success in Spendthrift, then at least those now mourning the farm's owner Thursday’s G1 Yorkshire Oaks. Click or tap here to go straight know that his own legacy to the breed could scarcely be more to TDN Europe. secure. For the same cannot quite be said of the horse who started it all for B. Wayne Hughes, Malibu Moon, whose loss earlier this year has now obtained a tragic symmetry. Between the farm's consecutive bereavements, there's no denying that the equine patriarch cannot yet match the human one in being guaranteed a lasting say in the development of the 21st Century Thoroughbred. How apt, then, if High Oak's performance in the GII Saratoga Special S. last Saturday should prove to be the moment his rookie sire Gormley announced himself a legitimate heir to a stallion whose overall resume surely merits his own branch of the A.P. Indy line. Malibu Moon, of course, had long shown an inconvenient propensity to concentrate his elite stock among fillies. Though no two horses did more for his career than Declan's Moon, a champion juvenile from his second crop, and 2013 GI Kentucky Derby winner Orb, they were the only two males among his first 10 Grade I winners. And Declan's Moon was a gelding, which left a lot of eggs in Orb's basket. We know what happened there. 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 Senior Contributing Editor Friday, August 20, 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 Assistants Amie Newcomb Kristen Lomasson Photographer/Photo Editor Sarah K. 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Chief Financial Officer Ray Villa [email protected] [email protected] TODAY’S GRADED STAKES ET Race Click for TV WORLDWIDE INFORMATION 9:30p Rancho Bernardo H.-GIII, DMR 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 8 • THETDN.COM FRIDAY • AUGUST 20, 2021 Gormley cont. from p1 Devil May Care. By the time he left us in May, towards the end of his 22nd breeding season, he was depending on a group of inexpensive young sons to contest the succession. Calumet, for instance, were giving a chance to Ransom The Moon and Mr. Z, while there were high hopes in California for Stanford. And then, standing right alongside his venerable father at Spendthrift, there was Gormley. He had been launched in trademark Spendthrift fashion, with a debut book of 180 in 2018 at $10,000. Though he maintained traffic at 127 and 72 mares through the next two years, this time around he was offered at just $5,000 for that ticklish fourth season--a fee that earned Gormley a place on the value "podium" in our annual winter survey of Kentucky stallion options. Things began well, on the face of it, a $550,000 colt at OBS March proving the highest by a freshman sire--and a notable Gormley | Horsephotos pinhook, Eddie Woods having taken him aboard as a $160,000 Despite his exemplary breeding (family of Ruffian) and yearling at Fasig-Tipton the previous September. Similar touches management, Orb's slow start at stud was ruthlessly punished were landed at Timonium, where a couple of Gormley's other by commercial breeders. By 2020 he found himself reduced to a sons realized $450,000 and $425,000, having respectively pitiful book of seven mares, and earlier this year he was sold to reached $49,000 (RNA) and $140,000 in their previous visits to Uruguay. the ring. In the meantime Malibu Moon maintained his conveyor belt of Clearly, however, those were only the headline acts. As usual fillies: Life At Ten, Carina Mia, Ask The Moon, Malibu Prayer, when sheer volume gives the market so much choice, plenty of TDN HEADLINE NEWS • PAGE 4 OF 8 • THETDN.COM FRIDAY • AUGUST 20, 2021 confined all 17 of his Grade I winners to dirt. Don't forget that the first two dams of Malibu Moon himself were both Group 1 winners in France, while his mother's half-brother Septieme Ciel was perhaps the most accomplished turf performer by Seattle Slew. And these chlorophyll elements are handsomely complemented by Gormley's own family. Indeed, given the vexing situation in Chicago, it is bittersweet to recall that his fourth dam is none other than Estrapade, now destined to remain the only female to win the GI Arlington Million. She was six when doing so and, as a daughter of that very hardy influence Vaguely Noble (Ire), she really pegs down Gormley's bottom line. Her half-brother Criminal Type (Alydar) put together his Horse of the Year campaign at five, while the mating that produced Gormley's third dam Troika was with an even sturdier animal in the globetrotter (and fellow 12f winner) High Oak | Janet Garaguso Strawberry Road (Aus), who kept going until he was eight. vendors found things tougher. On the other hand, there's no Estrapade had a troubled breeding history and Troika was one denying the athletic appeal of that first crop. If $37,544 had of only two foals to make the racetrack, where she won four of been just a workable average at the yearling sales, then 59 sold eight on turf. Unfortunately her own breeding career would of 73 represented brisker trade than for many with a higher prove still more curtailed, confined to a single starter, Miss notional yield. (I always feel stallions are flattered by the Mambo (Kingmambo), who was Classic-placed over a mile in exclusion of RNAs from their averages, as these will typically France before being imported to join the Castleton Lyons include their weakest stock.) Interestingly as many as 52 broodmare band. Once again she would only really be Gormleys went to the juvenile sales, a tally exceeded in the redeemed by a single foal, a series of duds having followed a intake only by Klimt (68) and Practical Joke (56). The market very promising first one. consensus, plainly, was that they were built for the job. That was Race To Urga (Bernstein), who was on a roll of Moreover the $550,000 colt, aptly named Headline Report by four--on turf, of course, given her background--and had just won purchasers Breeze Easy, promptly gave Gormley his first winner, her first stakes when her career was cut short by injury. Her first as his first starter, over 4.5 furlongs at Keeneland in April. And date was with Malibu Moon: Castleton Lyons had a leg in the he then held out best behind the dazzling Wit (Practical horse, and indeed hosted him between his Maryland and Joke)--himself performing a very similar service to his own sire, as the most expensive yearling in an even bigger debut book--in the GII Sanford S. at Saratoga. With High Oak, Gormley has now found another colt with the potential to square up to Practical Joke's flagship.