THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 8.2 MILLION REASONS TO CDI MUM ON NEXT MOVE, BUT ILLINOIS HORSEMEN HAVE IDEAS TO PRESERVE SPREAD GENETIC CREDIT ARLINGTON DATES by T.D. Thornton In the aftermath of the Illinois Racing Board (IRB)’s verbal grilling of a Churchill Downs, Inc. (CDI) executive Tuesday over the company’s decision not to seek racino licensure at Arlington Park, the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association (ITHA) is floating several proposals that could help the corporation that owns the suburban Chicago track demonstrate its commitment to racing in order to secure race dates there in 2020. The mandate that CDI must show a racing-centric commitment was part of an IRB resolution voted on at Tuesday’s annual dates hearing that also included moving back the state’s awarding of race dates to Sept. 24. Cont. p5 Hip 498 in the ring | Keeneland IN TDN EUROPE TODAY by Chris McGrath PAT SMULLEN: €2-MILLION AND COUNTING In his weekly column, Pat Smullen reflects on Irish Nice to see that the people who count--the ones who actually Champions Weekend, including a very successful fundraiser spend the dough, that is, as opposed to impudent bystanders for Cancer Trials Ireland. who tell them how much better we could do it--don’t have time Click or tap here to go straight to TDN Europe. for that glib prejudice against older producers, whether mares or stallions. In making the daughter of a 23-year-old mare the most expensive yearling filly in Keeneland September history, however, they set a far more significant challenge to assumptions that are shared a good deal more widely. In fact, you might say that the $8.2 million paid for Hip 498 last week requires professional horsemen everywhere to ask fresh questions of themselves--above all, if they are in the habit of relying on anything purporting to be a ‘system’ or formula. No doubt some people will try to persuade you that Leslie’s Lady has produced Into Mischief, Beholder and Mendelssohn because her own genetic contribution has been upgraded respectively by two grandsons (Harlan’s Holiday, Henny Hughes) and one great-grandson (Scat Daddy) of Storm Cat. (Two of them, indeed, through the same son of Storm Cat, Hennessy.) But we still await coherent justification for simultaneously treating the influence of Mendelssohn’s 15 other great-great-grandparents as too infinitesimal to be relevant. Happily, the extraordinary contest for her daughter by American Pharoah, obviously from another sire-line altogether, shows due recognition for the merits of Leslie’s Lady herself. Cont. p3 max strength The Fastest Remsen-G2 Winner In Recent Years. Beyer MAXIMUS MISCHIEF 97 Mohaymen 95 Catholic Boy 91 Honor Code 88 Mo Town 86 NEW FOR 2020 Now available for inspection. $7,500 S&N Into Mischief - Reina Maria The Breeders’ Farm | 859-294-0030 PUBLISHER & CEO Sue Morris Finley @suefinley [email protected] V.P., INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS Gary King @garykingTDN [email protected] EDITORIAL [email protected] Editor-in-Chief Jessica Martini @JessMartiniTDN Managing Editor Thursday, September 19, 2019 Alan Carasso @EquinealTDN Senior Editor Steve Sherack @SteveSherackTDN Racing Editor Brian DiDonato @BDiDonatoTDN News and Features Editor Ben Massam @BMassamTDN Associate Editors Christie DeBernardis @CDeBernardisTDN Joe Bianca @JBiancaTDN ADVERTISING [email protected] Director of Advertising Alycia Borer Advertising Manager Lia Best Advertising Designer Amanda Crelin Advertising Assistants Alexa Reisfield Amie Morosco Advertising Assistant/Dir. Of Distribution Rachel McCaffrey Photographer/Photo Editor Sarah K. Andrew @SarahKAndrew [email protected] Social Media Strategist Snap Decision (Hard Spun - Salute, by Unbridled) and Willie McCarthy clear a hurdle en Justina Severni route to victory in Wednesday’s 8th running of the $75,000 William Entenmann Memorial. | Coglianese Director of Customer Service Vicki Forbes [email protected] OUTWORK COLT TOPS KEESEP BOOK 4 CLOSER 8 Marketing Manager A colt from the first crop of Grade I winner Outwork Alayna Cullen @AlaynaCullen topped the last of two Keeneland September Book 4 Director of Information Technology sessions Wednesday when hammering to trainer Ray Villa Keith Desormeaux for $220,000. [email protected] Bookkeeper Terry May TDN Q&A WITH TSG’S AIDAN BUTLER: PART 2 11 [email protected] Dan Ross wraps up his conversation about Southern California racing with The Stronach Group’s Chief WORLDWIDE INFORMATION International Editor Strategy Officer Aidan Butler. 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 | 732-747-8955 (fax) www.TheTDN.com TDN HEADLINE NEWS • PAGE 3 OF 16 • THETDN.COM THURSDAY • SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 8.2 Million Reasons to Spread Genetic Credit cont. from p1 After all, it’s not as though she can represent some kind of genetic void, meekly surrendering her 50% maternal stake in inherited material to a superior partner. So the big question is: whatever it is that she has brought to the equation, where does it come from? Leslie’s Lady is by Tricky Creek out of a Stop the Music mare. Her granddam was by One for All. These names are as left-field as, well, actually, as left-field as those of the sires responsible for the first three dams of American Pharoah: Yankee Gentlemen, Ecliptical and Tri Jet. At a time when the industry is contemplating formal control of stallion books, perhaps these largely forgotten contributors can renew our respect for the potency of variegation. Admittedly the “hybrid vigour” famously sought by Bull Hancock was something he pursued by importing elite stallions from Europe, rather than by seeking outcross blood in New Mexico. But the principle is the same. Hip 498 | Keeneland The aging Tricky Creek had been transferred from California to New Mexico a few months before the Mitchell family of Clarkland Farm gave $100,000 for his 10-year-old daughter Leslie’s Lady (in foal to Orientate) at her owner’s dispersal at Keeneland in 2006. She had improved her original value ($8,000 short yearling, $27,000 September yearling) with a stakes success at two, albeit besides that bit of dash her principal virtue on the track had been hardiness: she made nine, 12 and seven starts across her three seasons. This was consistent with such little distinction as Tricky Creek (himself a Grade II winner at two, three and four, through 37 starts) had achieved at stud--namely, as a source of exceptional soundness. One study, late in his career, placed him fifth among active national sires by percentage of starters-to-foals; and seventh, by starts-per-starter. Cont. p4 TDN HEADLINE NEWS • PAGE 4 OF 16 • THETDN.COM THURSDAY • SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 That’s pretty impressive, for an elderly stallion standing for good blood. I can’t pretend to know precisely which genetic $2,500 at Running Horse Farm, Albuquerque. So nobody should strands combined by Tricky Creek and Crystal Lady have discount his influence on his granddaughter Beholder’s rare entwined so productively in Leslie’s Lady. But I do know that achievement of winning Grade I races at two, three, four, five there is an overall mesh of quality, once you look beyond an and six. immediate family that appears to corroborate the pedestrian Though Tricky Creek obviously never earned much commercial status of the sires involved. opportunity, he was entitled to prove a conduit for class as well Just look, for instance, at the eight mares listed in her fourth as toughness. His dam Battle Creek Girl (by His Majesty, whose generation. All four who owe their presence in the pedigree to other distinctions as a broodmare sire include Danehill) sire sons were able to underline their class by a wider produced no fewer than 15 winners, six at stakes level. (One of distinction. Quill, for instance, had earned her mating with these was Canadian champion Wavering Girl {Wavering Northern Dancer (which produced One for All) as a champion on Monarch}, subsequently dam of Grade I winner Military the track; Flower Bowl produced not only Tricky Creek’s damsire {Danzig}). And she was also a half-sister to the dam of the His Majesty but obviously Graustark as well; Shenanigans, wonderful Soaring Softly (Kris S.), Tricky Creek’s third dam being likewise, was dam of Ruffian as well as Tricky Creek’s grandsire the Darby Dan foundation mare Soaring. You’ll find Soaring in Icecapade; while Nothirdchance, dam of Stop the Music’s sire exactly the same slot in the pedigree of Saint Ballado (and Hail to Reason, was a good enough runner to win the Acorn S. therefore also of his brother Devil’s Bag) and as fourth dam of And the other four mares, as already noted, similarly include a Rahy and Singspiel. couple whose merit has serial proofs, in Patelin and Soaring. At one point, in fact, Sheikh Mohammed gave $5.3 million for These eight mares’ various partners, moreover, percolated a Kingmambo half-brother to Tricky Creek as a yearling at Classic blood by the gallon: Darby Dan’s European monsters Keeneland. So while he appeared to be on his way to oblivion by Ribot and Sea-Bird, for instance; Northern Dancer, his father the time he reached New Mexico, aged 20 but without even 20 Nearctic, and his son Nijinsky; Turn-to and Tom Fool; and, the stakes winners, it remained perfectly feasible for the embers of one curveball, Better Bee. He’s pretty well off the map now, but his family’s quality to be stoked by his progeny. a record of 20 wins in 89 starts looks very much like the seams That process, moreover, is mirrored somewhat in the mare mined by Tricky Creek for that trademark soundness.