Now we can all agree, this is exactly what a GI Longines Breeders’ Cup Classic should look like. Three of the top four in the Derby, but not the one who can ultimately be credited as the winner. And in addition to solving the questions left open by this processional race at Churchill, they also have to pick up the glove thrown by an older horse whose straightforward racing style should leave no stone of merit unturned. A race, in other words, worth the biggest prize in the American Turf, with the Horse of the Year laurels most likely at stake as well.

To the connections of the nine involved, then, congratulations. Even arriving at the gate, you have essentially achieved everything that motivates the enduring investment of billions in breed improvement and maintenance. That being the case, however, the makeup of the domain poses some rather difficult questions for the blood industry.

Of course, this may indicate a functional paradigm in Essential Quality: a son of the elite stallion Tapit, bred by the biggest investor in Turf history from the daughter of a mare bought for $ 3million. dollars. But the rest of the field does not support business values ​​that are perceived so strongly.

Favorite Knicks Go brought Paynter back from the brink, his current juveniles graduating from a 34-cover book in 2018, but he’s still only $ 7,500, at which price Oxbow, Hot Rod’s father. Charlie, only received 28 mares this year. Medina Spirit, son of an even cheaper stallion at Protonico, changed hands for $ 1,000 as a yearling. Max Player’s sire, Honor Code, barely passed Oxbow’s book this spring, although he also produced from his first crop the only foal to beat Horse of the Year 2021.

Art Collector is one of the earliest breeders in history, but the yearling market had become so disenchanted with Bernardini that the last production sold before his death, conceived at $ 85,000, hit a median of $ 38,500. . Tripoli is an outlier for Kitten’s Joy, whose lack of commercial recognition has long been symptomatic of the senseless treatment of turf stallions in Kentucky. Stilleto Boy is from Shackleford, exiled to Korea last year. This leaves Express Train as the only runner, aside from Essential Quality, by a stallion with any claim to making sense of how the market works: Union Rags had a 164 pound last year, although it takes acknowledge that he likely only kept that traffic going by having his fees cut in half to $ 30,000.

If this is our idea of ​​a horse race, then she strongly berates the familiar and dismal disjunction between the sales ring and the racetrack. Logically, there should be nothing more commercial than breeding winners. But most matings are planned with one moment in mind: not the time of the Breeders’ Cup Classic, but the fall of a hammer.

You can’t blame the commercial ranchers, really. It’s a tough business, and a lot can go wrong with these delicate young animals. The fault lies with those leading the investment, the agents and advisers who prefer to urge their wealthy clients to buy a yearling by the latest unproven recruit than by an Oxbow or a Paynter.

Oxbow and Paynter! If you want to “run”, well, it works in the family. These sires are both from Awesome Again and the daughters of the monstrous Cee’s Song (Seattle Song), also dam to two-time Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Tiznow (plus two other Grade II winners) from her meetings in series with Cee’s Tizzy. And don’t forget that Oxbow’s brother Awesome Patriot gifted us Bella Sofia, Gamine’s (Into Mischief) main rival in the GI Filly and Mare Sprint. So here we have three stallions from the same dynasty, all seen as lacking in commercial allure, all with Grade I winners eligible to win the day that best measures the efforts of a multi-billion dollar industry.

Awesome Patriot admittedly won his chance at stud earlier by pedigree than by performance, but so did Outflanker, the mainstay of Maryland (by Danzig and a half-sister to Weekend Surprise) who faced 10 unsuccessful young girls. – and who surfaces as the father of Knicks Go.

Bella Sofia was found for just $ 20,000 at OBS last summer. Knicks Go was co-bred by Sabrina Moore and her dam Angie when they had a total of three mares. And the Hot Rod Charlie, as we have often celebrated, was the very last horse sold by the peerless Bill Landes of Hermitage Farm to families cultivated by his late boss Edward A. Cox, Jr.

Having earned just $ 17,000 as a little yearling, Hot Rod Charlie was unable to reward his astute pinhookers beyond $ 110,000 despite the rise of his half-brother Mitole (Eskendereya). It’s a measure of Oxbow’s business renunciation, but at least it allowed his son to fall within the grasp of a multigenerational partnership, united by ageless enthusiasm, comprising a group of former footballers from the Brown University run by trainer’s nephew Doug O ‘Neill. Some of these boys live and work in San Diego and bringing “Chuck” to their local track, a year after his insolent 94-1 challenge at Essential Quality in the GI Juvenile, offers exactly the kind of story our sport could do in. telling the outside world right now.

Hot Rod Charlie training in Del Mar | Breeders’ Cup / Eclipse Sportswire

But the success of Hot Rod Charlie would have no less redeeming potential within the company. Son of an exemplary scrapper, he is the author of the fastest opening in the history of GI Belmont S. (and half eclipsed only by the Secretariat) while blocking the horns so stubbornly in the stretch that he was 11 lengths to the winner of Preakness. third. So kudos to Gainesway for investing in such granite. Apart from everything else, the Tapit mares will be a fun match: Cee’s Tizzy was by Relaunch, full brother of Tapit’s third dam.

Oxbow, on the other hand, had a lot of quantity in his early books but not so much quality. Of course, Calumet walks at his own pace, and many commercial breeders will never follow suit. But at least this farm attaches great importance to the assets most eroded by the sharp vices of our industry: constitution, durability, endurance. Because we have to start breeding and racing horses that do not depend for their competitive strength and longevity on drugs, but on their genetic heritage.

It’s called the Breeders’ Cup, remember. Not the Sellers Cup. And its climax this year reminds us of what we’re supposed to be trying to replicate. Milton ended a sonnet by observing: “They also serve those who only stand and wait. But that’s all that many horses are bred to do today, stand on this platform and wait for the board to light up. Okay, they must also work well. But run? A bonus, apparently.

So go get them, Chuck!