Chris McGrath

They know perfectly well, by this stage, that the apostrophe shouldn't be there. They've been asked, and told, about it often enough. But you know what? They're fine with that. They have come round to the view that it fits the horse, that quirky outlying touch; fits their whole story. Because really there's no way they should be here, either. "Every year, 20,000 foals are born," reflects Anthony Sagan. "And only 20 make it to the Derby. But not only did we make it, we were a length off winning...

They used to say that all roads lead to Rome. Now they all seem to lead to Louisville, whether you're starting from the desert or up the road in Florence, Kentucky. Some of us, even so, still miss the forgotten turnpike long favored by horsemen of the old school. In fact, there are times when I fear that we might actually have found ourselves on the road that is notoriously paved with good intentions.

As noted by colleague Bill Finley earlier in the week, we've just passed the 50th anniversary of Secretariat's sophomore debut. Yet even two years ago hardly anyone had heard of an unraced son of Tapit, meanwhile acclaimed by many as the best American Thoroughbred since. Okay, so he had been a seven-figure yearling; and everyone who had participated in his education knew that he was something special. In fact, John Sadler was so aware of the impending responsibility that he was saying nothing. For one thing, if people had any...

On a weekend when we temporarily suspend our search for the adolescent Thoroughbred maturing sufficiently to beat his peers on the first Saturday in May, let's celebrate the fulfilments that remain available later in life--whether on two legs or four.

When it comes to ageing, as the wiseguys remind us, it's when you're over the hill that you begin to pick up speed. And it's true: the magnolia trees where I live are coming into blossom, and I swear that each passing year compresses both the duration of those brief candles and, above all, the intervals in between. The inference is a dismal one: time flies when you've had your fun. So on a weekend when we temporarily suspend our search for the adolescent Thoroughbred maturing sufficiently to beat his...

We had the Forte (Violence) bit last week. Now for the piano. The champion juvenile resumed his sonata in virtuoso fashion, reprising themes established in its first movement with familiar verve.

We had the Forte (Violence) bit last week. Now for the piano. The champion juvenile resumed his sonata in virtuoso fashion, reprising themes established in its first movement with familiar verve. From his barnmate Tapit Trice, in contrast, we have so far only had a couple of experimental arpeggios--but even those have sufficed for their trainer to remove the local trial winner from his path in the GIII Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby on Saturday. Now there are perfectly coherent grounds within his own game plan for evicting Litigate (Blame)...

With commercial sires nowadays represented by such enormous cavalries, it's unsurprising that they should encounter random statistical clusters. These tend to even themselves out, so that a stallion that "hits form" with a sudden spate of stakes performers will also endure barren spells that naturally receive rather less attention. What every farm covets, then, is for a horse to get on a roll while there are still mares out there with mating decisions pending for this spring--and there's no better way to do that than making some noise on the...

I must admit that this whole business of getting wiser as you get older is giving me a little trouble. Somehow I only seem able to nail one half of the deal-albeit, so far as that goes, I'm definitely making rapid, daily progress.

The world we share with these amazing animals may be an ever-changing one, but its mysteries abide. We consider ourselves ever more knowledgeable, ever more certain, riding the slipstream of science. Yet how much do we truly know, when Afternoon Deelites holds out for all those years and then waits just six days before following his owner to whatever shore may (or may not) lie beyond the horizon of life?

In an era when it appears that no horse can run twice under the same moon, once again we're going to have plenty of relatively unexposed animals converging on the GI Kentucky Derby. That requires us to fall back on some secondary evidence, in pedigree and upbringing, to estimate what latent resources may be summoned to deal with the startling novelty of a 20-horse stampede. That's why the handicapping jury should heed the defense attorney for Litigate (Blame), despite a pedestrian 77 Beyer in the GIII Sam F. Davis S....

How apt that one of Burt Bacharach's very first hits was The Story Of My Life. Because reading the tributes prompted by his loss a couple of days ago, it turns out that his music was pretty well a soundtrack to the lives of millions who--especially in the Sixties, an era of profound societal tension between materialism and idealism--wanted assurance that the essential bonds of humanity still united them all. He transcended those divisions much as he did musical genres, knowing that the middle-aged hosts of suburban cocktail parties and...