Sid Fernando

Bob Baffert is banned from Churchill Downs for two years and his 3-year-olds are ineligible for points in qualifying races for the Gl Kentucky Derby and Gl Kentucky Oaks. He may also get banned (again) from NYRA, which hosts the Gl Belmont S., which could leave only the Gl Preakness open to horses from his barn. So perhaps it's appropriate that he won a race over the weekend--the El Camino Real Derby at Golden Gate--that gives the winner a guaranteed entry to the middle leg of the Triple Crown. Blackadder,...

Last Friday, on the same day that Bob Baffert's New York Racing Association (NYRA) suspension hearing was ending in New York, the Texas attorney general filed a motion in a Texas federal court to join the National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association (National HBPA), et al., in arguing that the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA), enacted late last year, was unconstitutional. Baffert had challenged his suspension, which was summarily instituted by NYRA without a hearing May 17 after the Baffert-trained Medina Spirit (Protonico) had tested positive for betamethasone in...

In about three weeks, another breeding season will begin, but that's the easy part for stud farms. Getting those mares was the hard part, and that process played out over the last four or five months, an annual courting ritual of farms and breeders. It includes behind-the-scenes hustling, heavy-duty advertising campaigns, and some occasional arm twisting or deal making, because except for a handful of elite or popular sires that breeders are banging doors down to get into, most stallions need mares, usually as many as possible to fill books...

As I sat down to write this column Monday, I got a text from a bloodstock agent that said, "Heard Medina Spirit broke down at Santa Anita a little while ago. Gonna be a shit storm." I checked Twitter right away, but there was nothing yet about Medina Spirit (Protonico). I didn't have to wait long. Some minutes later, the "I heard Medina Spirit..." tweets started trickling out, and then the dam burst. Everyone had something to say, and most of it was derogatory or innuendo about his trainer, Bob...

Back in March of 2009, in the Werk Thoroughbred Consultants blog, the late Jack Werk recounted a wager we'd made years earlier. This is what he wrote: "The year that Elusive Quality went to stud, pedigree expert Sid Fernando and I had a small side bet: Who was the best sleeper or long shot from that crop? Sid picked Distorted Humor, standing for $12,500, a pretty astute choice at the time. I, of course, picked Elusive Quality, who also went to stud very cheap--$10,000. "As it turns out, we both picked wisely! The top two...

Expeditiously I be on my Grizzly Feds try to creep me somehow always miss me --Mr. Fantastik, from the MF DOOM song "Anti-Matter" on the King Geedorah album "Take Me To Your Leader" If you're not hip to the slang in the lyrics above, Mr. Fantastik is essentially saying that the Feds are after him while he's on his grind, but they can't quite get him. There's an implication in there that the Feds are incompetent, but that's more evident from Mr. Fantastik's delivery. Trainer Murray Rojas can probably relate...

We've been waiting a long time for a high-class son of Unbridled's Song to make a statement at stud and stick around to carry his name forward in pedigrees, and that horse appears to be Lane's End's Liam's Map, who got his fourth Grade l winner over the weekend. Unbridled's Song was a terrific stallion and his daughters have made him one of the best broodmare sires around, but he's had difficulties finding sons at stud as good as his daughters. He's had some that showed glimmers of talent, and...

Two sons of Candy Ride (Arg)--Gun Runner and Twirling Candy--were represented by three 2-year-old Grade l winners over the weekend, and do you know one thing they had in common? Each was produced by a Storm Cat-line mare. This affinity for the Storm Cat line was also an important feature of Candy Ride's own success, and breeders appear to be copying that formula with his sons. It's not surprising; it's something that usually happens when a stallion is successful with the females of another sire line, and this type of...

Everything that top-class racing should be was on display over the last weekend. The six Grade l races at Saratoga on Saturday featured most of the leading horses in each division except older dirt males, and as a group they didn't disappoint, did they? Nor did their trainers. One race after another was dramatically decided at or close to the wire, and some of the runners-ups, including the Steve Asmussen-trained Midnight Bourbon (Tiznow) in the Gl Runhappy Travers S. and the Todd Pletcher-conditioned Life is Good (Into Mischief) in the...

The contrast between NYRA's Saratoga and the Churchill Downs, Inc.-owned Arlington couldn't be greater. While the latter died an ignominious death over the weekend, punctuated by Arlington president Tony Petrillo outrageously booting deadline photographers and writers, including this publication's Alan Carasso, from the press box 90 minutes after the completion of the race formerly known as the Gl Arlington Million, Saratoga--or the Spa, as it's known--is flourishing under solid management. The upstate New York track has been welcoming fans at full capacity since it opened for the season after the...

Candy Ride (Arg), by Ride the Rails from Candy Girl (Arg), by Candy Stripes, came from Argentina, where he was a champion miler, and quickly established himself as both a high-class racehorse with a win in the Gl Pacific Classic and as a sire here in a similar way that Forli (Arg) and Lord At War (Arg) did before him. Make no mistake, it was quite a feat, because South American-bred racehorses, no matter how successful they are on the track in North America, most often whiff at stud in...

Three of the first four finishers in the Gl Kentucky Derby were owned by Middle Eastern entities. The beaten favorite in fourth, Essential Quality (Tapit), races for the global Godolphin operation of UAE's Sheikh Mohammed, whose recently deceased brother Sheikh Hamdan's Shadwell had won the GI Longines Kentucky Oaks a day earlier with Malathaat (Curlin). The Derby runner-up, Mandaloun (Into Mischief), flies the famous green and pink silks of Juddmonte, whose longtime owner, Saudi businessman Prince Khalid Abdullah, passed away earlier this year but whose future rests with his eldest...