Siskin

9th-GP, $92K, OC62k, 4yo/up, f, 1m, 5:07 p.m. ET. Juddmonte colorbearer SCYLLA (Tapit) makes her return to the races as the older filly looks to jumpstart her new campaign. The Bill Mott trainee certainly made her mark when she attained 'TDN Rising Star' honors as a debut winner at Keeneland last April, and then followed that up with an 8 1/4-length win against optional claimers at Churchill Downs in early June. Out of champion older mare Close Hatches (First Defence), the homebred is a full-sister to MGSW/MGISP and current sire...

HOKKAIDO, Japan--Things are hotting up in the Northern Horse Park, literally and figuratively. As the mercury nudged 30 degrees on Saturday, the English and Irish in town for the JRHA Select Sale swooned and wilted while the many attendants showing the horses, mostly clad in jackets, went manfully and womanfully about their hot and tiring work without so much as a whimper. Both they and the young horses in their care are well prepared for the two inspection days ahead, despite having only arrived on the sales ground that morning....

Ger Lyons has been competing at the top table of Irish racing for well over a decade and recorded breakthrough Classic success in 2020 when Siskin (First Defence) stormed to G1 Irish 2000 Guineas glory under Colin Keane at the Curragh. The pair didn't have to wait long to record their second when, just five weeks later, Even So (Ire) (Camelot {GB}) landed the Irish Oaks. Lyons has a typically-strong team of older horses to go to war with this season. Tough Talk and Hellsing appear to be the pick...

   There have been a lot of football analogies in racing this week. Most have centered around a hypothetical situation whereby the Kevin De Bruynes or the Erling Haalands of this world were leaving the Premier League for sunnier-and more lucrative pay packets-in foreign leagues.     For all the Manchester City fans out there, you can relax, as the analogy was simply fictional. However, there is nothing fictional about the mass exodus of talent facing British and Irish racing.    Ger Lyons is better qualified than most to speak about...

There are bloodstock sales and then there's the JRHA Select Sale. The premier sale for Thoroughbreds in Japan, held at Hokkaido's Northern Horse Park, is truly out of the ordinary as far as these events go. The yearling section of the sale, which this year features 234 entries taking into account withdrawals at the time of writing, follows a fairly traditional format (though the sale's website does include a document noting the yearlings' heights, girth and cannon bone measurements, vices, and any surgical intervention), but it is the following day's...

The Classic Generation At the start of June, with France and Germany having already crept cautiously back into play after the COVID full-stop, Britain joined in with the beginning of a flourish of catch-up fare. In under a week of racing, we had a new star to gaze at, and time experts were in awe of Bjorn Nielsen's English King (Fr) (Camelot {GB}). While he looked super-slick in the Listed Lingfield Derby Trial, he was to be given the justifiably dreaded number one draw at Epsom and gave up any...

Lord Kanaloa (GB) (King Kamehameha {Jpn}) leads the Shadai Stallion Station roster for 2021. The sire of recent dual G1 Japan Cup heroine and Horse of the Year Almond Eye (Jpn), he will command ¥15,000,000 (US$143,654/£107,013/€119,227) tops among the 30-member roster next year. Shadai welcomes three new recruits for the upcoming breeding season-GI Arkansas Derby hero Nadal (Blame) (¥4,000,000), G1 Irish 2000 Guineas victor Siskin (First Defence) (¥3,500,000) and G1 Champions Cup winner Le Vent Se Leve (Jpn) (Symboli Kris S) (¥1,500,000). A trio of stallions stand at ¥10,000,000 and...

Classic winner Siskin (First Defence-Bird Flown {GB}, by Oasis Dream {GB}) will stand for ¥3,500,000 at Shadai Stallion Station in Japan, the stud announced on Tuesday. It was earlier revealed the Juddmonte homebred's breeding rights had been sold to a group of breeders in June. Trained by Ger Lyons, Siskin won his first five starts, breaking his maiden at Naas in May of his 2-year-old year and quickly adding a listed race later that month, before first tasting group success in the G2 Railway S. that June. He saluted in...

Well, we know that such Europeans as have been able to make the trip--another lockdown began in England on Thursday--won't be in the slightest danger of catching anything on the dirt track. If we can meanwhile break the shackles of the pandemic as well, maybe someone might feel sufficiently liberated finally to have another go next year. But at least the raiders should again be in the thick of things over on the grass. Now that the Breeders' Cup returns to Kentucky, moreover, they will be expecting an especially congenial...

LEXINGTON, KY--In the 36-year history of the Breeders' Cup, few owners have been so intertwined with the event as has Khalid Abdullah's Juddmonte Farms been. The operation's 80 starters at the meeting are bettered only by Godolphin and the Coolmore partners, while its seven winners and over $16-million in prizemoney at the Breeders' Cup is only slightly inferior to the record accrued by Coolmore. Juddmonte and the Breeders' Cup, in fact, have nearly come of age together. At the time that the inaugural Breeders' Cup was staged at Hollywood Park...

LEXINGTON, KY--Tuesday brought about another bright but cool morning in Lexington, and the European Breeders' Cup contingent-all bar the Ballydoyle brigade, which touched down in Lexington late on Monday evening and will be ensconced in quarantine until Thursday-had another opportunity to stretch their legs at Keeneland. The English and Irish Guineas winners Kameko (Kitten's Joy) and Siskin (First Defence) were among those who took to the training track for the second straight day, with Kameko once again catching the eye in a light gallop just as dawn broke. Siskin once...

LEXINGTON, KY--With temperatures plunging into subzero depths overnight on Sunday, there was a truly wintery feel at Keeneland on Monday morning to coincide with the release from quarantine-a concept that many more of their human custodians can relate to in 2020--of most of the European Breeders' Cup raiders. (Click here for a video of European Breeders' Cup contenders training on Monday) As tractors worked over the main dirt course attempting to thaw it, training was restricted in the early morning hours to Keeneland's training track, and the Jessica Harrington-trained fillies...