Smart Strike

The freakish vitality and durability of his trainer stands in poignant contrast to the posthumous legacies entwined by the success of Seize the Grey in the GI Preakness S. Most obviously, as colleague Jill Williams highlights in her Saturday Sires series, the industry has been given fresh cause to lament the premature loss of Arrogate. For the family and friends of Seize the Grey's breeder, however, Saturday was a more intensely personal cue to honor the memory of Audrey "Tolie" Otto, barely a year after her passing. Otto's stable, Jamm...

10th-KD, $150K, Msw, 2yo, 1mT, 6:28 p.m. The European-style grass course situated on the Kentucky side of the southern border with Tennessee cards a maiden finale which draws $450,000 Keeneland September graduate from last year, PUBLIUS (Constitution). Bred by Twin Creeks Farm, the bay colt debuts out of Sharp Instinct (Awesome Again), who is the dam of seven winners from nine to race. The Brad Cox trainee, ridden by Florent Geroux, is a half-brother to GIII Excelsior S. hero Send It In (Big Brown). Also entered is the well-bred Tapitoro...

Counterforce (Smart Strike), currently Canada's leading second-crop sire and 2022 champion freshman sire, will relocate from Road's End Farm in British Columbia to Stride Away Thoroughbreds in the Okanagan region for the 2024 season. The stakes winner is a half-brother to GII winner Cezanne (Curlin) and out of a half-sister to the dam of Saturday's GI Belmont S. winner Arcangelo (Arrogate). "He's a lovely horse, with a magnificent pedigree," said Stride Away co-owner Cathy Reggelsen. "He came out firing as a freshman last year and that's certainly continued this season...

Sponsored by Alex Nichols Agency 1st-DMR, $70K, Msw, 2yo, f, 6 1/2f, 6:30 p.m. Purchased for $725,000 just six months ago out of the OBS June Sale, WUDI (Uncle Mo) makes her afternoon bow where the turf meets the surf for owner Baoma Corp and trainer Bob Baffert. Out of a half-sister to MGSW His Race To Win (Stormy Atlantic) and to the dam of Canadian champion turf male El Tormenta (Stormy Atlantic) and GSW Zero Tolerance (Mizzen Mast), Wudi hails back to Canadian Horse of the Year and Eclipse...

Chances for a 2022 Japanese Fillies' Triple Crown are alive and well after G1 Japanese 1000 Guineas heroine Stars On Earth (Jpn) (Duramente {Jpn}) delivered the Classic double in the G1 Yushun Himba (Japanese Oaks) for Shadai Race Horse and trainer Mizuki Takayanagi at Tokyo Racecourse on Sunday. Sent off as the 5-1 third choice, the bay broke well from the widest gate in 18, but was stuck wide as the field strung out in the wake of Nishino Love Wink (Jpn) (Epiphaneia {Jpn}). Sitting in eighth, Christophe Lemaire had...

Well, if it was hard enough to make sense of his performance, then don't expect things to appear any more conventional when you look at the pedigree of Rich Strike. His grandsire and dam share the same paternity. His mother was discarded a couple of years ago for $1,700; his half-sister was claimed only last month for $5,000; and his sire's only previous stakes winner had emerged in Puerto Rico. But if communal incredulity over the GI Kentucky Derby must have been flavored with extra piquancy for the breeders of...

It was a hectic week in the Thoroughbred business with all eyes firmly focussed on Louisville, Kentucky. Here are some facts and figures that you might have missed in the rush. Record Numbers... Wagering from all-sources on the Kentucky Derby (single race) totaled $179 million, up 15% over 2021 and up 8% from the previous record of $166.5-million set in 2019. This year's wagering record includes $8.3 million of handle put through the window in Japan. The Smart Strike Factor... As a broodmare sire, Smart Strike has the distinction of...

Fasig-Tipton has catalogued an additional 35 supplemental entries to its 2022 Kentucky Winter Mixed Sale. The entries are catalogued as hips 572-606 and may now be viewed online. They will also be available in the Equineline sales catalogue app. Print versions of supplemental entries will be available on the sales grounds at sale time. Latest entries include: Road to Romance (Hip 592): Four-year-old daughter of Quality Road was stakes placed at two. Dam is half-sister to two stakes winners including graded stakes winner and millionaire Super Frolic (Pine Bluff). Consigned...

Calumet Farm's perennial leading turf sire English Channel (Smart Strike--Belva, by Theatrical {Ire})'s health rapidly declined in the past 24 hours under the care of top equine specialists at Rood and Riddle and he passed away Thursday morning. "English Channel certainly went out on top," a release from Calumet Farm read. "He was the number one turf sire for the past two years and you could consistently find his progeny on the board in the top turf races across the country. English Channel has meant so much to Calumet throughout...

Multiple stakes winner Galilean (Uncle Mo--Fresia, by El Prado {Ire}), who hails from the female family of the influential Smart Strike, has been retired from racing and will take up his new career as a stallion at Hidden Lake Farm in New York, where he will stand the 2022 breeding season for a stud fee of $7,000 S&N. "We are proud of what Galilean accomplished on the racetrack," said West Point Thoroughbreds' Terry Finley, "and we're excited for him to write his next chapter as a stallion. He was precocious,...

Lane's End Farm's longtime Stallion Manager Bill Sellers will retire in September after 39 years of service. Sellers has overseen the management and care of influential Lane's End stallions including the legendary A.P. Indy, champion sires Kingmambo, Smart Strike, Dixieland Band, Gulch, Lemon Drop Kid, Mineshaft and City Zip in addition to current top stallions Quality Road, Candy Ride (Arg), Union Rags and Twirling Candy. Sellers has been a valued member of the Lane's End Farm team since 1982, when he was hired in a foreman capacity to work with...

When a horse carries a name like this, there can be no evasion or equivocation. With due honesty, then, let us admit that Honor Code is not yet converting his transparent eligibility as a stallion--apparently so watertight in pedigree, physique and performance--in quite the fashion that seemed likely when he produced the luminous Honor A.P. from his very first crop. Not yet. Small, agonizingly flexible words, in the context of a suffocatingly impatient marketplace. By any rational measure, it should still feel like early days in Honor Code's stud career....