Too Darn Hot

Just a couple of days after Darley announced that Too Darn Hot (GB) would not be shuttling to Australia, the operation revealed that he will be available to cover on southern hemisphere time at a fee of £50,000 from Dalham Hall Stud. The son of Dubawi (Ire), who is the most successful first-season sire ever in Australia and has already produced Group 1 scorer Broadsiding (Aus) Down Under, will be joined by fellow Dalham Hall Stud residents Palace Pier (GB) and Cracksman (GB) to cover southern hemisphere time, at fees...

A €210,000 daughter of Too Darn Hot (GB) headlined what was a predictably tricky two-year-old section to the Summer Sale at Arqana as the curtain definitively came down on the 2024 breeze-up season.  It was Brendan Holland's Grove Stud who consigned the day one top lot, who was bought by bloodstock agent Arthur Hoyeau on behalf of MyRaceHorse.  "She's been bought for MyRaceHorse and will go to the United States," said Hoyeau. "She's a very interesting filly with lots of qualities and has the perfect profile to go to the...

Too Darn Hot (GB) will not shuttle to Darley Australia for the 2024 season, the outfit confirmed on Monday morning.  Already a Classic-producing sire, thanks to the exploits of 1,000 Guineas heroine Fallen Angel and German 1,000 Guineas scorer Darnation, Too Darn Hot is enjoying a memorable year. He has also sired Group 1 winner Broadsiding in Australia and is the leading first-season sire Down Under.  A statement posted on Darley in Australia on X read,  "#TooDarnHot will not shuttle to Darley Australia's Kelvinside base for the 2024 season." It...

We're not quite halfway through the Flat season but Royal Ascot feels like a pivotal point. It's not just the fact that it coincides with the summer solstice (even though summer has really only just arrived in these parts) but it includes the first properly meaningful two-year-old contests along with a set of races for the Classic generation which start to underline the really serious prospects. While the yearling sales may tell one story of the popularity of stallions, one only needs to peruse the stakes race results on a...

If you are a racing tragic, and I'd like to think that most TDN readers fall into this celebrated bracket, it is impossible to have a day off at the moment. Trials, Classics, they come thick and fast in these heady weeks of spring. We've waited winterlong, starved of any meaningful action, and now it's hard not to feel a little queasy at the veritable feast of racing which is set before us, course after course after course. There's barely even room for the Cartmel Sticky Toffee Pudding Maiden Hurdle. ...

A person whose job it is to promote horse racing was, rather disappointingly, being sniffy about the Craven meeting on social media last week. I understand that some people don't like racing at the Rowley Mile and, yes, last Tuesday in particular was a little challenging on the weather front. But if you're a Flat racing person, and particularly one who is being paid to tell other people that they should come racing, then you really should appreciate all that is wonderful about these weeks of Classic trials across Europe....

In a first Japanese Group win for her sire, Etes Vous Prets (Ire) (Too Darn Hot (GB)--Nahoodh {Ire} (GISW-Eng, G1SP-Ire, $443,612), by Clodovil {Ire}) stubbornly held on to her advantage in the final metres, and claimed Sunday's G2 Hochi Hai Fillies' Revue, a trial for the G1 Oka Sho on Apr. 7. Twice the bridesmaid in a pair of maiden contests, she broke through by two lengths in her first start at this venue last September on her third attempt. From there she took another step forward to win the...

Yes, I know. It's a bit early for this, isn't it? We usually have a strict No-Seven-Days rule until the week after the Brocklesby but this winter has dragged on and on and I just can't wait any longer. We have the small matter of the Cheltenham Festival to get through this week, and we'll be giving it our full attention, but as we have counted down the days to the 'The Roar' it has been impossible to ignore the sneaky French getting their Turf season underway with a couple...

The entries for the first two Classics of the season have been released, with 49 horses entered in each of the Qipco 2,000 Guineas and Qipco 1,000 Guineas. The colts will line up at Newmarket on Saturday, May 4 when it is likely that much of the attention will focus on the unbeaten City Of Troy (Justify), who at this stage is the ante-post favourite for the 2,000 Guineas. Trained by Aidan O'Brien, he has left Ireland for two of his three starts to win the G2 Superlative S. at...

There will be a lot of I-told-you-sos when looking back on the first-season sires' championship with Blue Point (Ire) living up to his lofty billing by amassing 50 individual winners in Europe including two Group 1 scorers in what can only be described as a dream debut season.  The pledge of support behind Blue Point from a very early stage, in what was viewed by many as the most competitive first-season sires' championship in a long time, was telling.  Perhaps one of the most accurate predictions came from trainer Richard...

With Dubawi as its lynchpin, there have of course been plenty of red-letter days for Darley in recent years, but the results from the Arc meeting at Longchamp on Sunday can nevertheless be deemed to be extra special. Best of all was the victory in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe for the unbeaten Ace Impact (Ire), a member of the first crop of Cracksman (GB). That stellar performance was backed up by a first-crop Group 1 winner for Blue Point (Ire), who is leading the first-season sires' table and...

The Devil's Dyke stretches in pretty much a straight line for more than seven miles through parts of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. The best part, according to this scribbler anyway, is the section roughly a mile and half long which cleaves Newmarket's July Course from the Rowley Mile, with a break in the dyke allowing the two courses to join briefly just beyond the ten-furlong mark on the latter. A Dutch author, Iman Jacob Wilkens, once claimed that Cambridge's Gog Magog Hills was the true location of the City of Troy,...