This Side Up: Arc Only One End of the Rainbow

Even in a market like this one, weirdly insulated from economic and geopolitical chaos, trading Thoroughbreds will always remain a precarious business. Speculators never hesitate, then, to pounce whenever the odds appear skewed temporarily in their favor. Sure enough, with the dollar squeezing other currencies dry, around one in eight of the yearlings sold at the Goffs Orby Sale this week is said to be heading to the U.S.; and they'll have plenty of company out of Tattersalls next week.

To one who constantly berates breeders both sides of the water for a generation of mutual disengagement, this should really be welcomed as an edifying development. But I can't help thinking of the ancient military theorist, Sun Tzu, who cautioned: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

Is this mere opportunism, exploiting a congenial exchange rate? Or are people finally walking the walk, after years of talk about a burgeoning grass program in the U.S.? Might there even be an enlightened few who have finally remembered how the breed, in the past, was repeatedly regenerated by cross-pollination?

I'm pretty sure some of these American investors will observe the climax of the European season at Longchamp on Sunday, with 20 horses plowing through a mile and a half of mud, and mutter that this is steeplechasing without fences. On Saturday's card, moreover, they can spook themselves with three of four Group races respectively contested over 14, 15 and 20 furlongs.

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But these assignments aren't just alien to the American environment. They are also wildly beyond the compass of the stock that nowadays dominates commercial breeding in Europe, with its disastrous conflation of speed and precocity. Some of the most heavily subscribed stallions in Europe would never get you a Classic horse even at a mile. Hilariously, however, there are influential players in the European market who blithely disparage Bluegrass bloodlines as “all speed”, when actually it is precisely in Kentucky that they might find just the kind of speed that underpins a Classic Thoroughbred: speed, in other words, that carries. And that's because commercial breeding in the U.S., happily, still clings to the aspiration of seeing out a second turn on the first Saturday in May.

But what of that other end of the European spectrum, showcased this weekend? The genetic foundation required is vividly apparent in three blatant influences on the field gathered for the G1 Qatar Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe: no fewer than four runners by Frankel (GB); three, including the defending champion, by Adlerflug (Ger); and four by Japanese stallions. You couldn't ask for a more robust contrast to those “sharp” European sires who trade on the flimsy possibility of putting you in the same parade ring as the new King for a juvenile sprint at Ascot.

Just imagine–albeit I'm not sure there are narcotics strong enough to sustain the fantasy for five seconds–a parallel world in which Adlerflug had been exported to Kentucky for his stud career. If you stood him for a dime, he would never have received a single commercial client. Frankel is obviously a case apart. (And priced accordingly). But while I always said that he ran like a dirt horse, at stud he has proved a pretty unadulterated conduit of the stamina we associate with his sire Galileo (Ire). As for the Japanese, well, anyone can see that they are well on their way to the dominant Thoroughbred of the 21st Century.

A first Arc, after several vexing near-misses, would nicely round off 12 months featuring five winners on Dubai World Cup night, four on the Saudi Cup card and two at the Breeders' Cup. And all built largely on animals renounced by western markets.

Let's take just a couple of recent examples. The 2019 U.S. Horse of the Year, Bricks and Mortar, poisoned his own well by winning over a mile and a half of grass at the age of five. Now he has been joined at the Shadai Stallion Station by Poetic Flare (Ire), brilliant and tough enough to contest three mile Classics in 22 days, winning the first by a short head and losing the third by the same margin.     And, good grief, if it's precocity you want, at two Poetic Flare had won the very first race of the Irish season, on March 23. But his unfashionable parentage ensured that only the Japanese had an adequate offer for the genius who bred and trained him.

So, guys, where's the strategy?

Take a hint from Epicenter (Not This Time), whose sire–just like Bricks and Mortar–is by the transatlantic legend Giant's Causeway. Epicenter's dam is by the Argentinian import Candy Ride (Arg), while his third and fourth are by two of Europe's most profound stamina influences of the postwar era, in Ela-Mana-Mou (Ire) and Busted (GB).

Another brilliant dirt sophomore, Taiba, is by the hottest new stallion in years, Gun Runner: a son of Candy Ride, this time, out of a Giant's Causeway mare. But it's a two-way street. Taiba's strongly domestic family includes a third dam by Phone Trick. And it was by matching one of Galileo's breakout champions with a Phone Trick mare that Jim Bolger came up with Dawn Approach (Ire)–the very sire who ostensibly made Poetic Flare impossible to stand in Europe.

All I'm saying is that there's imbalance. There's an imbalance between the vogue for European imports, both runners and yearlings, and the commercial asphyxiation of even the most eligible grass stallions tried in Kentucky. And there's an imbalance, also, in that same export market out of Europe: between low-caliber commercial production and those breeders, typically “end users”, still prepared to populate the kind of stamina test that briefly engages global attention this weekend.

Rich Strike training last month | Sarah Andrew

The point is that these imbalances could be reconciled; that we could stop pointing two magnets against another, so that they waste their force in waving and pushing apart, and instead hold them side by side to double their power. To my eye, for instance, there are one or two running only at Grade II level at Churchill on Saturday that could potentially serve the European breed far better than many of the sires cluttering up some catalogues over there. Certainly the Lukas Classic looks a much better contest than the lap of honor reserved for Life Is Good (Into Mischief) in a far more storied race–won last year, indeed, by one of the key protagonists–in New York an hour or so earlier.

Curious though it will be to see a horse whose two previous visits to Louisville comprise a 17-length maiden win and a Kentucky Derby blowout; here he meets three contrasting models of consistency, even if each similarly has a solitary Grade I win apiece. You know this has to be a tougher race than the grade because Happy Saver (Super Saver) always goes looking for trouble, consecutively escorting Olympiad (Speightstown), Flightline (Tapit) and Life Is Good to the winner's circle in three previous starts this year. Maybe he's only here because he decided the Arc wasn't worth the trouble once Baaeed (GB) (Sea The Stars {Ire}) dropped out.

As it happens, Art Collector (Bernardini), Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow) and Happy Saver all share pedigrees of a broadly indigenous, dirt flavor. But these set-your-clock, hard-running speed carriers have exactly the kind of track profile that would assist the Europeans in filling the gap between their cheap speed and elite stamina.

The correction of such local imbalances, as I've said, could usefully complement each other. But I guess any program smart enough to seek equilibrium would be in danger of finding itself with something that might even deserve the name of strategy.