This Side Up: Flightline Ready For More Altitude

The race is not always to the swift. Pretty old news, by this stage: it's right there in Ecclesiastes and, nearly as long ago now, you could see as much when More Than Ready cut the last corner in the Kentucky Derby. He transparently didn't get home, flattening into fourth behind Fusaichi Pegasus. But the brilliance of that move was instead sustained through his second career, where he just kept on going–whether measured by years, or air miles–and proved a far more potent force than the rest of that Derby field put together.

While he certainly maximized his legacy, famously shuttling 19 consecutive seasons to Australia, his loss at 25 still leaves a challenging void. Few stallions today are embraced with the same conviction in such diverse environments and, if his service as a domestic conduit for the Halo line is to be prolonged, then we appear precariously dependent on one of his later sons: Daredevil has just produced his first crop since repatriation; Funtastic had a timely first winner last weekend; while Catholic Boy and Copper Bullet are making their debut at the yearling sales.

Catholic Boy would be an especially apt heir, as only the third American sophomore to win Grade Is on both dirt and turf. Don't forget that he had already won graded stakes on both surfaces as a juvenile. His failure to kick on after the GI Travers S., bombing out at the Breeders' Cup and then confined to a fitful campaign at four, shouldn't efface a pretty extraordinary career to that point.

In terms of carrying forward the More Than Ready legacy, Catholic Boy also has a suitably eclectic background: his first two dams by Bernardini and Seeking The Gold; his third, by Nijinsky II; while his fourth is the Argentinian champion La Sevillana (Arg). She starts a chain of seven native mares tracing back to a daughter, delivered in 1890, of one of Argentina's great foundation mares, Ante Diem. This is just the kind of sturdy backbone at an urgent premium in the modern breed.

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More Than Ready himself, of course, was by a stallion who did so well in Argentina that he reverse shuttled to Kentucky–and what a blessing that was, given that Southern Halo replicated the great Almahmoud as granddam of both his sire Halo and damsire Northern Dancer. These timeless genetic brands were never about brute size, one of many misplaced obsessions of commercial breeders today, and More Than Ready was built on corresponding lines. But he still stood out a mile to J.J. Pletcher, the day he found him way out the back hill at Keeneland.    Endorsed by another outstanding judge in Eddie Rosen, More Than Ready became so versatile an influence that we tend to forget what a commercial paragon he was on the track, all precocity and speed. His 10-length romp in the GII Sanford S. was already his fifth straight win, and he cut back to sprinting when returning to Saratoga the following summer to win the GI King's Bishop S.

In between, it had felt pretty well obligatory to roll the two-turn dice for the Derby, and perhaps it's going to prove a similar story at Del Mar on Saturday when Flightline (Tapit) stretches out for the GI TVG Pacific Classic.

This horse is already doing great things, but that doesn't yet make him a great horse. If we're seriously supposed to reconcile ourselves to the miserable possibility that Flightline might be wilfully confined to half a dozen starts, then at least we must thank his connections for exploring his talent so far as that meteoric passage would permit. He crossed the continent for the GI Hill 'n' Dale Met Mile off a long layoff, for instance, and now takes on some hard-knocking stayers at their own game.

And, as with More Than Ready, not to mention a horse that once brought a Citation-sized streak into the Pacific Classic, the race is not always to the swift. Even to the very swift.

Flightline, to this point, is a phenomenon that couldn't really happen in Europe. His serene indifference to the upgrading of his opposition has merely served to confirm what his speed figures had already told the handicappers. The fact is, however, that the test anticipated at Belmont didn't really materialize. And he will no longer be measured only against the clock, now that he is set so very different an examination.

Nobody would deny that he appears to have the stuff of greatness. To European sensibilities, however, 312 seconds is an insufficient body of evidence for his elevation to the pantheon. And actually, even if he were to smash up these horses the way he has all others, I would be reserving my first plaudits for a trainer who could win the premier summer prize of his home state with four different horses in five years–with Hronis Racing, moreover, a fortunate party to each.

That run was initiated by the late-blooming Accelerate, who the previous year had joined Arrogate (another cautionary precedent among perceived invincibles) in taking a rear view of Collected. Nobody needs to tell John Sadler or his clients, then, about the fulfilment available when a horse is permitted to mature to the peak of his powers. But the opinion that Flightline is the most valuable stallion prospect ever to go to stud, while pardonable in one fortunate to have a stake in whatever his value proves to be, would certainly not have been aired in times when the measure of greatness was rather more exacting.

Nearly all the names you might sensibly shortlist for the top dozen American Thoroughbreds of all time underpinned their brilliance with competitive longevity. Whether the horsemen of today are nervous of real or perceived deficiencies in their charges, I guess we just have to get used to it. But unless and until horses are again asked to demonstrate their resilience, then even horses as infectiously exciting as Flightline will never again reach the same kind of public; and nor will breeders of the future know quite what they're getting.

In which case, never mind the race going to the swift. Everybody, after all, knows what a fast horse looks like. But how on earth can we know whether or not the battle is to the strong?