Is Y a Prospect--Part II

Call this the day after Thanksgiving. While a certain percentage of the female population is out shopping--and, one of these days soon i will figure out the attraction in the computer age of spending the afternoon spending money on trinkets--RR is out soaking up our greenhouse effect November Sun. Absolutely beautiful today in the peacefulness of knowing all my legal clients are otherwise occupied, and, if we can overlook that there is little to zero money to be made on these Thursday holidays, it is the sort of day i look forward to. Now, for the matter at hand, in one of the past blogs i noted the small odds on a macro level of any one horse winning the Kentucky Derby, much less being in it.

But, let us presume by now the Derby field has been winnowed down to about 14,000, where does our Y, that little 2/3 of a horse, fit into this notable group. It's already been established that Y is a grandson of Storm Cat, the most noted sire in Kentucky presently who stands for $500,000 single stud fee at Overbrook farm and whose babies sell in the millions to Arab Sheiks and Irish Stud Farms. The Sire, Vision and Verse, finished second in the Belmont Stakes, and the broodmare sire, Deposit Ticket was the second best two year old of his year. There are no weaknesses at all in any of the male ancestors in Y's pedigree--Vision and Verse, Storm Cat, Storm Bird, Secretariat, Private Account by Damascus, Hoist the Flag out of Ribot Line, Deposit Ticket, Track Barron, Nijinsky II, and Sir Gaylord, everyone either a millionaire or close, or a noted sire. Conclude: there are definitely some genes, and no mediocre genes at all which is remarkable even in the expensive pedigress where there is at least some weakness. None here unless you want to call the non-sire millionaire+ Track Barron (a horse I loved), a weakness.

In fact Y looks at this point like a carbon copy of his pop. He has some growing to do, but, it's established already that he has the basic appearance of a real decent racehorse. You can look at the Breeder's Cup photos on the website Turf Angels and see that good looking horses, horses that look like race horses are a dime a dozen, and when the running starts good looks means crap. BUT, it good that this little fellow at least has the basic form. The little horse has balance, perfect proportion except for slighly too long pasterns, and muscles where it counts. Photos soon.

I measured the jaw width yesterday. From the running I already know the little fellow is one of the better breathers, and I have long maintained that it is really the breathing that separates race horses. You particularly understand this when you ride them. Y has at this stage an unbelievable 5 finger jaw. I do not have and never have had any horses that have a 5 jaw. some 4.5s and most 4s, but, never a 5, and this guy is only 2/3 grown at this point. Jaw width is only an indicator of breathing ability. So many other things go wrong with horse breathing mechanism. But, it has been clearly shown that everything else in the throat being equal, the jaw width can play a significant factor. Some doubt this premise, but, this is consistent with my experience.

So, pedigree, appearance and build, breathing. Anything else matter? Oh, yes, there is the little mater of "speed". Let's put it this way (see today's workout), with his still open knees (knees close early in the two year old year), this little fellow easily keeps up with my big boys, and, really he runs on their butts and nudges them along. Riderless speed is different from speed with rider up, BUT, i alreay know that Y is other than slow.

So, here really nothing bad except the pasterns. All in all the conclusion is that the horse is trainable and he has some desireable characteristics, and we have at least a "PROSPECT". Now, a little Preston Burch training, and we'll continue the evaluation in a few months.

Today's training: For grown ups i like to give speed work every three days. For youngsters with still open knees and in the weakened condition that Y had 30 days ago, i'm giving only a very short spurt of speed about every 4 days, but, today was time for a speed day, and we could call today's w/o the first real speed w/o for Y. It was riderless and consisted of 3x1f riderless bursts around the paddock with about 1 m rest between. This was after appropriate warm up and with an older horse in the lead. I estimate the track speed to have been a little faster than 15 sec. per furlong. This is what i believe the little fellow can survive at this point. He looked very good doing it. A deer like athlete. Count Fleet had that description.