Tuesday Miscellaneous

THE NEW PURCHASE: Did notice that Eagle Valley Farm, Carlisle, Ky had a terrible sale with their many Shore Breeze hips yesterday. They all RNA'd except two at ridiculously low prices. Now, I saw several of those, and they were nice horses, which is why I'm anxious to lay eyes on mine. The status of the Shore Breezes was similar to every other Hip sired by a non-commercial stallions. Most of them failed to sell, and several were nice horses. The state of the sport presently still sits such that smart people can come in a buy good horses for very little, which brings me to

THE RICHTER SCALE:

Left click to enlarge and see the best built stallion out there, standing for $5000.00 at Richland Hills Farm, Ky. For what fathomable reason this horse fails to get top mares further indicates the intuitiveness and lack of common horse sense of the majority of the people in our business.

Let's just reiterate that RR remains sick 24 hours after missing out on Hip 185, a major league horse out of Richter Scale that I missed by $500.00. I specifically participated in the sale to bring back such a horse, and, whiffed. Just ridiculous. Why? Several reasons. A busy distracting schedule. I never took this sale very seriously which is indicated that I phone bid instead of driving the Lexington. I carefully weeded through the catalogue determined to come back with a horse with first and second dams that were winners, black type under second dam out of a flashy, racy stallion with a dam post 1995 and with a winner (or young) as a foal. There were only 10 such Hips on the first day in my price range, and what do I do but buy a hip outside of my own predetermined guidelines.

In buying Hip 354 I compromised my own discipline partly because I allowed myself to be influenced by my Fasig Tipton bidder who was getting impatient by my constant calls. (when you phone bid, you have to advise in advance what hips you'll bid on, and thus very few hips are actually available for bidding.).

But, primarily I'm disgusted by missing out on the Richter Scale. This young colt, a chestnut, had the identical conformation to his pop, an imposing athletic presence that was so obvious I was shocked I was bidding against only one other. The lesson: this sport requires 100% concentration to succeed. It's difficult to carry it on under distraction. Will I ever learn?

GROOVIN' WIND: breezed Saturday in 1:18.4 on a very slow track. Rest Sunday. Track closed Monday due to rain--rest. The option was to enter for Saturday and breeze Tuesday or Wednesday, or abandon ship. By Monday I'd made the decision to decline entering the horse. This is partly based on Wind's personality and how he reacts to Race #1, which is that he's so flighty and nervous a decent performance is impossible for him. First race it's all I can do just to saddle him in the paddock.

The point of putting Wind in a race would be to see the end point of all the Burch training. BUT, we'd fail to see that in the first race, and in fact, the horse would need several races or additional breezes before being sufficiently conditioned to show his stuff. I saw little point in this. I've decided to decline sending Wind to another track. My energies lie elsewhere at the moment than racing my 12 year old, and I'll post on plans and further thoughts next couple of days.

ART: measured this morning. 15'3". He made it! I'm hoping for another little January growth spurt to 15'3.5". We may yet have a race horse here. Art's serious prep will begin tomorrow. I'm tied up today in research.