Skip Away grandson Golden Dragon will try dirt in BC Juvenile

It has been two decades since Skip Away shipped out to California to win the 1997 Breeders’ Cup Classic – highlighting a career in which the big gray Hall of Famer brought home four Eclipse Award statues, including the 1998 Horse of the Year trophy, won 10 Grade 1 races, placed in 20 other graded events, and bankrolled $9.6 million.

But Skip Away, who died in 2010, did not replicate himself at stud, with the most accomplished of his six graded stakes winners being 2010 Eclipse Award champion steeplechaser Slip Away. And as a gelding, that competitor never passed on his sire’s genes.

Skip Away’s lone son advertised at stud in Kentucky is Considine Farm’s Skipshot, winner of the Grade 2 Swaps Stakes in 2010. The ridgling’s crop of just 15 foals in 2015 included Golden Dragon, who is scheduled to make his next start in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile in California.

Golden Dragon’s first preference was the Juvenile Turf, but he is on the outside looking in on the oversubscribed race. He has won 2 of 4 starts, all on turf, for breeder, owner, and trainer Mikhail Yanakov.

“I would like to run him again on the grass, but too many horses in the race,” Yanakov said. “He also trained very good on the dirt. I just want to try.”

Russian-born Yanakov trained Skipshot and boards his mares at Considine. He and farm owner Dan Considine met a decade ago through Considine’s involvement in the international shipment of horses.