Zenyatta's first foal arrives at Shirreffs's barn

ELMONT, N.Y. – With the Triple Crown in the rearview mirror, much of the second half of the year centers on the 2-year-olds who could potentially participate in next year’s Triple Crown series.

There won’t be many 2-year-olds under more scrutiny than Cozmic One, the first foal out of the champion mare Zenyatta by the champion Bernardini who arrived at trainer John Shirreffs’s Belmont Park barn on May 23 and has been galloping almost daily since.

“You can definitely tell he’s his mother’s son,” Shirreffs said Wednesday, shortly after the colt returned from a training session. “He looks a lot like Zenyatta.”

Cozmic One is a rather big, dark bay colt who was broken on Mayberry Farm in Ocala, Fla., before shipping to Shirreffs. Zenyatta didn’t make it to the races until November of her 3-year-old year. Shirreffs has no timetable set for when Cozmic One might be ready, adding that it would be a stretch to see him run during the Saratoga meet.

“I take the time required. I don’t plan on taking a lot of time,” Shirreffs said. “I listen to the horse.”

Shirreffs said Cozmic One, owned and bred by Zenyatta’s owners, Jerry and Ann Moss, has made huge advancements that suggest he could be ready to run earlier than his mother.

“We’ve all been waiting for Zenyatta’s first foal, so it’s really exciting to have him here now,” Shirreffs said. “The fact he matured so well from the time he was a foal, weanling, yearling, and 2-year-old – he’s changed in a positive way each stage, so that makes it really exciting.”

Shirreffs knows that with a colt like this, there will be plenty of scrutiny. He said it came with the territory regarding Eblouissante, the sister to Zenyatta who has won 2 of 5 starts and remains in training in Southern California.

“The only negative to the scrutiny that a Cozmic One or an Eblouissante gets are the negative feelings people have,” Shirreffs said. “If the horse isn’t perfect or he just doesn’t do fabulous in a workout or something like that, suddenly everybody’s wondering, ‘Does the horse lack talent, or is something wrong?’ Just the second-guessing is a little bit frustrating to listen to at times, but that’s part of it.”