“Calumet laid it over the competition like ice cream over spinach.”
– Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter Red Smith
Warren Wright was born 138 years ago this fall in America’s heartland of Springfield, Ohio, the son of a traveling salesman, grandson of a miller, great-grandson of a tavern-keeper . . . blue-collar lineage back to 1636, when a Puritan ancestor turned up in this country seeking religious freedom.
Coolmore stallions Henrythenavigator and Dylan Thomas will shuttle to stand the upcoming Southern Hemisphere season at Haras Don Alberto in Chile.
Both stallions are based at Coolmore Ireland in Co. Tipperary.
Teardrop, a three quarter-sister to Grade 1 winner Pyro, broke slowly from the outside post but still proved much the best in her career debut Thursday at Churchill Downs, drawing off in the stretch for a 3 3/4-length victory.
The 2-year-old Tapit filly, who runs as a homebred for Winchell Thoroughbreds, is trained by Steve Asmussen. Rosie Napravnik was aboard as Teardrop covered five furlongs in :58.40 on a track rated fast.
In Excess, a four-time Grade 1 winner who went on to become a dominant California sire, died last week at the age of 26, Vessels Stallion Farm announced Thursday. He had been a pensioner at the Bonsall, Calif., farm since 2011.
In Excess sired Grade 1 winners Romance is Diane, a track record-setter at Hollywood Park and Santa Anita, and Musical Chimes, who also was a French classic winner. Among In Excess’s other graded stakes winners were Excessivepleasure, Above Perfection, Romanceishope, and Icantgoforthat. He also sired millionaires Texcess and Valentine Dancer.
English-based stallion Archipenko was represented by his first winner on Thursday when Lady Penko won a 1,200-meter (about six furlong) turf race in Florence, Italy.
The 2-year-old filly is out of the Danehill Dancer mare Lady Rengali, won by 2 1/2 lengths. She covered the distance in 1:16 over turf rated as soft.
The history of the evolution of Thoroughbred pedigrees is essentially a history of changing patterns of inbreeding. In the late 18th century, the English racehorse transformed from an animal designed to gallop four miles at a relatively slow pace to one required to run at a much faster pace over much shorter distances through inbreeding to early foundation sires Godolphin Arabian, Darley Arabian, Herod, and Eclipse.
Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum’s Darley has hired Gerry Duffy, previously WinStar Farm’s stallion seasons director, to be general manager of Darley’s Kildangan Stud in Ireland.
Duffy, a native of Co. Kildare, Ireland, and a graduate of the 2007 Darley Flying Start program, worked for Darley’s American operations for about five years before joining WinStar in Versailles, Ky. In addition to managing Kildangan, Duffy also will assist Kildangan Stud director Jimmy Hyland in managing the operation’s seven Irish farms.
