NEWS
Eight champions to continue racing
Posted: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 5:46 PM
ZENYATTA
Benoit & Associates photo
by Jeff Lowe
Critics of the accelerated retirement of some of racing’s top stars in recent years will like what they see on the racetrack this year with eight of the ten flat champions from 2008 scheduled to return this season.
Benny the Bull, Conduit (Ire), Forever Together, Indian Blessing, Midshipman, Proud Spell, Stardom Bound, and Zenyatta all will get the chance to earn another championship. Steeplechase champion Good Night Shirt is expected to pursue a third title.
On the flip side, the two champions who will not be back in 2009 are champion three-year-old male Big Brown and Horse of the Year and champion older male Curlin, arguably the most prominent names in racing in ’08.
“I think it’s key that we do have horses sticking around,” said Michael Iavarone of IEAH Stables, the co-owner of Benny the Bull, Big Brown, and Stardom Bound. “The more quality horses we have in training, the better the sport will be. I think if you look back over the last few years, if we had been able to keep Curlin, [2007 Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (G1) winner] Street Sense, and Big Brown—all those monsters—together, God knows how good the racing could have been. But a lot of times it just doesn’t work out. With Big Brown, we made an agreement with [Three Chimneys Farm] pretty early to stand him as a four-year-old.
“The racing industry did a good job marketing Curlin, but the problem was that they had no one to market against him,” Iavarone continued. “We want to run. Our people buy horses to run, and when you have horses like Stardom Bound and you have the ability to run them against someone like Zenyatta or run her in the Santa Anita Derby (G1) against other big names, that’s what’s going to drive people into the seats.”
Jess Jackson, the majority owner of two-time Horse of the Year Curlin, has long been outspoken about the American racing industry’s need for more incentives for owners who keep their stars in training.
“The industry has a broken economic model,” Jackson said this winter. “It concentrates on two-year-olds and three-year-olds. And then there’s a race to the breeding shed.”
The current economic slide and related swoon in the bloodstock industry may be changing that equation in some cases.
Benny the Bull originally was supposed to stand this season after a bone chip was discovered in his right front ankle in August. No stud deal was reached, and Iavarone announced at the Eclipse Awards ceremony that the Lucky Lionel horse would resume training.
“It was a combination of [economics] and the injury not being as severe as we originally thought,” Iavarone said.
Racing Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel told Daily Racing Form in early February that multiple Grade 1 winner Champs Elysees (GB) is still racing this year because of the recession.
“A lot of studs are going to be starving,” Frankel said.
Red Rocks (Ire), the 2006 John Deere Breeders’ Cup Turf (G1) winner who beat Curlin in the ’08 Man o’ War Stakes (G1), also is back for another season at age six after drawing little interest from American stud farms, but owner J. Paul Reddam said that is probably more attributable to the Galileo (Ire) horse’s pedigree than the economy.
“It speaks a lot about the commercial mindset,” Reddam said. “To me, Galileo is actually the top sire in the world. Red Rocks, of course, is from his first crop, and he’s a multiple Grade 1 winner, but we’d rather stand horses that produce early two-year-olds that are done when they have to stretch out.”
Jeff Lowe is a Thoroughbred Times staff writer
