Op/Ed: Giant's Legacy Can Reduce Surface Tension

The Iron Horse is dead. May he rust in peace.

Sorry, couldn't resist. And he wouldn't mind, if he knew how I felt about him. What a horse he was; and what a sire. Stands to reason, I guess. For those ferrous attributes that defined Giant's Causeway (Storm Cat) were precisely the kind you would want to replicate, generation to generation: hardiness, courage, versatility.

I'll never forget that stirring duel with Tiznow (Cee's Tizzy) in the Breeders' Cup Classic. Much like Zenyatta (Street Cry {Ire}), over the same track 10 years later, he only grew in defeat. In being permitted to explore his limits, he transcended them.

Tiznow, of course, was a dirt monster. Stuck out that great snout of his to win the Classic two years running. But here's a funny thing. The horse he beat at Belmont the following year, Sakhee (Bahri), was also making his dirt debut after proving himself top-class on turf in Europe. And who, outside Ballydoyle, would nowadays have the adventure to run a six-length Arc winner—out of a Ribblesdale winner by Sadler's Wells—in the Breeders' Cup Classic?

Who, come to that, would still dare to run Sheikh Albadou (Green Desert) in the Breeders' Cup Sprint? A horse out of a half-sister to winners of two turf slogs in the Ascot Gold Cup and Yorkshire Cup?

In fairness, the expansion of the turf programme at the Breeders' Cup is perhaps a factor. But there is no question that Europeans have become less disposed to experiment since being so indulged the year the meeting was staged on a synthetic surface at Santa Anita.

Some of us in Europe have since repented of condescending misapprehensions, formed around that time, about racing on dirt. But not too many, judging from the abject failure of European horseman to reciprocate, at the Breeders' Cup, the kind of enterprise increasingly shown by the Americans at Royal Ascot—coming over to our backyard and beating us at our own game. And we have the nerve to caricature the Americans as insular.

As it is, we seem to be relying almost exclusively on these canny breeze-up consignors to import dirt pedigrees. On the same evening that we mourned Giant's Causeway, just about the only significant demand at the Tattersalls Craven Sale was for Keeneland pinhooks. Yet, European breeders largely persist in widening the kind of schism so evident at the Breeders' Cup.

Historically, the breed has depended on transatlantic transfusions for its regeneration. European bloodlines were famously invigorated in the 1970s, for instance, by sons of a little dirt champion raised in Canada. In turn, Northern Dancer's sire Nearctic had distilled several venerable strands of European Classic blood (three tracing to Canterbury Pilgrim, the 17th Earl of Derby's foundation mare).

The time is surely at hand for another turn of the wheel.

Perhaps some Europeans have been conflating the demands made by dirt with the undeniable complication of medication in the U.S. But they have to be very careful about their stereotyping. Scat Daddy: speed influence, couldn't last past June as a 3-year-old. What would they give for him now?

Scat Daddy has three members of his penultimate crop in the Kentucky Derby picture: Justify, Mendelssohn and Flameaway. But even if Mendelssohn confirms himself even better on dirt than on turf, his sire has unmistakably straddled both disciplines.

Another crossover stallion, Medaglia d'Oro, likewise has two leading Derby candidates in Bolt D'Oro and Enticed. His father El Prado (Ire)—despite his own profile as a turf sire—has arguably ended up, through various sons and grandsons, giving Sadler's Wells a wider footprint, at least in terms of geography and diversity, than even the great Galileo.

True, the only other sire with more than one son in T.D. Thornton's latest TDN Derby Top 20 is Curlin, through Good Magic and Vino Rosso. And Curlin's discomfort on a synthetic surface remains notorious. It would be churlish to deny that different surfaces call for different strengths; or that many horses can neither stretch their own repertoire nor, in many cases, that of their progeny. Galileo, again, is a case in point: he trailed in behind Tiznow and Sakhee with his eyes streaming. But it would be just as silly to claim some definitive genetic prejudice, in all horses, towards one surface or another.

Part of the problem is that so many people read pedigrees largely through sire-lines. That's understandable, given that only sires—above all in this era of appalling book sizes—can produce a legible statistical sample. The mare gets one snapshot a year, and that's with health and luck. But the genetic dice, in each individual foal, nonetheless rolls equally between black and red, odd and even, sire and dam.

It makes perfect sense for Scat Daddy to produce the goods on grass as well as dirt, as a son of a champion on both in Johannesburg (Hennessy). And Hennessy's father Storm Cat, a champion sire on both sides of the ocean, of course gave us Giant's Causeway himself.

But the same people who make sweeping generalisations about an entire sire-line often tend to dismiss other branches of a pedigree as tapering into insignificance. To these, the fact that Scat Daddy's dam is out of a Nijinsky mare is doubtless neither here nor there. (The next dam, incidentally, is by No Robbery (Swaps), otherwise noted as the sire of a seven-length Dewhurst winner in Wind And Wuthering.)

In statistical terms, these “galactico” sires—Scat Daddy, Medaglia d'Oro and Curlin—are wildly surpassed in being doubly represented on the Kentucky Derby trail by John Gunther of Glennwood. From a broodmare band that seldom passes 20, Gunther and his daughter Tanya have come up with both Justify and Vino Rosso. If that's a pretty incredible achievement, then it comes as no surprise to learn that a number of Glennwood mares are over in Europe, mixing it with Frankel and company. For here are people smart enough to understand that the moment you start prescribing black-and-white outcomes for something as unpredictable as a racehorse, you're just shutting down your own options.

Visiting Eddie Woods in January, he remembered how Big Brown (Boundary) left Ocala just looking like a turf horse. And he wondered whether that is what he would have remained, had that Gulfstream allowance race not been moved onto the main track because of rain.

How many people, equally, would ever have entertained the Kentucky Derby for a colt by Leroidesanimaux (Brz) out of an Acatenango (Ger) mare? Animal Kingdom, of course, went on to finish second in a Breeders' Cup Mile, and to win a synthetic Dubai World Cup.

The real wiseguy was Socrates: wisdom is knowing you don't know. What makes me most comfortable, in a pedigree, is just seeing as many threads of quality as possible woven together. That way, whatever becomes unstitched, you'll always be left something to work with.

Take Vino Rosso's dam Mythical Gold (Street Cry {Ire}), found by Gunther for $42,000 at the Keeneland November Sale in 2011. When he looked at her page he saw Street Cry, a top-class dirt runner with a regal turf pedigree (duly sire of champions on turf and dirt), matched up by a Touch Gold mare. How could Touch Gold not be a broodmare sire, being by Deputy Minister out of a Buckpasser mare? And whatever else Curlin might have brought to the mating, he did so partly as a son of a Deputy Minister mare.

Mythical Gold's next dam is by Roberto's son Lear Fan. An acre of grass there. In fact, just take a climb through her family tree and tell me when you find a flimsy branch. For 42 grand.

So if you think the whole mystery can be reduced to this nick or that index, carry on and good luck. But let's always be wary of formulaic, prescriptive thinking. Because otherwise we will only raise or race horses within our limitations, and prevent them from reaching their own.