Spendthrift Double Ties Legacies of Crupi, Cox

We should all know what to expect, whenever Thoroughbreds appear to suggest that the random fortunes of the racetrack are somehow determined by a benign destiny. Nonetheless there are times when some such happy delusion can be hard to resist. And seldom has that been more poignantly the case than when Vino Rosso (Curlin) made that flamboyant move in the Classic, apparently setting a joyous seal on the defusing of an agonizing challenge to Santa Anita in staging the Breeders' Cup.

In the circumstances, his acceleration seemed to borrow some last, bittersweet surplus of the vitality finally extinguished, back in May, by the death of the man who bought Vino Rosso and taught him to be a racehorse. After years preserving his exuberance so unyieldingly, and so uncomplainingly, against the erosion of his physical health, Jimmy Crupi had died just a couple of days before Vino Rosso made his Grade I breakthrough, on reconnaissance for the Classic, in the Gold Cup at Santa Anita.

So while Messrs. Viola and Repole doubtless invoked their late friend with a more personal intensity, everyone present could sense the broader redemption offered by Crupi's last bequest–Crupi's last benediction–as Vino Rosso swept into the lead to bring two days of immaculate sport to an apt climax.

So many people had put in so much effort into reducing the odds against a fresh calamity threatening the future of this timeless racecourse. And now everyone with a stake in restoring balance and rationality to the debate (however legitimate, in itself) was turning to each other, palms raised for the most relieved of high fives. And then we all looked again, and saw Mongolian Groom (Hightail) dropping through the field in the graphic throes of catastrophe. And suddenly the flawless image of just a moment before–seemingly already preserved for our nostalgic recall, in years to come, by the sepia dusk gathering under the mountains–dissolved in a fog of tears.

My purpose here, however, is not to reprise yet again the various options for an industry addressing dismally familiar dilemmas. I simply wanted to reiterate that Crupi's was not the only mastery vindicated by Vino Rosso.

Because if we sometimes perceive the role of fate by looking back, men and women can always claim a role for themselves by looking forward. And if you look forward with Vino Rosso, his final start also marked a new beginning.

He had been one of five new stallions announced by Spendthrift Farm the previous month; and one of four whose fees would not be decided until they had run at the Breeders' Cup. For those four to include not just Vino Rosso but also Sprint winner Mitole (Eskendereya), as well as arguably the most talented runner-up on the card in Omaha Beach (War Front), represents talent-spotting too sensational to be lost from view, as it was on the day, behind bleaker storylines.

Now everyone is aware that Spendthrift's somewhat militant challenge to market conventions did not endear them to some other Kentucky farms. But they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and you won't find many commercial breeders complaining about the kind of radical incentive schemes nowadays proliferating–thanks to a genuinely epoch-making poster boy in Into Mischief–among the competition.

Admittedly some people remain uncomfortable with the industrial nature of the Spendthrift model. And it was certainly intriguing, during Breeders' Cup week, to observe the farm's owner B. Wayne Hughes deep in conversation with Coolmore's M.V. Magnier one morning at Clockers' Corner. “I wonder what they're talking about,” said one bystander. “I'll give you 140 guesses,” came the reply.

Nonetheless you can only admire the way Hughes has come into the business, pondered how it all fits together, and devised such pioneering alternatives.

Don't forget that Hughes made his fortune from scratch, his boyhood having been shaped by one of the definitive American journeys: an authentic “Grapes Of Wrath” migration from Oklahoma to California, with a mattress strapped to the roof of the family automobile. And, as so often when someone makes such a giddy ascent of capitalism's ladders, Hughes fixed many a rung in place by shrewd delegation.

So wherever the behind-the-scenes credit should be divided between Hughes, Ned Toffey, and the rest of the team, it would be remiss to allow their collective achievement at the Breeders' Cup to be lost, as has largely proved the case, behind bleaker storylines.

They now have their due reward in being able to launch Vino Rosso and Mitole, authors of the carnival's top two Beyers, at $30,000 and $25,000 respectively; while a $40,000 provisional fee for Omaha Beach reflects his undiminished eligibility for the GI Pegasus World Cup.

Conceivably Omaha Beach was an inadvertent victim of extreme caution in the management of the surface, in that the Dirt Mile was one of several races in which it proved difficult to reel in the leader. Be that as it may, the two Spendthrift recruits who did manage to win on the day both permit the farm's clients access to genes assembled by breeders celebrated for punching far above weight.

Vino Rosso was famously raised on the same farm as Justify, in fact foaled the very next day. As a measure of their acuity, John D. Gunther and his daughter Tanya had chosen partners for their dams when Curlin and Scat Daddy were still available at $25,000 and $30,000 respectively. Moreover Vino Rosso's dam Mythical Bride (Street Cry {Ire}) had only won a Sunland Park maiden when acquired for $42,000 at Keeneland November in 2011. At the time she had a weanling half-brother by A.P. Indy, and a juvenile one by Distorted Humor: as Commissioner and Laugh Track, both proceeded to upgrade the page when beaten narrowly in the GI Belmont and GI Breeders' Cup Sprint, respectively.

As with Justify, who got his bedrock from Nijinsky, in Vino Rosso the Gunthers balanced inbreeding to Mr Prospector's class and glitz with a parallel duplication of class and toughness: this time through the mighty Deputy Minister, who recurs as sire and grandsire respectively of Vino Rosso's two grand-dams.

Mitole, for his part, represents the program of one of the most accomplished small breeders of his generation in the late Edward A. Cox Jr.

He is the first since Gulch in 1988 to add the Breeders' Cup Sprint to the stallion-making Met Mile–a race also won by another son of Eskendereya in Mor Spirit, already on the Spendthrift roster. Having produced two Met Mile winners from his first three crops, it seems fair to wonder whether Eskendereya was exported prematurely to Japan. He has wonderful balance to his own pedigree, after all, and won the GII Fountain of Youth and GI Wood Memorial by an aggregate 18 1/4 lengths only to be retired days before the Kentucky Derby.

Mitole himself is rated the fastest horse ever raised at Hermitage Farm by its sage and long-serving manager Bill Landes, which is all the testimony any of us should need. It was Landes who, doing his utmost to maximize the dispersal of a cherished patron in Cox, sent Mitole's dam Indian Miss (Indian Charlie) to Spendthrift for a late cover by Into Mischief himself last year. The pregnant mare was extremely well bought by WinStar, then, for $240,000 at Keeneland this time last year, Mitole having temporarily disappeared after his first couple of stakes wins the previous spring. (Indian Miss delivered her Into Mischief filly on May 26.)

Cox himself passed in March, just a few weeks before Crupi. As with Vino Rosso, then, it is tempting to perceive some kind of celestial intervention as Mitole, having already proved his elite calibre at a mile, cut down a specialist sprinter as fast as Shancelot (Shanghai Bobby) at Santa Anita.

That's for you to decide. This business has enough puzzles to be able to accommodate one more without disturbing the few guarantees we can depend on. Maybe our frivolous sporting endeavours really can be blessed by those we have lost; maybe these stories really do bring together both the quick and the dead. (The very quick, in Mitole's case.)

But whatever unseen hands may deal our cards, let's give due applause for the skill with which Spendthrift picked out and played these consecutive aces.