Breeders Digest

The turn of the year always prompts us to look both forward and back, along with Janus, the god of two faces for whom January is named. And that provides a perfect context for Goal Oriented (Not This Time), graduate of a farm with an unrivalled past-and one that has dynamically reimagined its future. On the one hand, the GI Malibu Stakes winner stands for continuity and heritage. Co-bred and raised by the oldest continuously operative Thoroughbred farm in the Bluegrass, he extends one of its most patiently cultivated families....

His contentious prohibition from Churchill penalizes many others besides Bob Baffert and his loyal patrons. A shot at the GI Kentucky Derby, once-in-a-lifetime for most, is also being denied to everyone else with a stake in his horses' development, from those on duty at the foaling shed to the pre-trainer to the feed company. And, of course, there's nothing like a Derby winner to market a stallion. As things have turned out, a setback means that Nyquist would have lost the services of Nysos even had he moved to another...