In Excess

His father had long since ceased training, but they still always stood at the same point by the Santa Anita paddock. "There was a spot there, where the horses come out from the saddling enclosure and make a right," Evan Ferraro recalls. "From there you could look at them straight on, so you could see their conformation, their joints, and my dad would point stuff out to me." And there was one filly by In Excess (Ire) that just blew the veteran horseman away: a Harris Farms homebred, saddled by...

This business about sire lines has been driving your correspondent a bit nuts for the past 40 years, dating from when he first came to understand the realm, initially through the discourses of the great analyst Dr. Franco Varola and the estimable author Abe Hewitt. In those days we all not only relied on the historical database of a rather limited number of stallions but also on the patience needed to assess the long-term impact of form, function, and pedigree. You had Phalaris and Swynford, then Nearco and Hyperion, then...