Modern Games

6th-WO, $115K, Msw, 2yo, 1 1/16mT, 3:34 p.m. ET. Mike Repole's European purchasing run last year included TOLD (Ire) (Lope de Vega {Ire}). The owner took home the colt for €200,000 out of Book 1 of the Goffs Orby Yearling sale. Sent to Kevin Attard, Told is out of Cartesienne (Ire) (Pivotal {GB}). The dam's own half-siblings include the Eclipse Award-winning Modern Games (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}), 'TDN Rising Star, presented by Hagyard', Mawj (Ire) (Exceed And Excel {Ire}) and English stakes winner Modern News (GB) (Shamardal). TJCIS PPS

After watching 'TDN Rising Star' Wild Desert (Ire) (Too Darn Hot {GB}) and Dance to the Music (GB) (Dubawi {Ire}) defeated as the favorites in the GI Summer Stakes and GI Natalma Stakes earlier on the Turf Champions Day program, respectively, Team Godolphin got a measure of revenge when long odds-on 'TDN Rising Star' Notable Speech (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}) came storming down the center of the inner turf course and stamped his authority on Saturday's GI Rogers Woodbine Mile. The victory secures the homebred a berth in the field for...

For this second instalment of our value sires series we are looking at stallions standing in the €20,000 to €49,999 fee range.  Another year has gone by in which Nathaniel (Ire) has provided us with one of the stars of the season. This time it was the Irish Oaks winner You Got To Me (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire}), who later played a starring role of a different kind when topping the Tattersalls December Mares Sale at 4.8 million gns. She'll be in the Amo Racing silks next year and surely already...

NEWMARKET, UK -- There are no hotel rooms left in Newmarket. Visitors to Tattersalls are not only spread far and wide across Suffolk and Cambridgeshire but have come from far and wide too. The largest ever contingent from Japan is expected at Park Paddocks this week, and with most of the stallion farms in the region displaying signs saying 'open house' it's the perfect time for international breeders also to consider using a local stallion to cover a new purchase before export. The locals are pretty good after all. Frankel...

Under normal circumstances, drawing the outside gate in a one-mile race, on turf, going two turns is a kiss of death. At Santa Anita, well, maybe not so much. Sent off as the 33-10 second betting favorite behind Japan's superstar miler Songline (Jpn) (Kizuna {Jpn}), Godolphin's Master of the Seas (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}) produced a stunning late burst of speed to run down the commonly owned Mawj (Ire) (Exceed and Excel {Aus}), whose half-brother Modern Games (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}) was victorious in last year's Mile at Keeneland and in that...

As has become customary, Dubawi (Ire) heads the list at Darley's Dalham Hall Stud, where his fee will remain unchanged in 2024 at £350,000, making him the most expensive stallion in Europe. The champion sire covered 137 mares this spring, in a year in which he was represented by nine Group/Grade 1 wins on the track. One of those came in the Lockinge S., won by his son Modern Games (Ire), who joins him at stud in Newmarket at a fee of £30,000 after notching a total of five top-level...

Newbury's G1 Al Shaqab Lockinge S. has been a happy hunting ground for some top fillies in recent times and Saturday's renewal features another as TDN Rising Star Laurel (GB) (Kingman {GB}) takes aim at the colts. Dazzling with her sectionals in a Kempton novice in September, the daughter of Promising Lead (GB) (Danehill) was sent into battle for the G1 Sun Chariot S. by the normally more-reserved Gosdens just days later and justified that risk by beating all bar Fonteyn (GB) (Farhh {GB}) in the Newmarket contest. With a...

The public bet reigning Eclipse Award-winning turf male Modern Games (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}) like he couldn't lose Friday's GI Maker's Mark Mile at Keeneland, but Lael Stables Chez Pierre (Fr) (Mehmas {Ire}) had other designs, as he kicked hard into the stretch and ran out a very easy winner in stakes-record time. Alertly into stride from gate three, the 5-year-old dueled inside and heads apart with Peter Brant's Dr Zempf (GB) (Dark Angel {Ire}) around the first turn and tugged his way to the front beneath Flavien Prat to lead...

Last year's Eclipse champion turf male returns to the place of his Breeders' Cup glory Friday with an expected start in the GI Maker's Mark Mile S. Modern Games (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}), trained by Charlie Appleby, makes his 4-year-old debut since taking the GI FanDuel Breeders' Cup Mile at Keeneland last November. Off the board in only two of his 13 prior starts, the chestnut just missed in the G1 Queen Elizabeth II S. at Ascot leading into the Breeders' Cup, took the GI Woodbine Mile by 5 1/4 lengths...

Having just last week been crowned the Longines World's Best Racehorse in London, 'TDN Rising Star' Flightline (Tapit) was named America's no-doubt-about-it Horse of the Year and champion dirt male at the Eclipse Awards, held Thursday evening at The Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida. Bred in Kentucky by Jane Lyon's Summer Wind Equine, Flightline was a $1-million purchase out of the 2019 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Sale, didn't start as a juvenile and didn't get to a starting gate until April of his 3-year-old season. The negatives end right about there. In...

With the recent retirement of two-time winner Colonel Liam (Liam's Map), MG1SW Ivar (Brz) (Agnes Gold {Jpn}) was named the narrow 5-2 morning-line favorite for the GI Pegasus World Cup Turf. A winner of three of 12 starts in the U.S.--topped by the 2020 GI Shadwell Turf Mile at Keeneland--he has run in the GI Breeders' Cup Mile each of the last three years, running third in 2021 and fourth in 2020 and 2022. "I think his [last] race was very good," said trainer Paulo Lobo. "He lost to a...

Sergio Leone's 1966 masterpiece, "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," was the last and best of a trilogy of Leone spaghetti westerns that upended the traditional genre. Before Leone and other Italian directors like Sergio Corbucci set about redefining the Old West in Europe, traditional domestic westerns featured clean-cut leads like John Wayne, Alan Ladd, Gregory Peck, Gary Cooper, and Jimmy Stewart in films by directors like John Ford and Howard Hawks that clearly delineated the good from the bad and ugly. Not so Leone, who made the genre...