Palace Malice

With the OBS March Sale slated to kick off the 2-year-old auction season Mar. 17 & 18, TDN's Senior Editor Steve Sherack caught up with prominent bloodstock agent Mike Ryan for a Q&A session. Structor (Palace Malice)--an $850,000 OBS March (:21 1/5) purchase by Ryan from the Pick View LLC, Agent II, consignment at this sale last year--capped a perfect three-for-three season for owners Jeff Drown and Don Rachel and trainer Chad Brown with a dramatic win in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf at Santa Anita. Fellow OBS March...

Mr. Monomoy (Palace Malice), whose win in the GII Risen Star S. signaled that he was a major threat for the GI Kentucky Derby, has suffered a mild injury and won't return to the races until this summer. "He came out of a gallop two days ago with some heat in his ankle," trainer Brad Cox said. "We took some x-rays and found that there was some roughening in the P1 (first phalanx) area. He'll need 60 days off and is on his way to WinStar to recuperate. He is...

A year after War Of Will (War Front) won the GII Risen Star S., another Arqana Breeze-up Sale graduate, Mr Monomoy (Palace Malice), landed the same race (which was divided this year) and is also on course for the American Classics. The Brad H Cox-trained colt currently heads the leaderboard on the road to the Kentucky Derby with 52 points and he is not the only graduate of the 2019 sale in Deauville to have an eye on the Run for the Roses. Ete Indien (Summer Front) was runner-up to...

Sent off a generous 7-1, Mr. Monomoy (Palace Malice) secured an easy lead, set incredibly steady fractions up front and pulled away late to easily defeat GIII Lecomte S. hero Enforceable (Tapit) in the first of two divisions of the GII Risen Star S. Saturday afternoon at the Fair Grounds. Silver State (Hard Spun), who completed the exacta behind Enforceable last time, rounded out the trifecta. Drawn gate nine and looking to improve on his useful third-place effort in the Lecomte, Mr. Monomoy hit the ground running and dropped down...

After surveying the four intakes since, each still safely immune from judgement on the track itself, today we finally reach the first group of stallions who have actually tested their ability to replicate the talent that first earned them--however marginally, in some cases--a place at stud. Their first juveniles, last year, at least permitted some initial response to any erosion of their reputations, through the notoriously jittery and impressionable consensus of the yearling market. Yet there are few more instructive indices of the odds against them than the contrast between...