Will Take Charge

What a tough game this is. You only get to show the first card in your hand before virtually the whole pile of chips is distributed. One or two players gather up their winnings, whooping triumphantly, and suddenly your own hopes of staying in the game--your hopes of a viable stud career in Kentucky--depend exorbitantly on the next card. Generally speaking, it doesn't matter if you turn out to have had a whole sheaf of aces farther into your hand. By the time you can turn those over, there will...

In this continuing series, we take a look ahead at US-bred and/or conceived runners entered for the upcoming weekend at the tracks on the Japan Racing Association circuit, with a focus on pedigree and/or performance in the sales ring. Here are the horses of interest for this weekend running at Nakayama and Hanshin Racecourses, the latter of which plays host to the G1 Asahi Hai Futurity S.: Saturday, December 19, 2020 7th-HSN, ¥13,830,000 ($134k), Allowance, 2yo, 1800m FRANCE GO DE INA (c, 2, Will Take Charge--Dreamy Blues, by Curlin) was...

The bloodstock industry in Kentucky is heavily weighted to the commercial marketplace, and when the first yearlings of a stallion sell well, sometimes even experienced commercial breeders can get momentarily caught up in the euphoria. A breeder called me after the Fasig-Tipton October Sale to say that he was going to breed to such a stallion next year. That's great, I told him, if he had a strong opinion on the horse, but I reminded him that he breeds to sell and he'd be breeding to a fourth-year sire, meaning...

The under-tack show for next week's Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's July 2-Year-Olds and Horses of Racing Age Sale continued with a second session Tuesday and a filly by Will Take Charge tied the week's fastest quarter-mile work so far. Consigned by Top Line Sales, the chestnut filly (hip 245) covered the distance in :20 4/5. The time tied the mark set by a daughter of Shackleford during Monday's first session of the under-tack show. "She is a nice filly. She prepped over here and her prep was very impressive," Top...

Sponsored by Alex Nichols Agency HALF TO LA VERDAD DEBUTS AT ELLIS 4th-ELP, $37K, Msw, 2yo, 5f, 3:14p.m. FUEGO CALIENTE (Will Take Charge), a half-brother to the late champion La Verdad (Yes It's True), makes his career bow in this spot for Hall of Famer Steve Asmussen. His fleet-footed half-sister won 11 black-type races and an Eclipse Award over her lengthy career for Linda Rice, earning over $1.5-million. The bay succumbed to colic in May after producing her fourth foal, a colt by Into Mischief. Out of SP Noble Fire...

A Daredevil colt (Hip 640) breezed the fastest quarter at the third and final day of the OBS March Breeze show Saturday, covering the distance in :20 3/5. Two others tied for the fastest furlong at :9 4/5. Hip 640 is consigned by Ciaran Dunne's Wavertree Stables, which also sent out Friday's fastest quarter-mile worker in Hip 237, a daughter of American Pharoah, who went in :20 2/5. Dunne purchased the Daredevil colt for $30,000 at the Fasig-Tipton October Yearling Sale. The fastest furlong workers were Hip 477 (video) and...

So now we come to a group who will typically, at this stage of their careers, find themselves clinging by their fingertips to the commercial precipice--even as the agents and pinhookers press down ruthlessly with their boots. Yes, any breeder using these stallions this spring will at least have some valid evidence with which to evaluate what tends, in many cases, to be a dwindling fee: a first group of sophomores in 2019, backed up by the most precocious juveniles of their second crop. These, nonetheless, should by any sensible...

Sponsored by Alex Nichols Agency 2nd-GP, $50K, Msw, 3yo, 6f, 12:34 p.m. ET Ajhar (Tapit) brought $800,000 from Shadwell Stable at the 2018 Keeneland September sale--he was in fact one of three Tapit yearlings purchased by Shadwell for that amount at that auction and part of a $12,345,000 expenditure at that sale for Sheikh Hamdan's operation. The grey colt is out of 'TDN Rising Star', MGSW and GISP Jojo Warrior (Pioneerof the Nile), who herself is a half to Grade I-winning fellow 'Rising Star' A Z Warrior (Bernardini); GSW/GISP 'Rising...