The Price of Greed
Yearling prices and syndication deals have changed the game and made winning the Triple Crown harder, not easier, Lowell Sun racing correspondent Paul Daley writes in this week’s Sun column, reprinted with permission here.
The past few days we’ve witnessed two notable defections from the Kentucky Derby Trail. First, two-year-old Eclipse Award winner Stevie Wonderboy suffered a hairline condylar fracture to his right front ankle on Monday morning, necessitating at least a 90-day absence from the racing wars. Then, on Tuesday, trainer Patrick Byrne declared Arlington Washington Futurity winner, Sorcerer’s Stone, out of the Triple Crown due to small ankle chips.
Thus, the Derby jinx lives for at least another year. Spectacular Bid, in 1978, remains the last two-year-old champion to win the Kentucky Derby the following year. Why, 14 of the last 27 champion two-year-olds never even made it into the Derby starting gate.
Additionally, $60,150 in Churchill Downs Pool 1 of the Kentucky Derby Futures Bet is now down the drain faster than you can say flush. Sorcerer’s Stone finished Pool 1 at 30-1 odds, accounting for only $9,982 in wagers. However, Stevie Wonderboy was the second wagering choice in Pool 1, garnering $50,168 of the action while the mutuel field led the way at 3-1 with $115,000 wagered. At least with the field, if you lose a horse you still have over 400 others as a backup. Not so with the Eclipse Award winner, who will now be pointed for a late summer campaign leading to the Breeders’ Cup Classic, according to owner Merv Griffin. How appropriately ironic that two of the game shows he devised are Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.
Still, we shouldn’t be surprised. Horses, just like most of my dates when I was younger, don’t stay around too long, for various reasons.
Here is part of what I wrote in April of 2003 for an article in The Blood-Horse magazine:
Let’s look at a few statistics. First, everyone wants to win the Triple Crown, but it’s getting harder rather than easier. The 2003 foal crop, who are three-years-old in 2006, numbers 37,200. While we know that each horse does not have an equal chance at becoming a Classic winner, Affirmed’s class numbered 28,271, Secretariat’s was 24,361, and Citation was part of a foal crop of 5,819.
Additionally, 426 horses were nominated to this year’s Triple Crown, the fourth highest in the 22 years of Triple Crown nominations. Before that, horses were nominated for the individual races. Trainer Todd Pletcher has 38 nominations alone.
It seems more and more, because of yearling prices and syndication deals, that the goal is to win one or more Classic races, then possibly a Breeders’ Cup race, then ride off into the sunset for a career in the breeding shed.
There were 4,313 races for two-year-olds in 2004 in the United States and Canada, worth $129,568,288 in purses. That same year, there were 34,938 races carded at a mile or less in distance, with only 27,318 raced over a mile. There were only 420 races in the U.S. and Canada in 2004 run beyond 10 furlongs. Speed is the name of the game and horses are bred accordingly. Is it any wonder why there are so many breakdowns in races over a mile?
Isn’t it ironic that Boston’s Peter Fuller, whose Dancer’s Image won the 1968 Kentucky Derby while allegedly on butazolidin, was accused of having a sore, unsound horse? The big gray only started 15 times as a two-year-old, with eight wins, then ran seven prep races before his Derby win. Does that sound like a sore horse? Yet, that was the norm. Northern Dancer had 14 races before the 1964 Kentucky Derby, nine as a two-year-old. The line of demarcation seems to be about 1981, the year the late Pleasant Colony won the Derby and Preakness.
So, watch what you wish for. When the industry can sell 9,412 yearlings, as it did in 2004, for gross sales of $497 million, at an average price of $52,821, expect to see more Smarty Jones and a lot fewer Spectacular Bids. That’s the price of greed.
Copyright © 2006 by Paul Daley. Reprinted with permission of the author.
