The weekly TRC industry digest - a round-up of the international racing news from the past week.
Swiss Skydiver booked for November sale
North America: 2020 Preakness Stakes winner Swiss Skydiver will be offered for sale at Fasig-Tipton’s November Sale Night of Stars, according to owner Peter Callahan, who said, “It’s the right time to let her move into her next chapter.”
The 4-year-old daughter of Daredevil will be getting time off ahead of the November 9 sale, world #45 trainer Kenny McPeek said in a release.
“She deserved a little rest from racing,” McPeek said. “She's a classy filly, a sincere pleasure. She has the heart of a true champion and gave her all. She's an exceptional horse — one of those rare horses you don't see very often.”
Swiss Skydiver, the 2020 Eclipse Award Champion Three-Year-Old Filly, won four other Graded stakes in 2020, including the G1 Alabama Stakes at Saratoga. This year she added a victory in the G1 Beholder Mile at Santa Anita.
She currently resides at McPeek's Magdalena Farm near Lexington, where she will remain prior to heading to Fasig-Tipton, when she will be consigned by Runnymede Farm.
McPeek said Swiss Skydiver will be sold as a racing and/or broodmare prospect, and the American handler left open the possibility that she could continue to race for him if she does not meet her reserve.
$1.7m sale topper at Keeneland
North America: Enthusiastic bidding has continued throughout the Keeneland September Yearling Sale this week. It continued on Wednesday during the third day, when yearlings by young sires lit up auction house, with colts from the first crops of multiple G1 winner City Of Light and 2018 Triple Crown winner Justify fetching $1.7 million and $1.55 million, respectively. Young sires were represented by eight of the 10 highest prices of the session.
More on TRC’s dedicated Keeneland September sale section here.
Zenyatta’s son on horse show duty
North America: A Thoroughbred with an illustrious back story at the Kentucky National Horse Show in Lexington next week – the first foal of the great mare Zenyatta.
Cozmic One has joined the TAKE2 Thoroughbred League and will compete in the TAKE2 Thoroughbred Jumper Division at the show on September 22-26. The 9-year-old could earn a wild card berth in the September 26 $20,000 TAKE2 Hunter and Jumper finals if he finishes in the top 5 in the division.
Zenyatta, America’s Horse of the Year in 2010 and winner of 19 of her 20 career starts, foaled Cozmic One, a son of the late Bernardini, on March 8, 2012, at Lane’s End Farm in Lexington. Before he was named, the regally bred young colt was the subject of media coverage and even had a Breyer horse model created for him (it now sells for $125 on Amazon).
While he did not live up to his bloodlines on the racetrack, Cozmic One became a fan favorite. He still has a following today, according to Sergio de Sousa, who now owns Cozmic One in partnership with Zenyatta’s owner/breeders, Jerry Moss and Ann Holbrook, and his daughter, Isabela.
Cozmic One retired from racing in 2017 after five unsuccessful starts and joined the de Sousa family to start a second career as a show jumper.
Top jockey banned for punching rival in face
Europe: Italian jockey Fabio Branca admitted to Capannelle stewards’ that he had hit weighing room colleague Claudio Colombi with “a punch in the face”, which left Colombi facing a CT scan and treatment for facial injuries. He was discharged the following day.
World #160 Branca, who initially denied the assault, has been suspended for 40 days and received the maximum fine of €3,184.
It is understood that other members of the weighing room did not see the attack unfold. It was said that Colombi was lying prostrate on the ground with a “copious loss of blood, without [the other jockeys] knowing the reasons” and in the “immediate vicinity the presence of Branca”.
More here on horseracingplanet.com
Barber and Blum the big winners at TOBA awards
North America: Gary Barber and Peter Blum were the major winners at this year’s Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association (TOBA) awards, taking the national owner and breeder of the year crowns respectively.
Like many events last year, the TOBA awards dinner took place virtually, but it returned as an in-person event on September 11 at Hill ‘n’ Dale at Xalapa Farm. It included a performance by seven-time Grammy Award-winning singer Gladys Knight.
Barber - a repeat winner after receiving the same honour in 2019 - said the award was a “great honor”. The South African-born film producer pointed out that it had been his operation’s “most successful year in racing last year”.
Blum, who bred Horse of the Year Authentic, winner of a delayed edition of the 2020 Kentucky Derby, said: “I've been doing this a long time and what an honor it is to be chosen by the other owners and breeders at TOBA as the National Breeder of the Year. It’s the honor of a lifetime.”
Maryland-based breeder Angie Moore, whose Knicks Go won the G1 Big Ass Fans Dirt Mile in record-breaking time, was named National Small Breeder of the Year.
Euros top the Melbourne Cup weights
Oceania: Racing Victoria (RV) and the Victoria Racing Club (VRC) have released the weights for the 2021 Lexus Melbourne Cup with four of the top six horses in the weights coming from Europe, despite a reduced international participation.
Joseph O’Brien’s defending champion, Twilight Payment, and Johnny Murtagh’s Irish St Leger winner, Sonnyboyliston, were announced as joint topweights for the great race, on 58kg. Paul Bloodworth, RV’s international recruiter, confirmed that connections of Sonnyboyliston had indicated that the horse would not travel to Melbourne.
RV’s executive general manager of racing, Greg Carpenter, conceded that “as always there is plenty of debate over the weights scale”, but he stood by the decision to give Twylight Payment top weight after his all-the-way win in last year’s Melbourne Cup. He added that Sonnyboyliston, who lowered Twilight Payment’s colours in the Irish St Leger and also won York’s famous Ebor Handicap, was a “rapidly progressing stayer”.
Leigh Jordon, VRC’s executive general manager of racing, said, “If you take Stradivarius out of the equation, we’ve probably got the best stayers in Europe.”
Former senior steward Spence dies at 84
Europe: Christopher Spence, the former senior steward of the Jockey Club and a founder director of the British Horseracing Board (BHB), has died aged 84 after a short illness.
A merchant banker and member of the Stock Exchange, he was elected in 1986 to the Jockey Club, where he served as senior steward from 1998 to 2003. He was the chairman of Racecourse Holdings Trust, which has since been rebranded Jockey Club Racecourses, from 1995 to 1998, as well as being the chairman of Newbury from 2010 to 2015.
Spence was also chairman of the National Stud from 2008, when it was taken over by the Jockey Club from the Levy Board, to 2011.
In 1993 he was one of the founding directors of the BHB – the body that, under the guidance of senior steward Lord Hartington, took over British racing's governance in one of the most significant milestones in the sport's history in the UK.
He was the inaugural chairman of the BHB’s finance committee, effectively acting as racing’s chancellor of the exchequer for a year.
As an owner, his emerald-green and black colours were carried to victory by Celeric in the 1997 Gold Cup at Royal Ascot. The horse was trained by Spence’s brother-in-law, David Morle,y and ridden by Pat Eddery.
New president at KatieRich Farms
North America: George Barnes has been named as the new president of KatieRich Farms, the boutique breeding, training and boarding farm in Midway, Kentucky. He had served as vice president since 2018.
He replaces Mark Hubley, who has stepped down as president but will continue as a consultant to the farm that he has been with since its inception.
Barnes has been involved in the Thoroughbred industry since graduating from the University of Kentucky with a degree in Animal Science in 2014. He previously worked at Blackburn Farm and the Larry Jones Racing Stable.
“On behalf of everyone at KatieRich Farms, we want to thank Mark for his many contributions to the farm since its inception,” Larry and Karen Doyle, owners of KatieRich Farms, said in a statement. “He has been with us every step of the way – from a trainer to farm visionary to president – and we wouldn’t be where we are today without his vision, experience, knowledge and business acumen. Moving forward, we are so grateful we can still tap into his expertise in a consulting capacity.”
Elsewhere in racing …
North America: Ashford Stud’s Dermot Ryan was named the 2021 Ted Bates Farm Manager of the Year by the Kentucky Thoroughbred Farm Managers’ Club. More here
Europe: Leading jump racing owner Andy Stewart has died at the age of 70 in hospital in Guernsey on Friday following complications from a fall at his Barbados holiday home this year. More here
Europe: An effort to enhance the quality of Sunday meetings in Britain is among the key features of the new 2022 fixture list. More here
North America: Jockey Declan Cannon is to miss “a few months with vertebrae fractures”. More here