Gold Is Where You Find It

Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Girl reciprocates. Boy and girl have sex. Boy is enthralled. Best sex of his entire life. Boy even starts to think about the “M” word.

Girl changes mind. Boy is despondent. Boy does NOT understand. Boy still loves girl. Boy would give girl another chance if she changes her mind again. In a heartbeat.

That in a nutshell is pretty much how I feel about yesterday’s Preakness Stakes. I tell myself over and over again that they are only nags. Do NOT fall in love with them. But then I do it anyway. And I end up disappointed and disillusioned, to say the least.

So yes, I am very disappointed that Orb ran so poorly yesterday. At this point all I can do is hope that he came out of the race okay and will live to fight another day. And yes, I will give him another chance if he does so (like girl in the parable above).

Nags are not machines, as the cliche goes. They have good days and bad days. It seems to me that Mylute ran pretty much the same race in both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. Oxbow and Itsmyluckyday ran much better in the Preakness than in the Derby. Orb obviously ran much more poorly in the latter than the former.

Another cliche is that pace makes the race. I would like to know the last time that the first half-mile in a Preakness was run as slowly as :48 3/5, especially on a fast track. I would guess that it was a LONG time ago. I suppose I could go and research it, but frankly I am in too shittye a mood right now to do so.

On to the pedigree of winner Oxbow (Awesome Again out of Tizamazing, by Cee’s Tizzy). The first thing that strikes me about this pedigree is that it is very similar to that of Paynter (Awesome Again out of Tizso, by Cee’s Tizzy). Paynter finished second in the Belmont Stakes last year and then won the Haskell Invitational Stakes.

The similarity in pedigrees goes deeper than having the same sire and broodmare sire. Both dams (Tizamazing and Tizso) are full sisters to two-time BC Classic winner Tiznow, although Tizamazing was unraced and Tizso was unplaced in two starts.

Both Oxbow and Paynter are 4x5x5 to Northern Dancer. I’ll Have Another was 5x5x5 to Northern Dancer. See my previous post on multiple inbreeding to Northern Dancer.

I’ll Have Another was inbred to Northern Dancer through Danzig (twice) and Sadler’s Wells. Oxbow and Paynter are inbred to Northern Dancer through Vice Regent, Lyphard, and Nice Dancer.

Nice Dancer was a Canadian classic winner (Breeders’ Stakes) but no great shakes as a sire (18 stakes winners from 441 foals, just over 4%). I would venture to guess that his ONLY real contribution to the breed is as the sire of Lonely Dancer, the dam of Cee’s Song, the dam of Tiznow (and three other stakes winners), Tizso, and Tizamazing.

Cee’s Song was not a bad racemare. She posted a record of 18-1-8-3 for earnings of $82,225. OK, she had a bad case of seconditis, but she also had an SSI of 4.38, which is stakes caliber. On the other hand, neither Tizso nor Tizamazing were winners (as mentioned above).

“In actual experience, good broodmares frequently develop from mares which were not raced at all or raced without distinction. And of course some of the best racemares fail as producers, for one reason or another. In Thoroughbred breeding, as I have remarked elsewhere, gold is where you find it, but the best place to look is right on the surface–in the individual itself, in the phenotype.”

“Uncle” Joe Estes, Racehorse Breeding Theories, page 68. Cee’s Song and her daughters are a wonderful example of this. Once a mare passes the breeding test, as Cee’s Song certainly did in producing Tiznow and other stakes winners, her positive value has been established.