The Heat Is On

- Racing was cancelled at Delaware due to the extreme heat on Tuesday, so Christening will stay in her stall and will be able to catch her favorite soaps live.

- Jazil will miss the Travers and will get a two week vacation back on the farm. He has a bruised cannon bone, but Kiaran McLaughlin told Haskin on Bloodhorse.com: “This is very minor.”

“He's a happy guy right now. We just wanted to give him the 30 days and do the scintigraphy there and X-ray him digitally to make sure everything is OK. If he can't make the Gold Cup, the next goal would be the Breeders' Cup."

The way things are going in the sport, it won’t be long until horses train up to the Breeders Cup from the Triple Crown anyway. McLaughlin also told the Albany Times Union that Henny Hughes won’t run again until the King’s Bishop on Aug 26. "These horses are not machines. You can't ask them to do it every three or four weeks. The way he ran (at Monmouth), I was like, 'Wow! This horse is the real deal!' "

So now three or four weeks isn’t even enough time. We recently read that Commentator won’t run again until the closing week of Saratoga, and Pletcher often speaks nowadays as if three weeks is an unthinkably short time between races. Not a good trend, and you can see where this is going as far as maintaining the tradition of the Triple Crown races.

Speaking of which, we saw two more 2006 Derby horses run big this past weekend. Deputy Glitters took the Ohio Derby, while Seaside Retreat, running in his second turf race since then, ran an excellent second to Go Between in the Virginia Derby. His jockey Patrick Husbands said that Seaside Retreat likes to hang with the crowd. "It's pretty normal for him to run in traffic.”

"He's a bad boy. Sometimes, we'll spend 40 minutes with him on the track and he won't move for anybody, not even the trainer. He does what he wants to do." [Dailypress.com]

If the Head Chef actually read my blog, she’d think he was talking about her teenage son. Which he could have been, except that the teenage son hasn’t come home with any checks for $200,000 of late.

Looking at some other Derby runners who have returned running, Point Determined and AP Warrior had their little tete a tete in the Affirmed before flopping in the Swaps; Showing Up won the Colonial Turf Cup on the grass (and three weeks was also too short a time for him to run back in the Va Derby); Sweetnorthernsaint was second in the Preakness; Jazil won the Belmont, and Bluegrass Cat was likely the best horse in that race. I suppose this all means that Barbaro was pretty good!

I also suppose that those in favor of changing the Triple Crown schedule will point to the fact that all of these horses other than Sweetnorthernsaint skipped the Preakness, while those who did try both races – Sweetnorthernsaint, Brother Derek, and Barbaro – were forced to the sidelines by injury or, in the case of Michael Trombetta’s Preakness runner-up, fatigue. "The rigors of the Derby and Preakness, you have no idea how hard that is on a horse….He's in light training now, but I'm taking my time.” [Baltimore Sun (July 6)]

- The Forestry colt that topped the first session of the July Fasig-Tipton yearling sale at $1.2 million on Monday was the first million dollar sale recorded there since 1983. The session-topper is out of Alizea’s Dream, an Unbridled’s Song half-sister to Songandaprayer, the sire who got his third stakes winner of the year on Saturday with Praying for Cash. The Bobby Hurley-owned colt upset 1-2 favorite Latent Heat for red-hot trainer Kelly Breen in the Long Branch at Monmouth (though John blames the favorite's rider Joel Cruz). No such heavenly appeals for currency are needed by the familiar names involved in the bidding for the Forestry colt, with the Maktoum family of Dubai outbidding B. Wayne Hughes. Just Monopoly money for these guys, really. In fact, the Maktoum’s agent John Ferguson conceded that the price was high. "I can assure you he was a very, very attractive colt but that was a strong price for him." [Thoroughbred Times] But what does he care; he's just the agent. It ain’t his money!

You had to go down to $375,000 to find the next highest price, a colt from the first crop of Harlan’s Holiday, out of a Bold Ruckus half-sister to the multiple graded winner Hey Hazel. Harlan’s Holiday stands for $17,500 at Airdrie in Kentucky, and he had quite a day. He had 17 offspring in the session, 14 of whom sold, five of those for six figures, and all well above his stud fee. A colt out of Santa’s Lady, a Silver Ghost half to Humana Distaff winner Ruby Surprise, sold for $200,000; a filly out of Tap For Gold, a daughter of the Schuylerville winner Golden Reef sold for $175,000; and a half-sister to the grassy stakes winner GP Fleet went for $170,000.

Another first-crop sire, Hook and Ladder (Dixieland Band), accounted for the highest priced filly, at $310,000. Hook and Ladder is a NY-based sire standing at Becky Thomas’ Lakland Farm. The filly is a half-sister to the Fantasy winner Ready to Please, and to Chief Officer (Officer), a NY-bred juvenile who graduated impressively at Belmont recently.

Officer currently heads the first-year sires earnings list, so it’s no surprise that his progeny sold well too. He had six sell for an average of $117,500, including a colt and a filly for $200K and $190K respectively. He stands for $15,000 at Gainesway.