Feeling Macho

Quite a day on Saturday for the second year sire Macho Uno, with his three-year old sons Macho Again and Harlem Rocker winning the Derby Trial and the Grade 3 Withers respectively. The 2000 Breeders Cup Juvenile winner stands at Adena for $20,000.

Harlem Rocker is now unbeaten in three starts for the seemingly unlikely duo of Frank Stronach and Todd Pletcher. Macho Again continued the winning ways of trainer Dallas Stewart, who had an excellent Keeneland meeting with five winners from just 13starters. He went off half of his 12-1 morning line after running up the track in the Lane's End. I guess he didn't like the Poly; Pyro fans take heart.

These were the first stakes winners of the year for Macho Uno; he ranked 5th on the rookie sire list last year, due in large part to Wicked Style, and what ever happened to him?

Here's a look at that 2000 Juvenile, and notice how many of these horses are currently at stud. I count seven, so that was quite a potent race (sorry). That year, NBC utilized their moving camera to follow the horses down the stretch. And though it was an interesting view and a worthy experiment, the finish of this race pretty much shows why it doesn't really work.



You don't really get a full sense of how close the finish was from that angle I don't think. Anyway, the current stallions that ran in that race are Macho Uno, Point Given, Yonaguska, A P Valentine (Texas), Street Cry, City Zip, and Scorpion. [And thanks much to this anonymous commenter, who points out that in addition to these guys, Noverre stands in Ireland, Burning Roma in Florida, and Flame Thrower in California!]

Majestic Warrior ran 4th in the Derby Trial; it's been a stunning fall from grace since last August's Hopeful for this grandly bred Kinsman homebred, and I'm sure that Coolmore is glad they bought into him after he won the Hopeful; shrewd move there. This was his best finish since then, and by a long ways! At one point last fall, Bill Mott seemed to hold a strong Derby hand with Majestic Warrior, Court Vision, and Z Humor; but none of those have come even close to building on their juvenile form. In fact, with the exception of Anak Nakal, Court Vision is the slowest horse in the entire Derby field. I'm certainly not going to bet on him based on a single workout.

The Rangers are in Pittsburgh at 2 PM today, so that's a wrap on the Aqueduct season for me. The Blueshirts need to show the kind of resiliency that the Flyers did last night, and bounce back from their awful loss in Game 1. They made too many mistakes to overcome the fortuitous bounces the Pens got on three of their goals, and the disgraceful penalty called on Martin Straka with three minutes to go. But the team has bounced back all year after disturbing losses, and I'm looking for a big effort today. Let's Go Blue!