A slew of disappointments; a few glimmers of hope

I worked all 87 yearlings today for the first time. Most, as expected, were mediocre. A few worked terribly and a few worked promisingly. What never does cease to amaze me is how wrong I've been when I pegged them as foals. Some I think could set the track afire turn out to be not much faster than a fat man, and some I have very modest expectations for work very quickly. (The former, in case you were wondering, occurs far more frequently.)

Despite my best efforts to branch out from turf sprinters my best workers and runners seem to always fall into that subtype. Don't get me wrong; I will take a good horse of any kind, but it would be nice for a change of pace to have a nice productive dirt or turf router. Perhaps with the retirement of Phoenix Rise --whose oldest crop, now two-year-olds, includes some quick workers who are still waiting for the racing secretaries to card those juvenile mile races-- I can develop some good dirt horses. But I digress.

Top workers from this morning are:
Balalaika (F) (Chernobyl -- Dance Biscuit, Blaze The Green); 3F(T) in 0:36.75
Riedell (Automobile -- Frost, Dubawi); 3F(T) in 0:36.75
Eminence Rouge (F) (Throne -- Grey Eminence, Fighter Jet); 5F in 0:58.47*
Pharfignewton (F) (Adjust the Lens -- Birdie Num Num, Snuggle) 3F(T) in 0:36.70
Picatso (Automobile -- Green Whiskers, Sakura Bakushin O); 3F(T) in 0:36.65
Scent of Freesia (F) (Del Mar, Bandiagara, Bernardini); 5F in 0:58.85

*Particularly excited am I about Eminence Rouge. A daughter of Throne --whose stud fee was recently hiked from $100,000 to $150,000-- and out of a graded stakes-winning homebred, she could very well be the best horse I have bred since Phoenix Rise. I'm hesitant to write that off of just one work, but my broodmare band is sorely lacking and as a result I really only get a handful of decent horses with stakes potential. The dam, Grey Eminence, has not been bred yet this year though at the moment I am looking heavily at Indian (Chinese Bandit).

The other worker who caught my eye is Picatso, who is out of the Steward-bred Green Whiskers. The dam, though a $200,000 purchase as an unraced four-year-old, appears to have been money well-spent. She was a grade III winner (grade II-placed versus males) for me and has been quite fecund in the shed thus far with two winners from starters, including a debut winner this season by Stratocaster. By Sakura Bakushin O and out of a Green Dash mare she really has a fantastic outcross going to just about every turf sprinter stallion out there. I'd really like to see what she'd produce when bred to more uncommon sprint lines like superstar Silent Partner (Courageous Witness), Auto Brake (Testa Rossa), Irish Heights (Dalakhani) or Chernobyl (Fastnet Rock). My stallion Berlioz has had a very warm reception at stud largely due to his unusual breeding (as well as his race record), and getting a good colt by any of the above stallions out of a mare like Green Whiskers would be invaluable to my stallion roster.

On the racing end of things, it's been a dry year for the stable thus far. A very dry year. Only a handful of wins; about half of them from maiden specials. A lot of my stakes winners from last year just have seemed to not "trained on." Things could improve with the debut of some two-year-olds a few weeks down the road but already by week four it appears it will be a very long season.