So long, Eskendereya; hope you're bred to soundness

For the second straight season, a runaway winner of the Wood Memorial has approached Kentucky Derby Day as the likely favorite in the race, and been scratched before the Run for the Roses due to injury.

And with word of the retirement of this year's stunner of a scratch, it's possible we'll never see either of them race again. (Although last year's defector, I Want Revenge, just this morning posted a published work at Aqueduct; 3f in :38.25.)

Zayat Stables has announced that Eskendereya, victor in a runaway Wood, is through with racing due to the soft-tissue injury that kept him out of the Derby. Owner Ahmed Zayat says he will retain a significant ownership stake in the horse in a partnership with Jess Jackson, billionaire owner of Stonestreet Stables and Horses of the Year Curlin and Rachel Alexandra.

Zayat said that he and Jackson "will work to develop the best progeny for American racing."

Word of advice, Messrs Zayat and Jackson: A program to breed "the best progeny for American racing" really should endeavor to eliminate the trend of the fleet-but-fleeting, six-race superhorse.

In other words, as stallions, 4-for-6 Eskendereya, "not so much;" 11-for-16 Curlin, closer to a "yes," though his own sire raced but eight times and his dam not at all.

I understand that the current market will greet Eskendereya with open arms, just as it has eight-race wonder Empire Maker (who stands for $50,000 this year), sire of Zayat's own 10-race G1 winner Pioneerof The Nile, who didn't race past the Preakness his 3-year-old year. It shouldn't, but it will.

At the very least, I beg of you -- all of you, not just these men of abundant wealth, but anyone who is mating sire to dam in hopes of a racehorse -- give more than passing thought to soundness.

We've apparently spent the last several generations of thoroughbred breeding so focused on horses who'll breeze a 10-flat eighth at a 2-year-old sale to bring top-dollar -- and hopefully win a few graded stakes on their way to a post in one of those 20 starting gates at Churchill on the first day of each May -- such that now many of the fastest aren't even holding together long enough to reach the targeted race, let alone competing at age 4 and beyond.

Empire Maker raced eight times and Pioneerof The Nile's dam, Star of Goshen, only five; her dam just six. It could be argued that Pioneerof The Nile exceeded expectations by reaching double-digits in starts.

Lava Man went to post 47 times. With Slew City Slew (42 starts) and Li'l Miss Leonard (18 races) as his parents, it makes perfect sense. (And while Lava Man's second dam, Pink Native, was unraced, her sire Be a Native, raced 42 times, and her dam, Pink Khal, answered the call to post on 57 occasions.)

So please present Eskendereya nothing but mares from lineages that demonstrated rock-solid soundness. Mares who ran a couple-dozen times themselves, and who have siblings that totaled starts in the 40s or 50s. Or hundreds.

I just checked the stats. Empire Maker from his first three crops has 66 percent starters from all foals (not a particularly high number, but not atrocious). Yet their average number of starts per runner for Empire Maker's 190 foals to race: 6.5. Even accounting for the fact that a third of his runners just turned 3 and have had little chance, that simply isn't good enough. For example, fellow fourth-crop sire Macho Uno has a band of runners who are the same age as Empire Maker's, yet their number of starts average 9.2, a disparity I suspect will widen rather than narrow as these stallions' records develop over the next decade or more.

A fast horse is a thing of wonder.

Fast and fragile is not in the best interest of the horse, nor of racing's future. And there should be no wondering about that.

Breeding observations from a wise guy

I'm engrossed in study of the catalog for the upcoming Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Sale of 2-year-olds in training, which prompted this realization.

Both from horses in this catalog and from their elder siblings, I can see the influence commercial breeding has on the sales market, and on the breed.

There are countless examples of foals that were bred (seemingly) not for winning races or surviving long careers at the track, but merely to cash in on a hot sire or "fashionable" breeding. Foals out of mares who were good, stakes-producers with what some would consider marginal sires, suddenly sent to the biggest names in the book. And, to a degree, it makes sense: If she can produce a statebred stakes winner with a regional sire, shouldn't she produce better when sent to a Storm Cat or Unbridled's Song?

Perhaps, but breeders in the process seem to forget what got them there; a nick that worked repeatedly among her earlier foals, particularly, or the type of racemare she was or sort of runner she'd previously produced. The commercial name as sire of the forthcoming offspring becomes more important than actually building upon the racing success of that foal's elder siblings.

Another trend I've noticed repeatedly in breeding for the American market is a measure of disdain for good turf horses. In all financial spectrums of the market, time and again, stakes-class grass mares are bred to decidedly "dirt" sires. And I'm not talking about sires who were raced on dirt themselves but have proved they can get you a turf horse now and again -- like Tale of the Cat, whose progeny earnings are nearly one-third on turf and who has sired the likes of last year's champion grass horse, Gio Ponti. Rather, the mare is sent to a horse whose get don't even seem to like grass for rolling or snacking.

Some of that phenomenon also is attributable to the sales. In the States, a splendid-looking colt by a dirt-oriented young sire (let's say Bernardini) has "Kentucky Derby" written all over him in the eyes of prospective buyers at a yearling sale. A colt of that same visual quality, sired by Kitten's Joy or English Channel, instead reads "Hollywood Derby." And while they're both Grade 1 races, Hollywood's race ain't "America's Race," and thus far fewer folks are lined up to pay the price of admission for the dream of having a horse in the starting gate on the first Saturday of each May at Churchill Downs.

Another market force in the dirt-over-turf breeding decision is the horse's usefulness at all levels of racing. While Virginia's Colonial Downs cards even bottom-level maiden and claiming races on the lawn -- the most beautiful lawn at any racecourse in America, I might add -- you can't get that everywhere. In fact, almost nowhere. And some tracks (ranging in quality from backwater bullrings to Oaklawn Park) don't have a turf course at all. Some buyers -- and thus breeders -- might be concerned that a horse methodically bred for turf will have nowhere to run if he isn't good enough to compete in allowance- or stakes-class races. So breeders put that good turf mare to a good dirt sire just in case the foal ends up needing to run for a $5,000 tag. Well, congratulations: You quite likely just bred a $5,000 plater.

I understand that at this stage, I have no street -- or, let's say, "back side" -- cred as a critic. My first foal in this game is a yearling; his 2009 stablemate already dead. (One of the harsh realities of the horse business; accidents happen.) And, being among the masses who can't afford a five-digit stud fee, let alone six, I sure haven't jumped into the deep end of the gene pool to start my breeding program.

But before getting involved, I watched this game from the sidelines for a decade, both the races and the sales. And soon enough, we'll be finding out whether that has made me wise, or just a wise guy.