'If we're just focusing on speed, then we're going to see our racing suffer': Where are the star juveniles?

Cover image courtesy of The Image Is Everything

In a year where no 2-year-old captured more than one Group 1, form analyst Nic Ashman felt the standout 2-year-old performance of the season wasn't in an elite race. In fact, after reviewing their performances, he has taken rather a dim view to this season’s crop.

“​​This is one of the weaker crops of 2-year-olds we've seen in the last decade,” he said. “None of the major races rated particularly well. If I was a breeder or a person looking for a stallion prospect, I'd be pretty careful about plucking a Group 1 winner or a high performing juvenile from this crop at this point in time.”

Snitzel was the only sire to produce more than one juvenile Group 1 winner this season, with Marhoona and Return To Conquer striking on both sides of the Tasman.

Standouts beyond the black type

In the immediate aftermath of the event, Ashman described the G1 Golden Slipper Stakes won by Marhoona as 4l faster than standard for the grade, but the time was ultimately beaten by unbeaten 3-year-old Autumn Glow’s (The Autumn Sun) performance in the Listed Darby Munro Stakes on the same card.

By contrast, the G1 Champagne Stakes crawled to its conclusion, with the winner Nepotism (Brutal {NZ}) the only runner emerging in a rosy light by Ashman's calculations. The G1 JJ Atkins, won by winter carnival talent Cool Archie (Cool Aza Beel {NZ}), did little to impress Ashman either, citing soft sectionals late in the race.

Ashman’s ones to watch from the season are outside of any Group 1 race - in fact, his first choice Prince Tycoon (Written Tycoon) didn’t even make it to a stakes race. The Trent Busuttin and Natalie Young-trained gelding won on debut by half a length at Caulfield before running a length second to Isti Star (Better Than Ready) in the $1 million Magic Millions National 2YO Classic later in May. He got loose at what would have been his third start a week later and has been spelling since.

“Prince Tycoon ran really good figures on debut at Caulfield, and then he went up to the Gold Coast for that 1000-metre race and nothing went right for him,” Ashman said, describing the gelding as still a very raw specimen. “But he strikes me as the kind of horse that could easily, within one or two starts, measure up to the best performing 2-year-olds of last season.

“When he won at Caulfield over 1100 metres, he wobbled around the corner. He wanted to float up the straight. He was still doing a lot wrong in that race, but when he knuckled down and won, he won like a good horse. The time was fast for the grade.

“It wasn't a Group race, but it told me that he might have something there. I think he's a horse to keep an eye on.”

Isti Star kept the form coming three weeks after the Magic Millions event when second to Brave Design (Brave Smash {Jpn}) in the Listed Oxlade Plate.

The other horse on Ashman’s radar certainly ran in Group events, but just couldn’t quite clinch victory. Wodeton (Wootton Bassett {GB}) earned himself favouritism for the Slipper with his debut win, and Ashman also had praise for the colt’s performance.

“Wodeton’s debut run was, for me, probably the best 2-year-old performance of the season,” he said. “But he didn't go on with it, and he had multiple opportunities to do so, and it just hasn't happened. I don't want to say he's the horse that you've got to follow, all I can say is that one single performance was the most impressive performance I saw from a juvenile this season, but in time, it didn't age well.”

Perhaps there is more in store for the $1.6 million yearling next season? After all, Wodeton followed that performance up with heartbreaking placings in the G2 Silver Slipper Stakes, the G2 Todman Stakes, and the Slipper, where he was nabbed by Marhoona by a long head. Even his fourth to Vinrock (I Am Invincible) in the G1 Sires’ Produce Stakes was by a margin of less than 0.75l - but the races’ ratings don’t offer many condolences.

“For me, if a race rates poorly or is only mediocre, there's no real point in looking for the unlucky runner,” Ashman said, “Because even if you can make a case that they should have won, they should have won an average rating race.”

Golden Rose open for the taking

“When you've got a pack of average horses, luck in running conditions on the day, the barrier draw, the way the tracks are playing that day, that's what's going to determine the outcome of races,” Ashman said.

“Horses like Sepoy, Dance Hero, Pierro, these were dominant 2-year-olds. Proper, top-class, elite juveniles. It didn't really matter how the track was playing, they were able to overcome it and win because they had the class edge.

“This year there's no horses like that, and so the prevailing conditions on the day is what is dictating the outcome of the races.”

However, Ashman is quick to point out that this is not the end of the road.

“The caveat on this is that 2-year-olds can develop immensely. Fastnet Rock finished fourth in the Golden Slipper. Now, it was a pretty high rating Golden Slipper that Dance Hero won in 2004, but as a 3-year-old, he obviously raised the roof.”

Fastnet Rock went without a win in seven starts as a juvenile, but he was forever biting at the winners’ heels, with second placings in the G3 Skyline Stakes and the G2 Pago Pago Stakes a week before the Slipper. Bouncing straight back into the action as a 3-year-old, he broke his maiden at his second spring start in the G2 Up And Coming Stakes, and was well on his way to six Group wins.

“The door is always open. We say it's a poorly performing 2-year-old crop, but there's always the possibility that they could go to a new level as a 3-year-old. It just means that at two, there was nothing running time that made us think, ‘wow, this is an elite juvenile’. Nothing has broken the clock.”

So while it’s not quite a level playing field, it certainly appears that a champion could emerge from a surprising corner of the foal crop.

“When you're looking at these spring features for 3-year-olds, particularly the spring where there's less time to develop, I think there's a real possibility that we'll see something that didn't contest a Group 1 as a juvenile come out and be very prominent in some of these early spring features.

“More broadly speaking, races like the Golden Rose, the early spring 3-year-old features, are probably there for the taking for left field 2-year-olds.”

Outstaying a sprinter

If the juveniles are weak, what are the broader implications for the breed? What concerns Ashman about the juvenile performances this season in particular is whether that weakness means something is lacking.

“I'm not a breeding buff, but I think everyone's trying to breed 2-year-olds, and unfortunately what that means is we developed a real tunnel vision along the way,” he said, circling back to Pierro as an example of an elite juvenile who trained on.

Lonhro supplied his son with the type of precocity one looks for in an early 2-year-old, but dam Miss Right Note (Ire) (Daylami {Ire}) reinforces him with middle-distance blood; a dual winner herself out to 2400 metres and a half-sister to dual Group 1-winning middle-distance horse Laverock (Ire) (Octagonal {NZ}), she is out of a Sadler’s Wells (USA) mare, injecting more stoutness into the pedigree.

“Pierro had quite a stout pedigree, and if you speak to Gai Waterhouse, she will say to you that he was never really a 2-year-old,” Ashman said. “He was always going to be a better 3-year-old, and he ran faster time as a 3-year-old than he did as a 2-year-old, so he did progress, but she was able to train him to hold a high sprint for a long period of time because of his stoutness.

“Quite often with the juveniles that I see, they're very fast but they're also a bit weak, and I think if you can find a way to breed a bit of stoutness into a pedigree and get that really good mix, then you get horses like Pierro that can outstay his rivals in a 1200-metre race.”

That stoutness is what’s lacking in a lot of Australia’s speed horses, to Ashman’s eye, echoing the thoughts of Colm Santry in a TTR feature two weeks ago.

Golden Slipper victress Marhoona benefitted from the general versatility of Snitzel’s progeny, as well as Encosta De Lago as damsire. Dancing Show (USA) (Nijinsky {Can}) appears on both sides of the pedigree - as fourth dam to Marhoona and second dam of Redoute’s Choice - to imbue a little miler prowess, but maybe that’s not quite enough?

“He (Pierro) beat two good horses in the Golden Slipper, by outstaying them,” Ashman said. “It was a fast run race, and he just outstayed them, and I think that toughness is probably what's just lacking a bit (in this crop).

“Wodeton is a great example. He has terrific acceleration of a genuine, top-class juvenile, but once he got into those really fast run races, they brought him undone. He just couldn't quite sustain it.

“Because the thing is, when I look at identifying a horse that's got a really sharp turn of foot, it's great, but a high rating race is a race that rates well because of its overall time. So there's no use having a horse that's got an unreal last 400 metres on it if for the first 800 metres of the race, it has to walk, because your overall time is not going to be any good.

“You will win races where they walk to the 400-metre mark and then dash on it. They're the races they're going to suit you. But if they go hard, which they usually do in most Group 1 2-year-old races, it's all about who can run the fastest overall time.”

A dash for home

One more nail in the coffin for Ashman comes from the way that tracks play in Australia.

“In this country, and a lot of other countries, they water tracks,” he said. “They want to dish up these tracks that have got Soft 5 and Soft 6 ratings, and they're happy with that. The problem with that is it takes the pace out of races. You don't find out which horses can run the fastest overall time, it just becomes a dash to the post from the 600 or whatever it might be.”

A dash is all well and good over a couple of furlongs, but Ashman is concerned that the Australian-bred horse is losing the ability to stay out a sprinting trip - and even more so beyond.

“In Japan, they don't really water their tracks, they practically run on bitumen roads over there. The pace in every race is hard and fast, and so they find out which horses can run the fastest overall times.

“The shape of (European) tracks are very different to Australia. Ironically, England is such a smaller country than Australia, but they have much more spacious racetracks. What happens is horses are not overly fast out of barriers, but they start to build through the 2400 metres of a race. By the time they get to the 1200-metre mark, they're going in a good, solid gallop.

“If you pause a 2400-metre race in Australia at the 1200-metre mark and look at the speed they're going there compared to where they go in Europe, they're going faster in Europe almost every time. So by the time they get to the 400 metres in Europe in a distance race, most of the horses are out on their feet, but in Australia, most of them are still just getting into their work. And that affects the overall time.”

Ashman posits that this problem extends beyond assigning ratings to performances.

“So in Australia, we don't actually find out which horses can run the fastest overall time. We just find out which horses have got the highest speed figure. In other words, which horse can get to 66 kilometres an hour - which I think is probably the biggest problem that our industry faces. We're just breeding purely for speed.”

If speed is all that matters, what happens when it comes to a Derby? Or a G1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes? Fastnet Rock may have provided one of the greatest middle-distance horses this country has seen in years in Via Sistina (Ire), but it bears pointing out that he sired her during a shuttle season north.

“We've got a lot of horses in this country that can break 11 seconds for a sectional, but there's not many that can run 11 seconds flat for four sections. There's not many that can do that, and the ones that can do that become our elite horses. If we're breeding that out of them, if we're just focusing on the speed, then obviously we're going to see our racing suffer.”