Shaking a stick on a Friday night

I'm writing this on a Friday evening.  Not just any old Friday evening, but a Friday evening when Sky Sports Racing is showing us a Group One race from Newcastle and also several Breeders' Cup races at Santa Anita.  A treat indeed.  We've just had the Vertem Futurity.  That was a splendid contest.  I was sceptical about the wisdom of putting it on the AW, but it worked really well.  It was a very exciting race ('event') and a very good one.  That's food for thought, not only as regards the prospects of the several top-class horses who contested it but also for the AW's place in the greater scheme of things.  Newcastle would have been a very special place to be tonight.

Chelmsford will be a very special place to be tomorrow night - for the owners, trainers and jockeys who will be there as competitors, eg Donnacha O'Brien and myself - but in the interim we have the rest of this evening's Breeders' Cup races. We've had one so far, the winner of which (Itsinthepost) cost 5,000 euros as a yearling.  It was a good afternoon for people (such as myself) who are sceptical of the myth of the genius of the people who lauded for spending huge amounts of money on horses and that has meant that the Breeders' Cup meeting has begun in similar vein.  Future Champions' Day at Newmarket a couple of weeks ago was good (with the winner of the first two-year-old race on the card, Tomfre, having been unsold at £600 as a yearling) but this afternoon was arguably even better.

Jonathan Portman has done very well with some inexpensive horses in the past - 1,000-guinea-vendor-buy-back yearling Mrs Danvers being a prime example - but this afternoon was particularly special even by his high standards.  He sent out the winner of the Bosra Sham Stakes (Listed), Mild Illusion, who scored under Josephine Gordon.  This filly was bought by Jonathan for 1,000 guineas as a yearling in Book Three of Tattersalls' October Yearling Sale last year.  Her victims today included the China Horse Club's Lady Light (3rd) who cost 850,000 euros as a yearling; Coolmore's Precious Moment (12th) who cost 500,000 as a yearling; and Godolphin's Divine Spirit (13th) who cost 850,000 guineas at the Breeze-Up sales this spring.  Even the filly who finished last of 16 cost 100,000 euros as a yearling.

Let's see what the rest of the evening brings.  And, by the way, Tomfre wasn't an aberration on Future Champions' Day. After her win in the opening Class Two nursery, we then had Max Vega winning the Group Three Zetland Stakes, a 25,000-euro yearling; home-breds (Military March and Pintubo) winning the third and fourth races; Stratum, who raced for his breeder until being sold as at the Horses-in-Training Sale as a three-year-old, winning the Cesarewitch; Richenza, a 48,000-euro yearling, winning the Boudicea Stakes (Listed); and Feliciana De Vega, a 50,000-guinea weanling, winning the Group Three Darley Stakes with a 2,600,000-guinea yearling in third.  Food for thought at the end of a month which has featured as many six- and seven-figure yearlings as you can shake a stick at.