Category Archives: Farm

“Races like the ones between those two horses are what makes horse racing the great sport it is.” – Arthur B. Hancock III

Jockey Gary Stevens, who will ride Mor Spirit in the 2016 Kentucky Derby, once told Jennie Rees that he believes in Derby Destiny and the winners were picked a long time ago. Whether it’s luck or superstition, owners and trainers have seen their own signs during the Triple Crown campaign, both good and bad.

“I like the story behind the naming of Sunday Silence, the 1989 Kentucky Derby winner,” Jockey Club registrar Rick Bailey said in an e-mail. “Someone from outside the industry sent a list of names to some Kentucky farms including Stone Farm of Arthur B. Hancock III. Sunday Silence was one of the listed names. The story is Mr. Hancock remembered a song favorite, ‘Sunday Mornin’ Coming Down.’ When Hancock realized the horse’s parents’ names were Halo and Wishing Well, Bailey said, “Sunday Silence was a perfect fit.”

As the flat season kicks into gear in Europe, few events have done more to whet the appetite than Aidan O’Brien’s announcement that he is likely to saddle only one colt in the G1 QIPCO 2,000 Guineas. It is not unusual for O’Brien to run several colts (or fillies) in a Classic, so there is one, and only one, obvious conclusion to draw from his statement: Air Force Blue (War Front) must be streets ahead of his peers within his own stable. If that is indeed the case, then he could be a very special horse indeed, a horse with the potential to light up the season.

Not for the first time, the Dubai World Cup meeting must have left a few of America’s older breeders fighting the urge to kick themselves. This urge to don a hair-shirt dates back to 1990, when it was announced that 1989’s Horse of the Year Sunday Silence was being retired to the Stone Farm of co-owner Arthur Hancock III. The response–or lack of it–from local breeders was such that Zenya Yoshida was able to increase his stake in this great racehorse and Sunday Silence left Stone Farm for Shadai without standing a single season.

Upon his retirement, 1989 Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Sunday Silence attracted surprisingly little attention from American breeders but was sold to Japanese interests for $11 million, at the high end of the market at the time. It was a prudent move, as he went on to make innumerable contributions to that bloodstock industry. Now, more than a decade after his death, he could be adding some international intrigue to this Kentucky Derby.