TAKING STOCK: INTRIGUE FROM TWO DERBYS AND AN OAKS
by Sid Fernando
What an excellent weekend of European Classics, which featured a sprinkling of some intriguing Awhat ifs@ to flavor what=s to come in the months ahead.
On Friday, Aidan O=Brien won his 41st British Classic--yes, you read correctly--when Tuesday (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}--Lillie Langtry {Ire}, by Danehill Dancer {Ire}) short-headed the unlucky John Gosden-trained Emily Upjohn (GB) (Sea The Stars {Ire}) after an exhilarating face-off in the waning stages of the G1 Cazoo Oaks at Epsom. It was a familiar affair in more ways than one. The fillies are by champion half-brothers, the winner is a product of a long-established and potent cross, and she's a sister to Minding (Ire), who won the same race for O'Brien and the Coolmore partners in 2016. Moreover, only Gosden (three) and O'Brien (six) have won the Oaks over the last nine years, and O'Brien, all told, has won the Oaks 10 times. It's easy enough to speculate the finish might have been reversed had Emily Upjohn not missed the break, but Tuesday, a June 3 foal who won the Oaks on her birthday, is a typical high-class Galileo, and they, O'Brien will tell you with certitude, rise to challenges, because they are as tough as nails and more generous than most, leaving everything on the racecourse.
On Saturday, Saeed Suhai's inexperienced Desert Crown (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire}--Desert Berry {GB}, by Green Desert) won the G1 Cazoo Derby In Memory of Lester Piggott with a devastating display of acceleration for his third win in as many starts, giving his Newsells Park-based Galileo sire his third individual Classic winner following the great Enable (GB) (Oaks) and Channel (G1 Prix de Diane). Like Tuesday, Desert Crown was bred on the Galileo/Danzig cross, and the colt, the race favorite, gave his trainer Sir Michael Stoute his sixth win in the Classic.
Desert Crown won by 2 1/2 lengths under an inspired ride by Richard Kingscote, and the margin could have been more had Kingscote not had the race in hand some ways from the wire-- which he may not have, if third-place finisher Westover (GB) (Frankel {GB}) had a clear run at a crucial stage. A Juddmonte homebred, Westover was stopped twice as Desert Crown launched his move, but once clear, he finished fastest of all to miss second place in a photo, looking much like Juddmonte=s unlucky Dancing Brave, who was given too much to do when a flying second to the Aga Khan=s Shahrastani in 1986.
$1.5M ZAYAT SETTLEMENT TO MAKE SMALL DENT IN OVERALL $19M DEBT
by T. D. Thornton
The trustee in Ahmed Zayat's personal bankruptcy case has negotiated a $1.5-million settlement to be paid by the debtor's brother, Sherif Zayat, that a court document stated will "resolve all claims and causes of action" related to the multiple mortgages on Zayat's home.
The motion for approval of that settlement, if so ordered by a judge in a New Jersey federal bankruptcy court July 6, doesn't mean the end to the complicated, now 21-month-long Chapter 7 petition by the allegedly insolvent former Thoroughbred owner and breeder.
But it does mean some of that $1.5 million might trickle down to creditors once the case gets fully settled.
As an attorney for trustee Donald Biase put it in his June 6 court filing, the settlement will "provide a benefit for the Debtor's estate, which was otherwise uncertain."
The settlement documents were filed exactly seven years and one day after Zayat's superstar homebred American Pharoah swept the 2015 Triple Crown.
The $19-million debt question for Thoroughbred trainers, horse farms, bloodstock businesses, veterinarians, and equine transportation companies who are among the 132 entities listed as non-secured creditors still hasn't changed much.
That's because the money owed to them is in the form of "non-priority unsecured claims," which puts those people and businesses far down in the pecking order for repayment of Zayat's debts.
