CHARGE IT TO GRANDDAM'S ACCOUNT
by Chris McGrath
This whole industry, as I've often remarked, turns on a delicate pivot. We need pedigree to hold up sufficiently for the big investors to stay in the game, and incidentally to keep the rest of us in business; but we also need a sufficient number of unaccountable aberrations for the little guy to feel he always has some kind of chance, as well. If the top lot at Keeneland September Book I won the GI Kentucky Derby every year, then almost the whole pyramid beneath would collapse. But nor can we afford a Rich Strike (Keen Ice) to turn everything on its head too often, either.
This is why, when it comes to blue hens, we need two types of Lady in our lives. We need Leslie's Lady (Tricky Creek), the $8,000 daughter of a mare once claimed for $5,000 and a stallion who ended up in New Mexico. And we also need Take Charge Lady (Dehere), who was sold for $4.2 million after an elite racetrack career and has proved worth every cent.
In hailing yet another stellar talent under Take Charge Lady in her grandson Charge It (Tapit), we must remember that there is no more cherished tool in pedigree analysis than hindsight. Since we tend only to study the backgrounds of horses that excel sufficiently to claim our attention, it's difficult to avoid post-rationalization. Sure enough, I have often enjoyed demonstrating how Leslie's Lady was actually saturated with genetic quality a couple of generations down.
