Chris Mcgrath

John Kimmel had $25,000, and wanted an Exclusive Native filly. But he had to pass up his first choice, at Fasig-Tipton in 1978, after she went to $32,000. She turned out to be Genuine Risk.

Class: an elusive concept, in horses as in people. That's because it refers to something inherent, something beyond external trappings. In this business, most of us will have observed how someone can be wealthy and still have no class; and also, more pleasingly, how material poverty need not diminish those human qualities that elevate a person from the mean (in every sense of that word).

Some people only look for difficulties. Others seek solutions. Between those categories, it's not hard to place Joe Pickerrell and his wife Courtney. Having attended a couple of family weddings in South Africa, and been blown away by the venue each time, they struggled to find anywhere remotely comparable when planning their own nuptials back

Though one or two made a more blatant impact-above all Juddmonte, either side of the water, while McKinzie will be receiving due attention from colleague Jill Williams in her Saturday Sires series-let's start by celebrating a less obvious contribution to a fabulous weekend of racing.

When he succumbed to colic in October 2011, aged just 14, there was a poignant sense that Bernstein had never quite lived up to his glamorous billing.

With so many roads now leading to Del Mar, traffic may feel pretty slow just now. But we should make a virtue of that, in that our preoccupation with the elite program tends to deny due attention to those achieving their success a tier or so below the very top. After all, such people have

It has always been a small farm, and nowadays they're down to no more than half a dozen mares. Some of the more strenuous duties, moreover, have lately been contracted out. After all, Alfonso Mazzetti is not as young as he was. It's been a long and winding road since he used to ride a motorcycle, aged just 11, to the racetrack in Lima where he would shoot pool with the jockeys; never mind the many years in Colorado in between. Such a long and winding road, in fact, that he expects to be selling up his farm outside Paris, Kentucky, sooner rather than later.

So it turns out that there are last days, too. It was axiomatic with Anthony Manganaro that every day in business should be treated like your first. “If it's the second day, you're falling behind,” he would say. Because it was on your first day that you always asked: “What can we do different, what

Well, that got your attention, didn't it? Devotees of a certain spoof disaster movie may recall the spinning front-page story–but few will be aware that it may yet, in a roundabout way, lead to genuine headlines at the Breeders' Cup.

If it stays like this, a single maiden winner might settle it. Because all that separates McKinzie ($2,294,679) from current leader Tiz the Law ($2,339,575) in the freshman table is $44,896. But wait, there's more. McKinzie isn't even second. Between the pair lurks Vekoma ($2,306,457), ensuring a desperate three-way contest for the prized laurels of champion first-season sire.