[RolloTomasi]

But Wait, There's More Honor B.S.

The floors of A.P. Indy's stall had been bare since February, when Lane's End lost its elder statesman and pensioned cornerstone sire at the age of 31. For an entire season, the residents of the stallion operation's front barn passed by the empty stall on the way to the breeding shed.

Some big shoes to fill there…surely the prospective candidate to inhabit the stall will also be a royally-bred, Grade 1-winning 2yo that followed up the early promise with a win in Triple Crown race and progressed enough to beat the top older horses by year’s end…

Choose your cliche: both life and the show must go on at a stud farm, but Lane's End's “big stall” hadn't had a vacancy in a long time. Whoever filled the spot, it was going to be a big deal.

…OR will also have retired early without starting at 4 and have one undescended testicle…

Gotta take what we can get nowadays.

Fitting then, that the horse who finally called for bedding in A.P. Indy's stall for the first time in seven months would be one of the Hall of Famer's own blood, and one named to be a living tribute to his career.

Living tribute? The author acts like this horse’s name was kismet or something. How many offspring from the A.P. Indy line have the “A.P.” part in there?

At any rate, the horse might have been a living tribute to A.P. Indy’s stallion career which is peppered with horses of great promise that were only ever able to win at the top level in a single race (i.e., one-hit wonder).

Grade 1 winner Honor A. P. arrived at Lane's End on Tuesday around 11:30 a.m., and he checked in to the most high-profile suite in the place. A day earlier, his pending arrival was announced after the 3-year-old colt was found to have come out of his fourth-place effort in the Kentucky Derby with a strained front-left tendon.

Almost sounds like one of those Priceline dot com deals where you get those outrageous discounts at the last minute because the hotel is desperate to fill every room.

Tendons can take a long time to get back to racing shape in a racehorse, if they ever do, so the decision to move him on to the next phase of his career was an easy one.

Easy decision? With a single Grade 1 win? He’s lucky he has a “next phase of his career”…which by the way is tenuous if he doesn’t produce something in his first couple of crops. These “breeders” are fickle sorts that have no problem unloading a horse that doesn’t pan out right off the bat.

Hopefully he’ll impart some of that “late Autumn precocity” that his trainer was raving about…

“It's not visible, but it's obviously there,” said Bill Farish of Lane's End. “It's too bad that it came when it did, but timing-wise, the Derby's not when it would have been. If it had been in May and this had happened, they probably would have brought him back. Now, it's a six-month thing, and you're going to be into missing the breeding season.”

Does this make any sense? If he ran as a 4yo he’d miss the breeding season, too? Was he going to be retired at 3yo already if he happened to win a Triple Crown race?

And what’s the big deal of missing 6 months with most of it coming in the early part of the year? Outside of some inflated purse races scattered across the globe, what’s the hurry to get started back in the early part of the year in the older horse division?

Honor A. P. is a son of fellow Lane's End resident Honor Code, one of A.P. Indy's most successful runners, one of his last notable sons to retire to stud, and the kind of horse that forces a person to believe in evolution. Many of the physical traits that defined both A.P. Indy and his sons – the alert, inquisitive look in his eye, the ebbs and flows of his withers and midsection into a solid rump, the general impression that the horse before you could run forever – are all present in Honor Code, but bigger and stronger than the generation before him.

“Run forever”? Poor choice of words considering Honor Code ran a grand total of 11 times, missed the majority of his 3yo year with injury, and never won further than 9 furlongs.

And I’m sure most people would laugh at the horse as evidence of the theory of evolution after they took a gander at his 4 white socks…

The Searings bought Honor A. P. for $850,000 at the 2018 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Selected Yearlings Sale. He was practically a carbon copy of his flashy dark bay sire at the end of the shank.
Besides the uncanny resemblance to Honor Code,…

Is the resemblance really “uncanny” when we know that the horse has at least 50% of the same genes as the sire? Oh wait, I forgot we were still trying to figure out the whole evolution thing…

Honor A. P. had the page to merit the lofty price and the expectations that came with it. His dam is the multiple Grade 1-winning Wild Rush mare Hollywood Story, who had generated plenty of black type on her page before Honor A. P. set foot on the track.

More inflation. Hollywood Story, although a multiple Grade 1 winner despite only 4 total career victories (all at Hollywood Park by the way), was hardly “generating” any black type in her broodmare career before this horse. She had produced a minor stakes winner and a couple of colts that had minor placings. You had to go back to Honor A.P.’s 3rd dam to even find Grade 3/Group 3 black type, some of which was German and Italian…

Just like Honor Code did for A.P. Indy, Honor A. P. developed into a generational update of his sire, keeping the classic A.P. Indy look and the strength of Honor Code, but adding a bit of scope to the equation. That combination of traits led Honor A. P. to become one of the top 3-year-olds of his generation, punctuated by a victory in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby.

Can we stop with all this whispy, cotton candy-like fluff and just write a solid, critical review of the horse’s career and stallion prospects instead of being an industry hack that shills for the big commercial breeders?

Since when was Honor Code some sort of revelation in the stud career of A.P. Indy? He basically rode a 2-race win streak over the course of a few months (skipping several important races) and ended his career with a whimper making no impression whatsoever on a 3yo Triple Crown winner over a classic distance.

Ironically, A.P. Indy himself—given his pedigree and race record--could have perhaps laid claim to being the culmination of generations of breeding had he been sound enough to run (and win) on Derby Day and had come out as a 4yo.

Oh...and two testicles would have helped, too.

On the other hand, perhaps A.P. Indy is one of the prime examples of the negative generational update that currently plagues American racing given that he was retired early (because he was “too valuable”) and couldn’t quite overcome some pesky physical issues (reportedly his feet). Personally I would vote for Fusaichi Pegasus to claim that unwelcomed prize since he was a magnanimous flop as a stud and had a much more tailored racing campaign than A.P. Indy.

Farish had been interested in Honor A. P. as a stallion prospect well before he was a fully-fledged classic contender.

“Well before” he was a “classic contender”? Is this a good thing?

No, it isn’t. It’s getting tough to stomach some of this BS.

How about “well before he was a classic winner”?

He'd flown out to California to watch him finish second in the G2 San Felipe Stakes in March.

So basically the horse’s open length win in a ho-hum maiden special weight is what got the big farms foaming at the mouth for the horse as a potential stallion.

Does anyone like where this is headed?

However, the talks with the Searings got more serious after the colt's nose touched the finish line in the rescheduled Santa Anita Derby on June 6, and the announcement that Lane's End had secured the breeding rights went out on June 26.

He writes this trite like it’s some monumental accomplishment in the horse’s career. All it signified to people who enjoy horse racing is that the horse would be retired at the earliest possible moment (with the sycophant turf writers poised with pens at the ready to bolster the horse’s meager racing profile lest someone tries to see the forest for the trees).

How “uncanny” that it all came to pass…

“It didn't take long at all,” Farish said about the negotiation process. “Lee Searing was excited to have him come here. He named him after A.P. and everything else. Lucky for us, he genuinely wanted to have him here. We'd been following him since [the Saratoga sale], and David [Ingordo, Lane's End's bloodstock agent] bought him.”

Even better…it wasn’t the maiden special weight, it was an inflated sales tag at Saratoga. Maybe that’s why the horse didn’t run in the Travers, he’d already made his mark at Saratoga in the eyes of his “handlers”.

Bonus points for Lane’s End’s own agent for killing two birds with one stone by orchestrating the horse’s stud deal before the colt ever set foot on a racetrack.

A few hours after Honor A. P. arrived at Lane's End, he was brought out for display to the media, and he was soon joined by Honor Code. The two stallions stood face-to-face as if they were looking into a mirror; each with four socks and a flashy white face punctuating their near-black coats. Keeping true to the theme of generational progress, Honor A. P's socks were a little longer and his blaze was a little wider.

This is progress, folks. Greater prominence of undesirable traits (white on a horse).

Not more stamina, not more seasons of racing, not more Grade 1 wins, not success on multiple surfaces or multiple distances, not success on an international stage. No ...it's more white on the legs and face that we want.

Kind of like the progress of turf writers. More fluff, more puff, more BS.

Honor A. P.'s long white socks also provided the optical illusion that he might be a little racier and longer-legged than his sire, though Farish said time might balance that out.
“I think he looks that way right now because he's still tucked up and racing fit, but the resemblance is uncanny,” he said, “This guy's running style was maybe a little more like A.P. Indy than it was Honor Code. He's maybe a tick taller. They're both definitely taller than A.P. was. He's got more length and length of stride than Honor Code did, but they were both effective.”

There’s that “uncanny” greater than or equal to 50% same genes thing again…

Of course, they both paled in comparison to A.P. Indy as racehorses and more than likely will do the same regarding their stallion careers.

But hey, they got a lot more white than A.P. Indy which is what most people in the industry will tell you is what they look for in top racing prospects. Of course, these guys are worried about breeding prospects, so the point is moot.

These two horses looked similar, and they obviously come from similar blood.

What a revelation! It’s a turf writing, evolutionary miracle!

One would assume this would mean they might be drawing from a similar pool of mares come 2021 and beyond, perhaps cannibalizing each other's books, but Farish said the stallion that breeders might gravitate toward will depend on the outcome they desire with the foal.
“Yes, in some ways you're dealing with the same crosses, but you have one horse that does have runners and one that doesn't, so they're in very different points in their careers,” he said.

Holy crap, did that really need to be explained? I hope—him running a major Thoroughbred breeding operation—that he has some more relevant words of wisdom.

“People that are looking for a more proven horse are going to go to Honor Code, and ones that want something sale-wise that's unproven, they'll go to Honor A. P. It gives people an interesting choice.

For those still keeping score, that’s a round about way of saying people looking for a discount will go to Honor A.P.

“I would think a lot of the American speed-type sires are going to work very well –Speightstown, lines like that could complement the A.P. Indy line,” Farish continued. “It's worked, and we'll keep trying what's worked. In the beginning, with a stallion like this, you don't like to try to over-manage it, because you really don't know what's going to work. You'd like to think you do, and a lot of times you're right, but a lot of times you're wrong.

Read: We are going to throw the kitchen sink at this horse because if he doesn’t get a big sales horse or a top 2yo in his first crop he’s going straight to another hemisphere…or Texas.

City Zip was going to be a six-furlong sire and he ended up getting stakes winners at a mile and a sixteenth on the grass. You just try as many different things as you can.”

Huh? Talk about short-sighted…City Zip held his own with top older middle-distance turf horses Forbidden Apple and Sarafan in his turf debut as a 3yo before getting fried in a ridiculous speed duel in the 2001 BC Mile.

He was also a half-brother to uber-horse Ghostzapper--who could handle any distance.

Maybe this guy doesn’t have any further words of wisdom after all…

“That white eye,” Haley said, noting the signature ring that the grandfather, father, and son each have around an eye. “It sticks out, just like like A.P.'s did. That white eye sticks out on Honor Code, and it's sticking out on him, too.”

FYI, white eyes are about as desirable as 4 white socks. Usually signifies a high-strung temperament.

It would be a lot to expect of the stall's new resident to beckon a new set of “good old days” like his famous grandsire, but with the letters “A. P.” on the the first door on the right in the Lane's End stud barn, perhaps the rookie can at least provide a bit of normalcy. Every generational shift has to start somewhere.

I don’t know about any generational shifts actually taking place but certainly this has been the equivalent of a “gastrointestinal shift”. If only the author had just put the letters “B.S.” in the headline we could have been forewarned.

Every bloated puff piece has to start somewhere.