last laugh on Ogden Phipps, held most re-
sponsible by Hancock for his rejection by
the executors of his father's estate. F o r it
was Phipps's Easy Goer, raised at Clai-
borne, who was denied not just the 1989
Derby, but the Preakness and the Breeders'
Cup Classic by the Stone Farm graduate,
Sunday Silence.
That whole saga seemed to have been
choreographed sooner as a Greek play,
than a mere sporting rivalry.
To dwell on it now, howev-
er, would be a disservice
to the lifetime of wider endeavour that
has rendered Hancock at peace with the
world today.
Quite apar t from the fact that he had
already requited the family's Derby craving
seven years previously, as breeder and
co-owner of Gato Del Sol, Hancock has
become—in a wholly benign variation—
no less a patriarch than Bull himself. Not
only as father of all those wonderful
children, with his wife Staci, but also as
the man who foaled, raised, and co-owned
a transformative sire. (No Sunday Silence,
remember, equals no Deep Impact.)
