TDN Weekend December 2016 Issue 9
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/947139
Sure enough, year after year, the biogra- phy of a new champion features an early chapter somewhere round Ocala. Indeed, the jockey mannequins that greet visitors to Brennan's stables include one in the silks of the newly anointed Horse of the Year, Gun Runner—who actually got as far as breezing at OBS before a partnership was put together to take him off the market. "He was immature when he came to us," Brennan remembers. "Very athletic, al- most a feminine-bodied horse—but like a deer on the racetrack. Mentally he was still a bit flighty, just very young. Steve Asmus- sen and his team did an amazing job, they gave him every chance to develop. Look at him now, physically he's a beautiful horse: he was always going to be, but he needed to be a 4-year-old. So they did a wonderful job, picking spots and developing him ac- cordingly. Even though he's a talent, you can still make mistakes, can still go to the well too often. But they gave him every chance to be what he is." And that same dexterity is precisely what makes this ghetto of experts so cher- ished—both by those breeders who turn over their young stock for a grounding, and those who spend big money at the 2-year- old sales. It's all about knowing how to avoid forcing one step forward, at the cost of two backwards. True, the tyranny of the stopwatch at the breeze-ups has put their instincts at a new premium; to the extent that Brennan feels these auctions have lost much of their old magic, as he watches all the lemmings clus- ter round the "bullet" breezer. We never let them go full speed here on the farm.