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Racing Analysis by Steve Haskin

As racing fans prepared for the 2007 debuts of 2-year-old stars Nobiz Like Shobiz and Scat Daddy in the Feb. 3 Holy Bull Stakes (gr. III), few had ever heard of Curlin, an unraced son of Smart Strike who was making his career debut on the undercard for trainer Helen Pitts. Ten weeks later, Curlin was the overwhelming 7-2 favorite for the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (gr. I) in the third Derby Future Wager pool.

How could a horse make such a meteoric rise to prominence in so short a period of time? How could bettors make him the clear-cut Derby favorite over last year’s 2-year-old champ Street Sense, despite his having only three career starts and none as a 2-year-old? After all, we all know by now that the last Derby winner to have only three career starts was Regret in 1915, and the last horse to win the Derby without having raced at 2 was Apollo in 1882.

Racing fans crave a superstar each year, and with this year’s Derby so wide open, it was no surprise that they latched onto Curlin like barnacles to the hull of a ship.

Winning all three of your career starts by a total margin of 281⁄2 lengths is going to turn a lot of heads and get racing fans dreaming of super horses and Triple Crowns.

Curlin was so impressive in his career debut, in which he romped by 123⁄4 lengths, he was immediately purchased for a reported $3.5 million by a partnership of Jess Jackson, Satish Sanan, and George Bolton, with the colt’s previous owner, Shirley Cunningham and Bill Gallion’s Midnight Cry Stables, maintaining a minority share.

Stretching out from seven furlongs to 1 1⁄16 miles, Curlin ran away with the Rebel Stakes (gr. III) by 5 1⁄4 lengths before routing his foes by 10 1⁄2 lengths in the Arkansas Derby (gr. II).

So, is Curlin the super horse everyone is looking for? Even if he is, can he defy that much history and actually win the Kentucky Derby off only three starts? Stay tuned. Now it gets interesting.

Pedigree Profile by Avalyn Hunter

When Martha Snow, a daughter of the Epsom Oaks winner Snow Marten, was imported to the United States, she was a failed race mare with only one unplaced start to her credit. But her foals proved that the classic heritage of her dam had not entirely passed her by. The best of her three stakes winners was champion Nimba (by the Preakness Stakes winner War Cloud), who won the 1927 Coaching Club American Oaks and Alabama Stakes from her own sex and the then-important Lawrence Realization from the colts. It has taken Martha Snow’s family eight generations since then to come up with a runner reminiscent of Nimba’s class, but it just may have done so in Curlin, a descendant of Martha Snow’s winning daughter White Favor (by Sir Gallahad III).

Barbarika, the granddam of Curlin, is one of two graded stakes winners produced from War Exchange, a stakes-winning daughter of Wise Exchange. Sired by 1983 champion older male Bates Motel, she blossomed as a 5-year-old with victories in the Johnny Walker Black Classic Handicap (gr. II) and the Turfway Park Budweiser Breeders’ Cup Handicap (gr. III).

Sherriff’s Deputy, Barbarika’s 1994 daughter by Deputy Minister, never raced. But after Tenpins (Smart Strike—Maid’s Broom, by Deputy Minister) won the 2002 Washington Park Handicap (gr. II), the prospects for Sherriff’s Deputy’s 2003 mating to Smart Strike must have looked pretty good. The cross has clearly struck gold again in Curlin, who is now three-for-three and may well start as the favorite for the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (gr. I).

Smart Strike himself collected his biggest win in the Philip H. Iselin Handicap (gr. I) at 11⁄16 miles, but might well have gone farther had his career not been cut short by injury. He has proved one of Mr. Prospector’s more stamina-oriented sons at stud and is also the sire of current turf star English Channel, winner of three grade I grass races last year, including the 12-furlong Joe Hirsch Turf Classic Invitational. Should Curlin win the Derby, look for Smart Strike to join the six-figure club among Kentucky’s elite stallions in 2008.