LANDING

fretted about such details. From the break, Flightline took a sort of otherworldly control of the race and sprinted to what race caller Trevor Denman called an “embarrassing 20-length lead” with seemingly little efort.

“Te frst thought that came to my mind as he went around the far turn was Chic Anderson’s famous call of the 1973 Belmont, when he said, ‘Secretariat is widening. He is moving like a tremendous machine,’ ” said Jay Privman, Daily Racing Form’s recently retired national correspondent and a 2023 Special Eclipse Award for Career Excellence honoree. “It was a similar move with Flightline, certainly not with a Triple Crown at stake but as dazzling and breathtaking as you could imagine.”

In the Breeders’ Cup Classic, Flightline proved his natural brilliance once again with a convincing 8¼-length margin of victory — the largest in the history of the race. (It even outshone the 6½-length romp of Grand Slam Winner American Pharoah in 2015, also at Keeneland.) He had won all six of his starts by a combined 71 lengths or about the span of two football felds. Closing his career on Nov. 5 with a perfect record and earnings of over $4.5 million, Flightline began collecting accolades. In January, he topped the World’s Best Racehorse Rankings, and a week later he earned double Eclipse Awards: champion older male and the highly coveted Horse of the Year. He was such a shoo-in for the honor that at the Jan. 26 awards ceremony presenter Tom Rooney, president and CEO of the NTRA, quipped: “I’m not even going to open the envelope.”

Had there been any doubters lef, afer the Breeders’ Cup none remained. Flightline’s ticket into the pantheon of horse racing’s legends seemed frmly punched. Still, some questioned whether the lightly raced colt had earned the heady comparisons to Secretariat and others like him. Despite his slim resume, Privman thinks Flightline will have, and deserves, an enduring legacy. “I think we just have to appreciate him for what he was in the context of what modern-day racing has become, where horses have far fewer starts than 30-plus years ago,” Privman noted. “For me, Flightline was the best horse I’ve seen since Spectacular Bid, but Bid ran 30 times, winning 26, was a champion at 2, 3, and 4. It’s impossible to compare a horse with that resume to a horse who ran six times. But in the context of the times, I think Flightline will hold up as a truly great horse of the 2020s, even of the frst half of this century.”

FLIGHTLINE, TO INFINITY AND BEYOND

About 10 weeks into retirement, Flightline’s new life is pretty, well, humdrum, albeit sweet. Tanks to his supreme intelligence and a team full of pros, his transition has been a peaceful, easy one. “One of the things [Lane’s End general manager] Bill Farish always tries to do, and we preach it, is ‘measure twice cut once,’ ” said David Ingordo, who heads up the Lane’s End bloodstock team and spearheaded the purchase of Flightline as a yearling. “If you do something right the frst time, it should be better in the long run. We’ve done this [kind of transition] multiple times so it wasn’t atypical,” Ingordo added, “but our goal was to do this right. He’s a horse and needs to be treated like a horse, but we do understand he’s exceptional in a lot of ways, including in his value.” Flightline’s price tag rose sizably when Keeneland kicked of its November 2022 breeding stock sale with an auction of a fractional 2.5% ownership stake in him. When the hammer fell at $4.6 million to an anonymous bidder — via agent Freddy Seitz — Flightline’s worth reportedly jumped to a staggering $184 million.

Te industry’s top breeders are now anxiously awaiting Flightline as the sire of the next generation. Standing for a stud fee of $200,000, Flightline will be bred to a full book of 150 mares.

“I’ve been very fortunate in my career to be around some very high-profle, frst-season sires,” said Ingordo, “and this one — the reception, the demand, and the anticipation — has been like nothing I’ve ever seen. He is a generational talent and one of the most brilliant horses to put on a racing bridle, and breeders are looking for that brilliance and hoping he imparts it on his ofspring.” KM