Making the Grade: Discreetness

By Mike Curry

Content Provided by America's Best Racing

Making the Grade, which will run through the 2016 Belmont Stakes (gr. I), focuses on the winners of the big races, usually from the previous weekend, who could impact the next Triple Crown. We'll be taking a close look at impressive winners and evaluating their chances to win classic races based upon ability, running style, connections (owner, trainer, jockey) and pedigree.

This week we take a closer look at Discreetness, winner of the $150,000 Smarty Jones Stakes on Jan. 18 at Oaklawn Park.

Discreetness

Sire: Discreet Cat  

Dam: Fondness, by Elusive Quality  

Owner: Xpress Thoroughbreds

Breeder: Trackside Farm and Tenlane Farm (Ky.)

Trainer: William H. Fires

Road to the Kentucky Derby Points: 10 (Ranked No. 12)

Discreetness made his sixth start at his fourth different racetrack in the Smarty Jones Stakes on Jan. 18 at Oaklawn, where he posted a determined upset victory at 9.10-to-1 odds. With four wins to his credit and the 10 points on the Kentucky Derby Leaderboard thanks to his Smarty Jones win, Discreetness is firmly on the Triple Crown trail. The $500,000 Southwest Stakes (gr. III) at Oaklawn on Feb. 15 is the next target for Discreetness.

Ability: Purchased for $105,000 at the 2015 Ocala Breeders' Sales Co.'s sale of 2-year-olds in training, Discreetness has earned $282,122 with four wins in six starts. He won his debut in August at Arlington International Racecourse and sandwiched another win between a pair of unplaced finishes in stakes races—sixth, beaten by 7 3/4 lengths in August in the Arlington-Washington Futurity (gr. III), and fourth by nine lengths as the favorite in the Street Sense Stakes in October at Churchill Downs.

The race between those two stakes was an 8 1/2-length runaway win at Churchill Downs, which earned a then-career-best 90 Equibase Speed Figure and led to Discreetness being sent off as the favorite in the Street Sense. Discreetness bounced back from his fourth in the Street Sense with a win by a nose in the Remington Springboard Mile Stakes, but the Smarty Jones looks like a real breakthrough for this colt. He set a new stakes record by completing the one-mile Smarty Jones in 1:38.05 and he jumped 15 points from his previous career top Equibase Speed Figure to a 105.

It also was nice to see Discreetness battle through the stretch to win by a neck despite running wide throughout the race. He looks like he relishes a good fight and likes to win, which obviously is a nice quality.

Running style: Jockey Jon Court and trainer William H. "Jinks" Fires planned to keep Discreetness a little bit closer to the pace than usual in the Smarty Jones Stakes because one-mile races at Oaklawn use an early finish line.

He was third, 1 1/2 lengths off the pace after both the first quarter-mile and half-mile after racing in seventh, 4 1/4 lengths back, early in the Remington Springboard Mile. This indicates Discreetness has some versatility and also is mature enough to respond to his rider's commands.

"Going a mile here, if you're not first, second, or third at the three-eighths pole it's hard to make up ground," Fires said of the short stretch run in one-mile races. "So we decided to ask him a little early."

A 3-year-old who can come with a big rally from five or six lengths back or race just behind the pacesetter offers his rider and trainer multiple options on the Triple Crown trail depending on whether the early tempo is fast, average or easy.

Connections: Discreetness, owned by Dwight Pruett of Texarkana, is the fourth Arkansas-owned horse in the last five years to win the Smarty Jones Stakes. Pruett races as Xpress Thoroughbreds.

"We've got a great trainer, a great jockey, and a great group of people back at the barn that help us every day," Pruett said. "And a good horse, apparently."

Jinks Fires, 75, has won more than 1,400 races, including 73 stakes, through Jan. 26 since starting his careerin the mid-1970s. Fires won the Southwest Stakes in 2011 with eventual Arkansas Derby (gr. I) winner Archarcharch  , who ran fourth that year in the Smarty Jones and is Fires' only Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (gr. I) runner to date.

Jon Court has amassed 3,939 victories through Jan. 25 since beginning his professional riding career in 1980. Court won the Arkansas Derby twice—Line of David   (2010) and Archarcharch (2011)—among eight career grade I victories. In 2013, he won the Smarty Jones and the Rebel Stakes (gr. II) aboard Will Take Charge  , whose eighth-place finish that year in the Kentucky Derby is Court's best finish from three Derby starters.

Court guided champion Leroidesanimaux to four graded stakes wins in 2004-2005, including a pair of Grade 1 wins, and he also rode two-time Horse of the Year Wise Dan to a pair of stakes wins in 2011. Court's wife, Krystal, is the daughter of Fires and the Smarty Jones victory came on her birthday.

Pedigree: Discreetness is from the fifth crop of grade I winner Discreet Cat, whose top runners to date include grade I winners Discreet Marq and Dads Caps among 11 graded stakes winners. Discreet Cat also won the 2006 United Arab Emirates Derby (UAE-I) and was a very nice runner who was at his best at one mile.

Discreetness is the first winner produced by the unraced Elusive Quality mare Fondness, a half-sister to European group I-winning sprinter Bahamian Pirate and 2003 Jim Dandy (gr. II) and Dwyer Stakes (gr. II) winner Strong Hope.

While his granddam Shining Through also never made it to the races, his third dam was a multiple group stakes winner in Europe as a 2-year-old.

This family also has produced multiple European champion and influential sire El Gran Senor, European champions Malinowski and Try My Best, 2002 Breeders' Cup Mile (gr. IT) winner Domedriver, and 1982 Kentucky Oaks (gr. I) winner Blush With Pride.

Blush With Pride is the granddam of 2007 Belmont Stakes winner and champion Rags to Riches and 2006 Belmont Stakes winner Jazil as well as European champion Peeping Fawn and group I winner Thewayyouare.

Discreetness still needs to prove himself at the graded stakes level, but he is maturing nicely and there is some serious class deep in his pedigree. I'm not ready to tab him a major Kentucky Derby contender yet, but he definitely warrants keeping a close eye on moving forward.