Irish War Cry born to run for New Jersey

Can anything as erratic as a racehorse truly serve as an agent of destiny? Well, we’ll find out Sunday. For if ever a horse was born to win a race, it was Irish War Cry.

He lines up for the 50th Haskell Invitational Stakes at Monmouth Park not only as lone champion of a decimated breeding industry, but as a poignant symbol of its past glories.

His owner-breeder, Isabelle De Tomaso, is an octogenarian of impossibly glamorous antecedents and daughter of none other than Amory L. Haskell. It was Haskell - harnessing both a spirit of postwar renewal, and the racing passion bequeathed by a wife recently killed in a car accident - who founded Monmouth in 1946, a phoenix from the ashes of the track shut down by an anti-gambling lobby in the 1890s. And it is his example, in overcoming the longstanding prejudices of legislators, that must inspire New Jersey horsemen today. For their business is on its knees.

Casino

Surrounded by states able to inflate purses with casino profits, New Jersey breeders nowadays have little incentive to invest in a flimsy calendar that subsists, beyond Monmouth, only in a single turf meeting prised from the harness racing at Meadowlands. In 1996, New Jersey staged 2,455 races; as recently as 2010, purses reached $50 million. Last year there were 642 races worth a total of $20.3 million.

Things have now reached such a nadir for breeders that only 32 mares were bred in New Jersey in 2016 - compared with a foal crop, back in the mid-1980s, reckoned as high as 1,400.

In 2013, when De Tomaso sent a mare named Irish Sovereign to visit Curlin in Kentucky, the resulting foal was among 118 thoroughbreds loyally delivered in New Jersey the following year. His emergence among the cream of the national crop, as Irish War Cry, in itself remains unlikely to turn the tide when neighbouring New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania can offer such lucrative programmes and bonuses for state-breds. But just as Smarty Jones was credited with winning over Pennsylvanian politicians to "racinos", so it is hoped that Irish War Cry can put his shoulder to the wheel for similar lobbies in his native state.

Irish War Cry: brings together past and present in bidding to salvage the future of New Jersey breedingCredit: Michael Reaves

That would mean a great deal to De Tomaso, with her father’s legacy in mind. True, she is no longer resident at Red Bank, instead dividing her time between Palm Beach and Italy - addresses entirely consistent with her cosmopolitan past, including as a pioneer among female racing drivers.

It was through motorsports that she met her husband, Alejandro. He led an exotic life, not least when restrained at gunpoint as Fangio was kidnapped before the Cuban Grand Prix in 1958. De Tomaso - in tall, blonde counterpoint to the dark Argentinian allure of her husband - raced both alongside Alejandro, and in her own right. She preferred the sleeker European cars to the macho American vehicles of the time, but it was her growing interest in another kind of horsepower that inspired her to bestow the names Deauville and Longchamp on two luxury saloons manufactured by Alejandro's company. (Its most celebrated model, the Pantera, was driven by Elvis Presley - though he is said to have gone one step beyond Basil Fawlty when experiencing engine trouble, firing a gun at it.)

Foundation

Having built up a European stable during the 1960s, in 1971 De Tomaso exported a mare named Irish Trip - a descendant of Duccia Di Buoninsegna, one of Tesio's foundation mares, and beyond her of Pretty Polly - to Monmouth County and mated her with Beau Genius, Shoemaker's last stakes winner. The result was Irish Genius, whose daughter by Polish Numbers is the dam of Irish War Cry.

Irish Sovereign also has a five-year-old son of English Channel, named Irish Strait, himself a stakes winner and slated to appear on the Haskell undercard. Her 2013 date with Curlin came after his fee (now $150,000) had ebbed to $25,000. Indeed, Irish War Cry is one of just 39 live foals recorded in his fifth crop. As such, he represents a double act of faith on the part of De Tomaso: in both Curlin, and the paddocks of New Jersey.

In helping Curlin through his most vulnerable hour, Irish War Cry has certainly amplified the credentials of his sire as a Classic influence. Irish Sovereign, after all, was a sprinter (by a sprinter out of a sprinter) yet Irish War Cry was only worn down late by Tapwrit when attempting to make all in the Belmont last time.

Though run down late by Tapwrit, Irish War Cry showed more stamina than might be expected when second in the Belmont last timeCredit: Al Bello

True, his speedy damsire Polish Numbers is a half-brother to two Grade 1 winners over ten furlongs, their dam - champion filly Numbered Account - being by a broodmare sire who can always stamp Classic quality in Buckpasser. And then, of course, there are the sturdy European bloodlines exported by De Tomaso through Irish Trip: a daughter of Arc winner Saint Crespin III out of a mare by Tambourine II, an Irish Derby-winning son of the copper-bottomed Princequillo.

But the important thing, now, is that those Old World roots sustain a new bloom in the Garden State.

From the moment Irish War Cry won the Holy Bull Stakes in February, Sunday has been in the back of everyone's mind. Never mind that his subsequent win in the Wood Memorial qualified him to start as second favourite for the Kentucky Derby, where he seemed to be going best only to drop away into tenth. Graham Motion, his trainer, insists that there has never been the slightest pressure from the owner. But even in the spring people were wryly talking about the Kentucky Derby as a prep for the Haskell.

Sister

Usually, De Tomaso and her sister Hope Haskell Jones present the wood-and-silver trophy together. This time, they hope that one will present it to the other.

Perhaps, in the shade of trees planted by their parents, they can exorcise the apparent curse over New Jersey racing. Even when Monmouth embraced the Breeders' Cup, in 2007, its reward was an appalling deluge and the grotesque demise of George Washington.

If nothing else, Irish War Cry can remind the Jersey Shore politicians what is at stake. Stepping onto the track to the strains of another hometown hero - Bruce Springsteen, singing Born To Run - he will draw together national and local heritage.

This spring De Tomaso sent Irish Sovereign to Curlin's son Exaggerator, whose name just happens to be the latest etched on the roll of honour. The one beneath? American Pharoah, for his first port of call as a Triple Crown winner; extending a litany of champions stretching through Rachel Alexandra, Skip Away, Holy Bull and Bet Twice to the last New Jersey-bred winner, Thanks To Tony, in 1980.

The big question is whether Sunday has been written in the stars, since the day Irish War Cry was delivered at Overbrook Farm near Colt’s Neck; or whether he instead represents the fiery plunge of a doomed comet towards the ocean horizon.