Final Gambit one of three stakes winners for Not This Time on Saturday
And Tapit breaks new ground with Tiztastic
By Frances J. Karon
It wasn’t so very long ago that Brad Cox developed an up-and-coming horse for Juddmonte at Turfway Park, in 2022-’23 when Idiomatic (Curlin) made five of the first six starts of her career on the all-weather track in Florence, Kentucky. Her four wins at Turfway culminated in the 2023 Latonia S.—her first career black-type win—on the Jeff Ruby Steaks undercard early on in the campaign that led to her first of two Eclipse Awards.
This past Saturday, Final Gambit (Not This Time), another Juddmonte homebred trained by Cox, made the leap from Turfway maiden winner in February to Grade 3 winner in a month with a wide, eye-catching, last-to-first move to win the Jeff Ruby Steaks by 3 1/2 lengths at 15-1. It was the colt’s fourth start, having run third on the turf at Churchill in his debut in November and second at Turfway in January.
Final Gambit, the fifth in his direct line to carry Juddmonte silks, comes from a long line of mares that raced exclusively on grass—first dam Pachinko (Tapit; winner), second dam Hachita (Gone West; winner), third dam Choice Spirit (Danzig; listed stakes winner in France), fourth dam Zaizafon (The Minstrel; Group 3 winner in England), fifth dam Mofida (Right Tack; stakes winner in England), sixth dam Wold Lass (Vilmorin; winner), seventh dam Cheb (Denturius; winner).
His dam Pachinko is a half-sister to turf Group 1 winner Announce (Selkirk), turf Group 3 winner Mexican Gold (Medaglia d’Oro), and three stakes-placed turf horses. The extended family includes champion/Classic winner Zafonic (Gone West) and his Group 3-winning full brother Zamindar—both of whom were excellent sires for Juddmonte; G1 Oaks winner Reams of Verse (Nureyev) and her Group 1-winning half-brother Elmaamul (Diesis); and G1 Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf winner Midday (Oasis Dream). Yes, turf; all of them. You get the picture.
The 100 points Final Gambit earned will be enough to get Final Gambit into the Kentucky Derby field should connections choose to go that route, bearing in mind that he’d be the first in his direct female lineage to even make a start on dirt. (His dam’s half-sister Mexican Gold is the dam of Pure Force, a Constitution 4-year-old with two dirt wins.)
FINAL GAMBIT (2022 Not This Time – Pachinko, by Tapit)
B: Juddmonte
O: Juddmonte
T: Brad Cox
Record: 4-2-1-1, $520,639
Highest achievement: Grade 3 winner
Last Auction Price: none
Whichever way he goes from here, what we can say for certain is that Final Gambit’s pedigree is steeped in quality top to bottom. He’s the 46th stakes winner by Taylor Made stallion Not This Time, who had three stakes winners—including two first-timers—on Saturday. A couple of hours before Final Gambit, his daughter Way to Be Marie, stakes winner #45, won the listed Tom Benson Memorial on the Fair Grounds grass, followed by Dana’s Beauty in the Latonia S. on the Jeff Ruby card for the second year in a row. Dana’s Beauty is less than $25,000 short of a million in earnings.
Not This Time has proven to be a versatile sire with regard to surface and distance aptitudes—he got champion 3-year-old Epicenter, winner of the G1 Travers, from a European/turf family; and the second dam of his champion turf horse Up to the Mark, a Grade 1 winner on grass from 8-10 fur., was a dirt sprinter. Not This Time’s 23 graded stakes winners are almost evenly split on dirt and turf/all-weather surfaces, so he is liable to get high-class runners on any surface, as did his sire Giant’s Causeway.
Final Gambit is Not This Time’s third stakes winner from 14 foals of racing age (including current 2-year-olds, one of which is a full sister to Final Gambit) out of Tapit mares. The others are Arzak, a millionaire/dual Grade 2 winner; and Tony Eclipse, a stakes winner last year at two. Not This Time also has G1 Dubai Golden Shaheen winner Sibelius from a mare by Tapit’s sire Pulpit.
Tapit’s big day
Tapit was the broodmare sire of five stakes winners on Saturday: Grade 2 Louisiana Derby winner Tiztastic (Tiz the Law); Grade 3 winners Final Gambit (Not This Time) and Red Route Run (Gun Runner); and stakes winners Bless the Broken (Laoban) and Mucho Macho Girl (Mucho Macho Man). Three of the five were winning a stakes race for the first time, taking Tapit up to 126 stakes winners as a broodmare sire.
You may have noticed that 3-year-old Tiztastic—a listed stakes winner and multiple graded stakes-placed at two—is from the first crop of Belmont S. winner Tiz the Law, who stands at Coolmore America (and who got his sixth stakes winner, Cloe, on Sunday). Trained by Steve Asmussen, Tiztastic is the third graded winner and first millionaire for his young sire, and he heads the Kentucky Derby points leaderboard with 119.
TIZTASTIC (2022 Tiz the Law – Keesha, by Tapit)
B: Capital Bloodstock
O: Winchell Thoroughbreds LLC, Mrs. John Magnier, Michael B. Tabor, and Derrick Smith
T: Steve Asmussen
Record: 8-3-1-2, $1,549,800
Highest achievement: Grade 2 winner
Last Auction Price: $335,000 Keeneland September
Tiz the Law is by Constitution, a son of Tapit, so Tiztastic is closely inbred, at 3x2, to Tapit. Tiztastic is the sole stakes winner inbred to Tapit, and his sireline/broodmare sireline pattern of Tapit over Tapit mimics the formula that produced European champion Enable, by Nathaniel (by Galileo, by Sadler’s Wells) out of a daughter of Sadler’s Wells, with Sadler’s Wells 3x2.
