The brilliant, but sadly now retired, Not This Time, was the second top rated on the US Experimental Free Handicap, released in the US on Thursday.
The Jockey Club Experimental Free Handicap, published annually since 1935, is a weight-based assessment of the previous year’s leading two-year-olds, with the weights compiled for a hypothetical race at 1 1/16 miles.
This year’s list of eligible horses to be weighted included all two-year-olds of 2016 that started in graded or listed stakes races run in the United States and Canada.
Not This Time (who is out of a daughter of Drakenstein Stud’s reigning champion sire Trippi) was rated 125 pounds –just one pound log leader, and Eclipse Champion 2YO Classic Empire. The latter, who makes his return in Saturday’s G2 Lambholm South Holy Bull Stakes, won four of five outings last year including the G1 Sentient Jet Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and G1 Claiborne Breeders’ Futurity.
Not This Time, sadly now retired to stud, won two of four outings and was a close second (beaten just a neck) to Classic Empire in the G1 Sentient Jet Breeders’ Cup.
The Trippi grandson, who also romped to an 8.75 length win in the G3 Iroquois Stakes, is rated above such G1 winning 2yos of 2016 as Oscar Performance (BC Juvenile Turf), Practical Joke (Champagne and Hopeful Stakes), Mastery (Los Alamitos Futurity), and Gormley (Front Runner Stakes).
Not This Time (by Giant’s Causeway) is out of Trippi’s multiple stakes winning daughter Miss Macy Sue –who is also dam of Lane’s End’s exciting young sire Liam’s Map. That son of Unbridled’s Song won six of just eight outings including the G1 Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile and G1 Woodward Stakes.
Trippi, broodmare sire of the now Taylor Made Farms based Not This Time, has enjoyed another great run of success in 2017.
Not only is the son of End Sweep responsible for joint record holding yearling colt Charles (who was sold for R6 000 000 at the recent Cape Premier Yearling Sale), but he is also sire of recent $500 000 CTS Sprint winner Live Life.