Is Flightline the Greatest Thoroughbred Since Secretariat?

Still, a stout bunch will try to bring Flightline back to earth. Life is Good has won nine of his 11 races. Olympiad is six for his last seven. This year’s Kentucky Derby winner, Rich Strike, and the 2022 Travers champ Epicenter are formidable 3-year-old challengers.

The race promises to be great television (NBC) and, if Flightline prevails, offer a moment of triumph as well as tension for a sport desperate to return to mainstream relevance.

For the colt’s owners, a tough decision looms: Retire Flightline to the breeding shed and at minimum $60 million guarantee, or run him next year as a 5-year-old in the hopes of bolstering the argument that he is one of the sport’s all-time greats?

“We have a once-in-a-generation horse — a Picasso, a masterpiece, that you don’t see too often,” said Terry Finley, the founder and president of West Point Thoroughbreds, which owns Flightline in partnership with Hronis Racing, Siena Farm, Summer Wind Equine and Woodford Racing. “We’ll see how the Classic goes and weigh our options.”

Either way, the ownership group should be rewarded for the patience it demonstrated in managing a star-crossed colt’s stop-and-start journey to the racetrack.

Flightline, the son of Tapit, was a regally bred yearling when he entered the auction ring at the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Sale in 2019. He was muscled, balanced and poised beyond his skittish age. Finley signed the $1 million sales ticket, but partners quickly came aboard.

Even as a toddler, Flightline impressed.

April Mayberry, who put the colt through his early paces at her farm in Ocala, Fla., was compelled to call Sadler early in Flightline’s training to tell him he had a special one coming. Over decades of training hundreds of horses before they reached the racetrack, Mayberry made a similar call only one other time — to the connections of Zenyatta, the mare who won 19 of her 20 races.