2019 Hopeful Stakes Winner
Sire: Liam's Map
Grandsire: Unbridled's Song
Dam: Appenzell
Damsire: Johannesburg
Sex: Male
Foaled: 2017
Country: United States
Colour: Chestnut
Breeder: Cottonwood Stables, LLC
Owner: Jackpot Farm
Trainer: Todd A. Pletcher
Jockey: Albin Jimenez
Record: 12 Starts: 3 - 3 - 1
Earnings: $573,640
Major races: 2021 Sir Shackleton Stakes, 2020 Arkansas Derby, 2019 Hopeful Stakes
Saratoga in late summer is where two-year-old reputations are made, and on August 31, 2019, Basin made his. A bay colt foaled in 2017 in Kentucky and bred by Cottonwood Stables, he was sired by Liam's Map, the brilliant Lane's End stallion who won the 2015 Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile and was just establishing himself as a sire of speed, out of the Johannesburg mare Appenzell, herself the dam of multiple graded stakes winners. He was a late foal — a fact often noted in retrospect — and he was acquired and campaigned by Jackpot Farm with Steve Asmussen in the saddle as conditioner. Through the early summer he looked like a promising maiden; by the end of August, he looked like a Grade 1 horse.
That transformation came in the Hopeful Stakes, the historic seven-furlong Grade 1 that closes the Saratoga meet for juveniles. Off a debut second by a nose at Churchill Downs and a maiden score at the Spa, Basin met a deep field over a sloppy track with Jose Ortiz aboard. He stalked the pace, took control turning for home, and drew off through the lane to win by 6½ lengths in an all-Asmussen trifecta over Shoplifted and Gozilla — a romp emphatic enough to make him the first Grade 1 winner for his sire and to install him among the early favorites for the following year's Triple Crown trail. The Hopeful proved to be the high-water mark of his career; the trail he was supposed to lead in 2020 turned into a series of disappointing finishes, and although he raced through age four, he never returned to that Saratoga form.
He was retired in September 2021 with three wins from twelve starts, earnings of $573,640, and the kind of singular Grade 1 line that catches a stallion-maker's eye. Spendthrift Farm signed him for stud duties beginning with the 2022 breeding season, and his early progeny have begun to register on the racetrack, with thirteen winners from his debut crop. Basin's racing story is, finally, the story of one unforgettable Saratoga afternoon — a length-drawing, sloppy-track, headline-making Hopeful — surrounded by the more uneven realities that follow most two-year-old champions into their three- and four-year-old seasons.
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