In early April 1989, trainer Shug McGaughey, back on the East Coast, had the Santa Anita Derby on his mind. McGaughey trained Easy Goer, champion 2-year-old of 1988, a brilliant winner of his first two starts at age 3. Two weeks after the Santa Anita Derby, Easy Goer would cement his favoritism for the Kentucky Derby by winning the Wood Memorial by three lengths. McGaughey watched as a colt named Sunday Silence, who hadn’t even faced stakes competition as a 2-year-old, roared to an 11-length win in the Santa Anita Derby. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘I wish someone was training him besides Charlie Whittingham,’ ” McGaughey said. The 1989 Derby came May 6, with Easy Goer heavily favored. He never had a chance, as Sunday Silence got first run after stalking the leaders, bobbing and weaving to the wire once he had made the lead, still winning by 2 1/2 lengths. “Sunday Silence, he was more a taller, lankier type horse. He could really run around those quick turns, very athletic,” McGaughey said. The rivalry ran through the end of 1989, with Easy Goer besting Sunday Silence in the Belmont Stakes, and Sunday Silence home by a neck in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Both colts were injured and retired during the summer of 1990, post-racing paths diverging along the same lines as their pre-racing history. :: DRF Kentucky Derby Package: Save on PPs, Clocker Reports, Betting Strategies, and more. Sunday Silence, by Halo out of Wishing Well, by Understanding, had so little market force behind him that Arthur Hancock, who had raised the colt at his Stone Farm in Kentucky, bought him back from Keeneland’s 1987 summer yearling sale for $17,000. Hancock sent 2-year-old Sunday Silence to auction in California, hoping to get $50,000. He took the colt home again for $32,000. Upon retirement, Hancock looked high and low for a suitable stallion deal. Easy Goer, an Ogden Phipps homebred with a blue-blooded pedigree (by Alydar and out of Relaxing, by Buckpasser), took up residence in the No. 1 stallion stall at the legendary Claiborne Farm. With little American interest, Sunday Silence went to Japan. In 1990, Japanese breeder Zenya Yoshida bought a 25 percent interest in Sunday Silence, then buying out the horse’s American owners for $7.5 million and taking Sunday Silence to stand at Shadai Stallion Station. The acquisition of a Derby winner raised the stature of a relatively modest Japanese breeding industry, but no one could have imagined the heights to which Sunday Silence would take Japanese bloodstock nor the arc of influence the horse would have geographically and through time. Easy Goer, breeding top-shelf mares, began solidly at stud, but perished in 1994. Sunday Silence died relatively young himself, as a 16-year-old in 2002. It is not easy these days to find the name Easy Goer in the pedigree of an important horse in America, even more so in other racing jurisdictions. Sunday Silence’s shadow covers most of the racing world – even the 2024 Kentucky Derby. :: KENTUCKY DERBY 2024: Derby Watch, point standings, prep schedule, news, and more Forever Young has won his first five starts, including two rich stakes in the Middle East, and his performance in the U.A.E. Derby on March 30 punched his ticket to the Derby. Excluding Ski Captain’s appearance in 1995, Forever Young is the sixth Japanese horse to come to the Derby. All of them have Sunday Silence blood in their veins. Lani, ninth in 2016, is out of a dam by Sunday Silence. Master Fencer, sixth in 2019, is by Just a Way, who is by Heart’s Cry – a son of Sunday Silence. Crown Pride, 13th after a speed duel in 2022, is by Reach the Crown, by Special Week, by Sunday Silence. Last year’s two runners, Derma Sotogake (sixth) and Mandarin Hero (12th) both are out of Sunday Silence mares. Forever Young, the best Derby chance Japan has put forth, is by Real Steel, a major middle-distance turf winner. Real Steel is by Deep Impact, and Deep Impact is by Sunday Silence. This colt, a burly chestnut, looks nothing like his great grandfather and is not nearly as fast, but he can run. Real Steel is relatively new on the stallion scene, the third generation of sires from Sunday Silence, who has proven even more potent as a genetic influence than as a racehorse. Seventeen of his sons have sired Group 1 or Grade 1 winners, though the best of them is Real Steel’s sire, Deep Impact. Deep Impact, who died in 2019, is the best Japanese stallion outside of Sunday Silence. Unlike his father, who had little opportunity to cover mares not foaling in Japan, Deep Impact attracted mares from Europe and beyond. One of them, the Galileo mare Rhododendron, produced a colt named Auguste Rodin, who gave the Sunday Silence line an Epsom Derby winner last June before coming to America from Ireland to land the Breeders’ Cup Turf. McGaughey is 73 now. Whittingham died in 1999. Arthur Hancock, who turned 81 in February, likes to recount his first specific memory of Sunday Silence. Still standing with his dam in Field 17 at Stone Farm, Sunday Silence caught Hancock’s eye one morning. Other foals in the field lazed about or nursed. One darted in and out of mares, wheeling and cavorting. Thirty-eight years later, half a continent and the Pacific Ocean away from where he died, that foal’s great grandson runs in the Kentucky Derby. Forever Young, indeed. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.