Kentucky Sires for 2019 Part III: First Yearlings

After devoting the first two installments of this series to young stallions whose reputation hitherto rests on the work of farm promoters, and the response of their clients, today we move onto those who have just received their first exposure to the chill winds of the marketplace. For the sires offering their first yearlings in 2019 have, of course, already processed some of them at auction as weanlings.

But if they are no longer shadow-boxing, nor have they reached the definitive test of the prizefight. This phase is rather like sparring in a headguard. At the end of the day, we should still be interested in stallions more eligible to produce a good racehorse than their fee might allow—not panicking because a few agents may have leaped to conclusions about a minority of adolescent stock that has found its way under the gavel.

Nonetheless these first skirmishes can have significant consequences. After all, the countless breeders interested only in producing a yearling, rather than a racehorse, have already dispatched their mares unapologetically to the next cycle of new sires. He who lives by the commercial sword, after all, can die by it too. Many farms, then, must reconcile themselves to trimming fees in the hope of avoiding too conspicuous a slowdown in the third book.

The two Jonabell stallions who topped the weanling averages, however, have both been able to maintain their hire-rates accordingly. Frosted (Tapit) retired at the highest tag of the intake, at $50,000, and achieved an average of $181,500 in moving on 10 of 15 weanlings. He will need to improve that clearance rate with his yearlings, but there were some ambitious reserves—and understandably so, if you remember Frosted's 123 Beyer in the GI Met, and his Grade II-winning dam by the great broodmare sire Deputy Minister. There's no quibbling with a well-bred horse that can win the GII Remsen at two, and then tough out a gruelling sophomore programme before proving better than ever in stallion-making races at four.

Nyquist (Uncle Mo), in contrast, ran himself into the ground through a championship campaign at two and a seamless resumption the following spring to land the Kentucky Derby for his sire's first crop. He is just one of several recent Classic winners not to manage further success, but he's out of a GSW half-sister to the dam of a Grade I winner and benefits from strong broodmare sire-lines through his first two dams (via Forestry and Seeking The Gold).

Obviously Uncle Mo's status as a sire of sires remains unproven, but out of just half a dozen foals offered (five sold) Nyquist came up with the top colt and filly of the intake at $600,000 and $260,000, respectively. It's a tiny sample, relative to 153 mares in both his first two books, but certainly entitles him to hold his fee at $40,000.

The first of the big guns to get a clip is California Chrome (Lucky Pulpit), now available at $35,000 at Taylor Made after covering his first two books of 145 and 133 at $40,000.

During his rise to stardom, the two-time Horse of the Year owed much of his following to parentage that seemed to give everyone a chance: by a $2,500 sire, out of the $8,000 dam Love The Chase (Not For Love). On the face of it, that back story might be somewhat less convenient when it comes to marketing a young stallion. But California Chrome challenges us to think more deeply about the glib assumptions of this business. If the whole premise is that talent results from selective breeding, then this horse's make-up as one of the most accomplished Thoroughbreds of recent times must contain something that we should want to replicate.

Maybe it's the highly unusual fact that a mare as important as Numbered Account (Buckpasser) should be grand-dam of both Love The Chase's parents. Maybe it's the presence of the hard-knocking mare Lucky Spell (Lucky Mel) in exactly the same slot in California Chrome's pedigree as in that of his rival Arrogate (Unbridled's Song): both their sires are out of one of her daughters. Most probably, as ever, it all comes down to the elusive blend of many different genetic strands. So let's not be lazily dogmatic about what they should be.

As it is, California Chrome made a perfectly respectable sales debut, seven out of eight weanlings finding a new home at $116,714. If a small reduction in fee is designed to help him tread water, now could be just the time to keep the faith as he has every right to extend his amazing story further once his stock reaches the track.

California Chrome was just denied third place in the weanling averages, behind Nyquist and Frosted, by the freaky fast Runhappy (Super Saver). Claiborne introduced him at $25,000 and that was always going to get speed-hungry breeders salivating. For all the notorious human elements on the periphery of his tale, there's no arguing with a four-length margin and stakes-record time in a race like the GI King's Bishop; or a track record in the Breeders' Cup Sprint itself.

True, the purist might object that he wasn't really bred for the distinction of inheriting that storied first stall at Claiborne, which previously housed Secretariat and Bold Ruler. There's a single Grade III placing under his second dam, albeit she is herself a half to a Grade II winner. But the bottom line anchors to a significant influence in fifth dam Queen Nasra, while it's interesting that a relatively fragile sire-line should keep coming up with one really strong link to keep the chain going. Something very worthy must be coming through, after all, for him to do everything he did to rivals leaning on their Lasix.

One way or another, Runhappy was able to move on 15 out of 17 weanlings at $148,666, and that's a pretty instructive sample given that Claiborne are commendably conservative with their book sizes. Runhappy has had 123 and 128 partners in his first two seasons, and there are bound to be pinhookers eager to breeze his yearlings.

Number five in the weanling averages was Exaggerator (Curlin), though only by dint of our peculiar habit of rewarding stallions for failing to sell. He is credited with an average of $116,333 but shifted only half of 18 weanlings offered and WinStar give him a precautionary clip to $25,000 from $30,000.

Nonetheless it's very early days for a sire favoured by 325 northern hemisphere covers to date, besides a working holiday in Chile, and he retains every right to pass on something of the class and splendid constitution he showed on the track. Exaggerator was one of those who stood in the dockyard and rolled up his sleeves, ready to take on all comers. After his busy and accomplished juvenile campaign—Grade II winner, Grade I runner-up—he won the GI Santa Anita Derby by six, chased home Nyquist in the big one and then picked him off in the Preakness. Perhaps most instructive is the way he shook himself down after his Belmont flop to win a third Grade I in the Haskell. He did all this with a pretty physique and a good Canadian family.

Air Force Blue (War Front) is next in the averages at $84,119, and 16 sales out of 20 speaks of warm interest in a Coolmore stallion offered to the American market at $25,000 after his mystifying failure to train on back in Europe. Unusually enough he was trimmed to $20,000 for his second season, when his book diminished to 106 from 153. He was as accomplished a juvenile as the great Aidan O'Brien has trained since Johannesburg (Hennessy)—whose own sophomore campaign, funnily enough, was also disappointing. The question now is whether he can leave a legacy remotely comparable to the sire of Scat Daddy?

Air Force Blue had the best possible grounding at Stone Farm, and his dam is out of a sister to champion Flanders (Seeking The Gold), herself dam of another champion in Surfside (Seattle Slew). As a triple Group 1 winner who looks the part, and standing at a fraction of the fee commanded by his sire, his appeal is as plain as the caveats some will feel about a turf sprinter who lost his way. It was all or nothing, during his racing days, and it feels as though the same might prove true of his second career. Feel free to guess, according to whether your glass is half full or half empty, but at least the fee appears to strike a sensible balance.

It is hard to think of any doubts whatsoever that should have to be factored into Flintshire (GB) (Dansili {GB}). Few horses in this intake were anything like as accomplished on the track as this five-time Grade/Group I winner of $9.5 million (also a dual Arc runner-up), and he looks crazy value down to $15,000 from an opening $20,000 at Hill 'n' Dale.

The peerless Juddmonte programme has never produced a richer runner and, once he got onto a fast surface, Flintshire was able to show rare acceleration for a horse over Classic distances. (Try 44:56 for his final half-mile in the GI Manhattan.) His breeders have partnered with others who can send him proper mares and the chance to ride the wave, at that fee, looks an extraordinary bargain.

It's an unapologetically turf pedigree but one that genuinely qualifies him to produce elite horses on the world stage. He's out of a Group 2-winning Classic runner-up, and by one of the world's best-bred sires. This all played out in a superb temperament and outlook, and teak soundness. With 121 in his first book but 89 in his second, he can't have been getting as much outside support as the ownership must have hoped. But they will have the last laugh, along with other far-sighted end-users.

For now his fee stands as a rebuke to the paucity of imagination in too many horsemen, and likewise a humdrum average of $44,509 for 16 weanlings sold from 19 offered. Here is a horse amply qualified to succeed his studmate Kitten's Joy (El Prado {Ire}) as a turf patriarch, but there are obviously a lot of flat-earthers out there who think you fall off the end of the world at the seven pole on the main track.

In that context, the small books so far assembled by Tamarkuz (Speightstown) at Shadwell, of 38 and 42, are even more puzzling. Here, after all, is a dirt miler we last saw routing the next two Breeders' Cup Classic winners. The four weanlings who came under the hammer sold well, for an average $82,500, an auspicious enough start relative to a $12,500 conception fee—never mind an attractive trim to $10,000 this time round.

His page received an upgrade it could barely accommodate this year with the rapid rise of his half-brother Without Parole (Frankel), winner of the G1 St James's Palace S. for their astute breeders at Glennwood. The dam is a half-sister to dual Grade I winner Stay Thirsty (Bernardini) and to another Belmont S. runner-up in Andromeda's Hero (Fusaichi Pegasus), out of a five-time Grade I runner-up. And the bottom line just holds up all the way: sixth dam a sister to Triple Crown winner Assault, for instance, and ninth dam sister to Man o' War himself.

For those benighted enough to view such scrolls of parchment as irrelevant, the foreground shows us Tamarkuz signing off in the Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile with a daylight success from Gun Runner (Candy Ride {Arg}) and Accelerate (Lookin At Lucky). If neither had quite reached his peak, that is one hell of a podium from which to look back on four years of improvement. True, the span of his career implies that Tamarkuz might not be an overnight sensation at stud—but he looks highly eligible to get you a racehorse, and got very close to making the value podium.

Another son of the same sire in this intake has been covering much bigger books. In fact, the 174 ladies entertained by Speightster (Speightstown) at WinStar last year made him the busiest of the rookies, and another 150 followed this time round. His fee has been held at $10,000 after 29 of 36 weanlings changed hands for an average $60,517.

It must be said that the evidence is fairly precarious, with three wins from just four lifetime starts to confirm his natural speed. To impress in maiden, allowance and Grade III company is all very well, so far as it goes, but what makes the theory hang together is a dam (admittedly herself unable to race at all) who is sister to the outstanding runner and producer Dance Smartly (Danzig) and half-sister to Smart Strike (Mr Prospector). As always when a new sire is so heavily subscribed, you can't expect each and every yearling to hit at the sales—but equally sheer numbers on the track should keep his name in lights.

WinStar is also home to Tourist (Tiznow), who covered 134 and then 102 mares and gets a helpful trim to $10,000 from $12,500 after shifting nine of 11 weanlings at $49,000. He's a likeable type, who in contrast got better the harder and longer he raced, winding up by shocking Tepin (Bernstein) in a race-record Breeders' Cup Mile—his second Grade I win as a 5-year-old. His dam produced three stakes winners by lesser sires than the wonderful one who gave us Tourist.

The same farm has been able to hold Outwork (Uncle Mo) at $15,000 after he seduced a remarkable first book of 168, followed by 137 last year. He found buyers for 20 of 26 weanlings at $52,400. So here's another who can't be expected to hit it out of the park every time at the sales but can keep himself in the game with a running population.

It's not hard to see why commercial breeders should be drawn to a big fast horse who was actually his sire's first winner, over 4 1/2 furlongs at Keeneland in April. Outwork's big coup was to cling on for the Wood Memorial the following spring, albeit you couldn't pretend that it particularly reads like a Grade I race now and he disappeared after running down the field in the Kentucky Derby. The clincher for many will be that he's out of a Grade I-placed Empire Maker half-sister to Airdrie's buzzing young sire Cairo Prince (Pioneerof The Nile).

My pick of this intake last year was Taylor Made's Not This Time (Giant's Causeway) at $15,000—a fee he holds after selling 18 of 24 weanlings at an average $76,833.

In fairness, this is another who did not last the course, retired after finishing second in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile. But at least Not This Time established his elite calibre that day, not getting the rub of the green yet just failing to run down champion Classic Empire (Pioneerof the Nile). Injury condemned him to leave the matter there, but the winner and seven-length third Practical Joke (Into Mischief) were retired at $35,000 and $30,000 respectively. That leaves Not This Time looking great value as one of the last heirs—and probably the most precocious, having won the GIII Iroquois S. by 8 3/4 lengths from the subsequent Kentucky Derby runner-up—to his magnificent sire.

His family drips quality. He shares a dam with Liam's Map (Unbridled's Song), himself now making his name at Lane's End, and her mother was inbred 2×3 to Dr Fager's champion half-sister Ta Wee. In fact Not This Time's third dam is by Damascus out of a daughter of Secretariat and Ta Wee. Dismiss all that if you want to, but something lurking in their make-up made Liam's Map an $800,000 yearling—and Not This Time a physical knockout too.

His 274 mates to date include none other than Leslie's Lady (Tricky Creek), dam of Into Mischief (Harlan's Holiday), Beholder (Henny Hughes) and Mendelssohn (Scat Daddy). If Not This Time is good enough for her, I ain't going to quit him any time soon.

Taylor Made appears to be launching another of their young sires from a rather more slippery ramp, having given Mshawish (Medaglia d'Oro) another $5,000 cut to $10,000 (opened at $20,000) after his book slipped from 117 to 73. Let's hope they get rewarded for grasping the nettle, because this is a horse with assets every breeder should covet: the class to take fourth in the G1 Prix du Jockey-Club in his Classic year, and the durability and versatility to win the Grade I races on turf and dirt at five and six. After all, isn't a horse like this supposed to be the whole point of his stellar sire?

The GI Donn H. was Mshawish's seventh consecutive triple-figure Beyer, and his second dam is a Storm Cat half-sister to both a five-time GSW and the dam of champion Halfbridled (Unbridled). Maybe his starting fee reflected his achievements more closely than the peculiar tastes of the market, which nonetheless took up 10 of 11 weanlings at a respectable $60,100. (The pick were obviously nice for the grade, his top colt and filly respectively bringing $160,000 and $170,000.) Mshawish could easily turn things round for those with the patience to let his stock show their mettle on the track.

Best market welcome for a $10,000 sire was reserved for Upstart (Flatter), who sold 15 of 22 at $64,733. That's no surprise, given his own fine physique and record of two Grade I podiums through ages two, three and four. Perhaps his finest hour was thrashing Frosted 5 1/2 lengths in the GII Holy Bull S., and he's in the same deft hands that gave Cairo Prince such a super start at Airdrie. His bottom line is propped up by some interesting broodmare sires: his dam by Deputy Minister's son Touch Gold, and his third dam by Drone, a very potent distaff influence (witness two Kentucky Derby winners and European great Dancing Brave).

The Albaugh Family Stable, who homebred Not This Time, also launched Brody's Cause by the same sire at Spendthrift. Much like Not This Time, there are for-the-ages names along the bottom line: a fourth dam by Dr Fager out of a Bold Ruler half-sister to Secretariat's dam Somethingroyal. Closer up, you've a Grade I runner-up as second dam; and Brody's Cause himself won Grade I races at two and three, hit the board behind Nyquist in the Juvenile and finished well out of midfield in the Derby.

Another career that didn't last a year, but he proved himself among the best of his generation and a businesslike cut from $12,500 to $7,500 makes him a really attractive proposition. Certainly it's a generous response to the sale of eight weanlings out of 13 at $41,687, just a fair toehold for books of 101 and 110. But Brody's Cause remains a noble one. Hats off to the late Giant's Causeway, and to the Albaugh Family for sending him mares representing such fine bloodlines: that gives them two out of three on the value podium.

A notch down the Spendthrift roster appear a couple of $5,000 rolls of the dice. Hit It a Bomb (War Front) is his marquee sire's first Breeders' Cup winner, albeit he admittedly beat a plain enough field for the Juvenile Turf. He wasn't able to build on that at three, but is a brother to another juvenile Group 1 winner from a classy turf family. Cinco Charlie (Indian Charlie) meanwhile won the GIII Bashford Manor S. on his second start, the first of seven black-type wins across three seasons. A brisk, hard-knocking type, he's out of a half-sister to GSW by his sire in Bwana Charlie and My Pal Charlie.

Calumet have given Big Blue Kitten (Kitten's Joy) a helping hand, down to $10,000 from $15,000 after his book slipped from 93 to 68. You have to love the hardiness of an animal who was better than ever at seven, adding his third and fourth Grade Is and beaten only by a pair of Arc winners in the Breeders' Cup Turf. Unfortunately perseverance at eight did not pay off and it goes without saying that class, constitution and consistency for some reason have little play with the other “c” word: commerciality. Big Blue Kitten retains every right to breed you a runner, if that happens to be your game.

The same farm keeps his old rival Slumber (GB) (Cacique {Ire}) at $5,000. This horse has a seriously good pedigree: second, third and fourth dams are either Grade I winners or Grade I producers, respectively by Seattle Slew, Northern Dancer and Buckpasser; while his sire is out of the Juddmonte blue hen Hasili (Ire) (Kahyasi {Ire}) and is only so little known because of fertility issues. On the track, Slumber followed much the same path as Big Blue Kitten—generally in his slipstream, except for when getting first run for his Grade I day in the sun in the Manhattan. With those genes, however, he could yet have the last word in their rivalry.

Crestwood have quietly assembled an intriguing roster and Firing Line (Line of David) gives you performance and pedigree for just $5,000. Yes, pedigree: though hardly by a celebrated sire of sires, grandsire Lion Heart is making a name that way; while if his damsire Hold For Gold (Red Ransom) also lacks resonance, the fact is that the dam was Grade I-placed and traces directly to a champion and matriarch in Square Angel (Quadrangle). Only American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile) could beat Firing Line in the Kentucky Derby, while he had previously won the GIII Sunland Derby by 14 lengths and been precocious enough to run Dortmund (Big Brown) to a head in the GI Los Alamitos Futurity.

Texas Red (Afleet Alex) could also turn out to be plenty of horse for $7,500 at the same farm. The style of his GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile success is hard to forget, and was backed up by the time; and while he was restricted to a patchy sophomore campaign, he did manage to beat Frosted in the GII Jim Dandy. He's certainly a pretty wild outcross option, not least thanks to a classy Chilean family.

The venerable sire of Texas Red counts Anchor Down (Tapit) among his younger neighbours at Gainesway. He has had a trim to $7,500 from $10,000 despite selling eight of 11 weanlings at $51,025. A half-brother to GI Test S. winner Sweet Lulu (Mr Greeley), his poster moment came in seeing off Tamarkuz in a very fast time for the GII Kelso H.

Protonico (Giant's Causeway) has now shown up at Castletown Lyons, his third home in three years, at $5,000 from $6,500; he was only beaten a half-length in the GI Clark and is another offering some spicy Chilean genes.

Down to the same fee, from $7,500, is Ironicus (Distorted Humor) at Claiborne; he is one of five GSW out of his dam, and broke a track record on the Saratoga lawn. He finished with three strong finishes in the best of company, runner-up in the GI Manhattan and GI Shadwell Mile before weaving into fourth in the Breeders' Cup Mile itself. A really admirable animal, he traces to an important mare in Admiring and let's hope books of just 40-odd hold up long enough to give him a chance on the track.

Finally V.E. Day (English Channel) has arrived at Buck Pond from New York at $6,500. Quite something to win a dirt race as prestigious as the GI Travers with that pedigree: by a turf-oriented sire, and second dam a sister to grass champion Sunshine Forever. But he's out of a Deputy Minister mare and to get him that close up, nowadays, is nearly worth the tag on its own.

CHRIS McGRATH'S VALUE PODIUM
Gold: Flintshire $15,000, Hill 'n' Dale
Silver: Not This Time $15,000, Taylor Made
Bronze: Brody's Cause $7,500, Spendthrift