Second General Sires' Title for Kitten's Joy

If we can borrow without offense from the carol, sung so widely just a few days ago, then 2018 has brought Joy to the world. And it's high time that “fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains” should echo, on both sides of the ocean, to the lauding of the year's premier sire.

True, entering its final day, Kitten's Joy appeared set to fail by the narrowest of margins to give that status a formal gilding. For a margin of just $62,439 was keeping the nose of Dubawi (Ire) (Dubai Millennium {GB}) in front in TDN's combined earnings table for European and North American stallions. (These figures were set to be updated overnight.)

As it was, Kitten's Joy could settle for his second domestic general sires' title; as well, of course, as the turf championship that he has made routinely his own. But the fact that he has been able to top the general sires' list in North America, in a year when his best performer yet was plying his trade in Europe, confirms Kitten's Joy to be unmistakably the stallion of the widest achievement over the past 12 months.

True, a brave attempt to square the circle did not pay off when Roaring Lion rolled the dice in the Breeders' Cup Classic. That is hardly the kind of assignment that should be undertaken as an afterthought, of course, and the vexing scheduling of a card his owners themselves sponsor at Ascot means that the horse barely had time to be hosed down for his flight to Kentucky after the most draining race of his career. But if those factors mitigate his failure, it was hardly a surprising one.

For the sire who has this year united the transatlantic Turf has done so in a very literal sense. The figurative embrace of dirt racing, generally encompassed in the expression “the Turf”, notoriously does not apply here. Kitten's Joy is no Storm Cat, who became champion sire either side of the ocean by dint of his capacity to sire elite runners on both surfaces. When you filter the North American earnings table to include only dirt racing, in contrast, Kitten's Joy falls way off edge of the top 100. Deep into the year, in fact, TDN assessed the turf proportion of his 2018 earnings as 98 cents in every dollar. There is no point pretending that this is a stallion who contributes in the slightest to my fervent belief that too many people are too prescriptive about the surface requirements of a given sire's stock.

Within those limits, however, Kitten's Joy is actually a very versatile stallion. His stock has excelled in every discipline of grass racing. Roaring Lion and Hawkbill, who has also helped to make his name in Europe, operated between eight and 12 furlongs–which is no less than you would expect, given their sire's own racing pattern. But Kitten's Joy has also sired two Breeders' Cup winners at sprint distances and was champion sire of American 2-year-olds in 2011.

As such, he actually contributes to the extraordinary diversity that is the hallmark of his own sire's legacy–one more legible, admittedly, in Medaglia d'Oro (El Prado {Ire}) and his sons than in Kitten's Joy himself. The net effect, however, is to qualify El Prado as arguably a superior conduit of their sire's potency, if only in terms of the running “map”, than even Galileo (Ire) (Sadler's Wells).

These days, of course, you hear a lot of American horsemen talking a good game about the growth of the turf program, and how that must eventually play to the commercial advantage of sires eligible to populate it. For now, however, they aren't matching words with deeds. In compiling a survey of Kentucky sires for 2019, it has been depressing to see the coolness of the local market reception–at least pending their first runners–for such accomplished and beautifully-bred European imports as Flintshire (GB) (Dansili {GB}) or Karakonite (Jpn) (Bernstein).

These things don't get turned around overnight, of course. But let's not forget the immediate context in which Kitten's Joy elevated himself to still greater heights, in 2018, than he had managed even in a career of such prolific and consistent success.

Because it was only the deal agreed with the far-sighted John Sikura of Hill 'n' Dale that enabled Ken Ramsey–the man whose remarkable commitment and belief drove the rise of Kitten's Joy from 2006–to repent of an inclination, after the Keeneland September Sale of 2017, to export “the most underappreciated sire in North America” to Europe. (Actually, it wasn't just Sikura's deal; evidently the fierce dismay of Ramsey's wife Sarah and their family also helped to keep the horse closer to home!)

Even Ramsey could not have realized the significance of a race in the London suburbs just three days before that sale: a novice event at Kempton in which a young colt by Kitten's Joy made it two-for-two. Roaring Lion had been picked out by David Redvers for his patron Sheikh Fahad at the same sale, a year previously, for just $160,000. Next month, he starts his new career at Tweenhills Stud, with a £40,000 service tag, as the outstanding European colt of his crop: winner of four consecutive Group 1s and a model of toughness as well as class.

Credit goes to his breeder Jan Vandebos for sending her cherished and ill-fated mare Vionnet (Street Sense) to the Ramseys' homemade stallion. As he turns 18, the hope now must be that others will also perceive at last how consistently Kitten's Joy has distributed class through books that owed so much, year after year, to his owner's sheer determination–which, heroic though it was, had to be largely expressed in quantity rather than quality of mares.

The early signs, following his transfer to Hill 'n' Dale, are auspicious. Sikura, having acquired a 50% stake in Kitten's Joy, immediately reduced him to a more commercially accessible fee for 2018–down to $60,000 from $100,000. The reception was such that the horse will stand at $75,000 for the new season. That is still a quarter of the fee commanded by War Front (Danzig), the most expensive sire in the land.

To be fair, it's not hard to understand the initial wariness of commercial breeders. In his racing days, Kitten's Joy had won on turf over as far as a mile and a half, and had not even sampled stakes company at two. (He did end up winning a maiden and an allowance as a juvenile, albeit over eight and a half and nine furlongs.) At three, he was named champion turf horse after winning Grade Is in the Joe Hirsch and Secretariat S., though he failed to exploit a weak European challenge for the Breeders' Cup Turf when shocked by Better Talk Now (Talkin Man). In his third campaign, he did manage to drop back in distance for a Grade II success over a mile, and also finished second in the GI Arlington Million.

Doubtless the sons and grandsons of El Prado have preserved cosmopolitan influences in his background: ranging from Forli, imported from Argentina to sire the grand-dam of Sadler's Wells, to three separate strains of the imported Derby winner Mahmoud. In the case of Kitten's Joy, moreover, three of his four grandparents won Group 1 races over a mile in Europe, even though two of them were by Epsom Derby winners and another was by a Kentucky Derby winner. So there are fairly immediate strains to support his ability to impart speed.

Along the bottom line, incidentally, his fourth grandparent doubles the presence on his page of Tom Fool–always a good thing. (That's because her dam is by his grandson L'Enjoleur {Buckpasser}, mirroring the role of Tom Fool as sire of El Prado's grand-dam.) It's actually a maternal line full of quality and interest, the family of Spectacular Bid among others, but first and foremost there is the dam of Kitten's Joy, Kitten's First (Lear Fan).

A half-sister to one Grade I winner out of a half-sister to another, Kitten's First additionally produced not just another multiple Grade I winner by a Ramsey sire in Precious Kitten (Catienus), but also the stakes-winning dam of champion 2-year-old filly Dreaming of Anna (Rahy). The latter's son Fast Anna (Medaglia d'Oro), now himself at stud at Three Chimneys, reiterated the staggering diversity of the El Prado sire-line when beaten a neck in a race as speed-loaded as the GI King's Bishop S. in only his third career start.

Aided by the 2005 Dubai World Cup success of Roses In May (Devil His Due), the Ramseys built up a broodmare band approaching 200 and at various times mated Kitten's Joy with nearly 90% of them, racing the great majority of foals themselves. Many had plain pages and/or racing records. Even so, after finishing fifth and seventh in his intake through his first two seasons, Kitten's Joy then produced 15 stakes winners to top the crop in its third year.

Of his first 38 stakes winners, no fewer than 36 were bred by the Ramseys. Incredibly, even when his elevation to top of the general list in 2013 was crowned by three Grade I winners on a single summer afternoon, all three were both bred and raced by Ken and Sarah Ramsey.

In his return to top of the all-comers' table in 2018, burden and benefit have been spread a little wider. As such, we are all indebted to Kitten's Joy for demonstrating that a stallion can still top the overall standings through breadth of achievement. For the advent of a race as valuable as the GI Pegasus World Cup Invitational has threatened to skew the earnings model terminally against valid historical comparisons.

Last year, Arrogate (who added another huge pot in Dubai) gave Unbridled's Song a posthumous title, while Gun Runner has elevated Candy Ride (Arg) into second this time round. In fairness, Kitten's Joy has garnered more from his principal earner this year–Hawkbill, thanks largely to his success in the G1 Dubai Sheema Classic–than did third-placed Scat Daddy through the Triple Crown success of Justify. The landscape is changing, and in the future it may yet make sense to give at least as much attention to those parallel tables that rank sires, say, by black-type or graded-stakes winners.

Finally, let's not forget that his modest early partners have hitherto given Kitten's Joy limited scope to enhance his reputation still further as a sire of sires. With young stallions like Oscar Performance and Roaring Lion entering the fray, however, even the new global stature he achieved in 2018 may prove only one extra sign of the overall impetus behind his fresh start at Hill 'n' Dale.