2019 Kentucky Sires: Established Sires

The whole thing's crazy, really.

In five previous instalments of this series, we've surveyed a dazing variety of young stallions–among which only a single intake has even undertaken the cursory test of actually loading some adolescent stock into the starting gate.

The percentage of mares sent to these unproven sires is pretty horrifying, when you consider how quickly most of them will promptly be written off–more often than not on the self-fulfilling basis that their fees, books and sale dividends start to fall as soon as they get anywhere near exposure on the track. You have to get very lucky to stumble across one that not only survives the initial commercial ordeal of the sales ring, courtesy of a wholly unreliable consensus, but then conjures enough credits from his first couple of crops on the track to prevent a terminal freefall in his book.

For every Pioneerof The Nile or Uncle Mo, standing at six figures after pulling an American Pharoah or Nyquist out of their hats, there will be a cavalry of stallions very soon banished to regional or overseas service. They trudge away like pawns cynically sacrificed in a recurring stalemate, annually renewed in the hope of someday fluking a move that traps the market in a profitable “check.”

But if history tells us that new sires are never again likely to command as high a fee, then conversely there is real value to be had among the survivors. Not so much the sire kings, the War Fronts and Tapits, as those knights and bishops who quietly fight their corner, achieving far more than will ever be within the competence of even the most glamorous of new names.

If such proven achievers are often said to lack commercial appeal, then that is another sad reflection on an industry that too often sets out to breed yearlings rather than racehorses. For the end user, however, that's a beautiful situation. And for farms trying to build up families, likewise.

In the end, that's the great thing about this business–at least for those who can afford to back their judgement. If you think everyone else is wrong, then you can go out there and take advantage. And, at the wire, everyone can find out who was right, and who was wrong.

To be fair, moreover, there's still commercial value to be found among those sires who are establishing a track profile. War Front and Tapit, after all, had to earn their stripes: in his fourth season Claiborne were down to $10,000 and making deals for their $250,000 top gun, and Gainesway had Tapit at $12,500 until his runners starting advertising what he could do.

So let's have a browse through the sires who are able to let their runners do the talking, rather than the advertising agencies.

Nobody, of course, needs telling that a stallion commanding a big fee might be able to get a runner. True, it's alarming to see the champion freshman in Europe catapulted to €100,000 from €25,000 after a single crop. Among those who form what remains of the lower-to-middle market, however, we'll try to pick out a few value bets.

RUN AWAY AND HIDE (City Zip), $6,500, Darby Dan

The City Zip story has only grown more remarkable since his death in 2017, with yet another Breeders' Cup winner in Bulletin and a potential Kentucky Derby contender in Improbable. His legacy will soon be contested accordingly, but for now one of the most accomplished sons available to transfer the genes of Ghostzapper's half-brother is quietly producing very solid results off fees that have never exceeded $7,500.

Precocious enough to break his maiden over 4 1/2 furlongs at Keeneland, and to win a Grade III on May 1, Run Away And Hide promised to prove a match for later developers when setting a stakes record in the GII Saratoga Special S. in August. Sadly he was then derailed but he has produced sounder stock himself, notably the redoubtable Are You Kidding Me: from his first crop, he was Grade II-placed as a juvenile and his in 2018 success in the GII Eclipse S. at Woodbine, aged eight, took his record in the last four runnings of that race to three wins and a neck defeat.

That admirable campaigner is among the black-type and graded-stakes winners produced by his sire at a ratio comparable to many dignified with a higher fee: to take two random examples, both Pioneerof the Nile and his sire Empire Maker.

Interesting to see Run Away And Hide's book move back up from 65 to 91 last year–perhaps a response to smart juveniles the previous year in Run Away, Grade I-placed after his GII Best Pal S. success; and Ten City, winner of the GIII Bashford Manor S.

It's hardly a mainstream family, but we keep reiterating why that's not always a bad thing. (His third dam, in fact, is by a son of Hyperion!) Anyway what do you expect? Look at the price on the label.

MIDSHIPMAN (Unbridled's Song), $8,500, Jonabell

With exciting freshmen in champion Cross Traffic and Will Take Charge, and young guns coming through in Arrogate and Liam's Map, Unbridled's Song is getting a posthumous lift as a sire of sires. Certainly you won't go to any of those in 2019 anything like as inexpensively as you can to Midshipman. Yet how many of them will match his quiet consistency as a producer of stakes horses, even with mares superior to those he has always entertained?

Hardly the first son of his sire to prove difficult to hold together subsequently, Midshipman was a champion juvenile on synthetics and the turf elements in his family give his pedigree–the highlight of which is his half-sister, the Grade II-winning dam of Frosted (Tapit)–an intriguing mix. He had graded stakes winners on both dirt and turf in 2018, contributing to a cumulative black-type-horse percentage across five crops of better than 12.5%. Again, that beats a lot of horses standing at bigger fees. Midshipman will always roll his sleeves up and look after his clients.

ORB (Malibu Moon), $12,500, Claiborne

This takes a bit of courage, clearly. But his farm has shown plenty, in halving his fee after a generally tame start by his first two crops of runners. And it's no good me spending half this series rebuking the commercial market for a jittery overreaction to early clues, and then failing to recognize that his new fee warrants continued faith in all those things that first made Orb so eligible as a stallion prospect.

He still has that princely family–crowned by his fourth dam, a Bold Ruler half-sister to Ruffian–and that top-class record on the track, unbeaten as he roared through the grades to win the Kentucky Derby. And his ability to throw a handsome yearling kept him unchallenged at the top of the intake in both his first two years at market.

So it's just silly to decide that his failure to land running (just two black-type winners in 2018) means he can be definitively written off after just a second crop of juvenile starters. Especially when one of those two stakes winners stood up against the tide to win at Grade I level, Sippican Harbor winning the Spinaway S. after a 17-length maiden success at the Spa.

So we know already that he's perfectly capable of producing an elite winner. His studmate Blame (Arch) took much longer to do that, Senga (Fr) winning a French Classic in his fourth year with runners. That came too late to stop Blame's book haemorrhaging from 105 to 48 in 2017. But Claiborne did exactly the same to his fee as they now have with Orb, qualifying Blame as a value pick at $12,500 this time last year. And the rest is history: his book revived to 112 even as his maturing stock rallied to the cause, two Grade I winners helping his fee straight back up to $30,000.

Orb finds himself in a similar pickle, his yearling average slumping from $184,006 in 2017 to $53,097, with his book meanwhile down from 125 to 70. But breeders have been given every incentive to roll the dice at his new fee, and I can do no better than reprise exactly the words used of Blame in the equivalent space last year. Because some day you might find yourself looking pretty far-sighted for having sent a mare to Orb in his hour of need.

MIDNIGHT LUTE (Real Quiet), $15,000, Hill 'n' Dale

Last year Midnight Lute was given his second consecutive $5,000 fee cut and his deeds in 2018 qualify him as real value at this level. Dual Grade I winner Midnight Bisou (also third in both the Kentucky Oaks and Breeders' Cup Distaff) was the obvious highlight, but he had two other make the elite podium and eight graded stakes performers overall. His ratio of black-type winners and performer to starters, at 4.05 and 7.66%, was at least on a par with (and often better than) many stallions commanding much higher fees.

It's instructive to see him produce a filly like Midnight Bisou because the blistering speed he showed as a dual GI Breeders' Cup sprint winner–and as author of that famous 124 Beyer–was notoriously connected to the fact that he more or less raced on one gasp. With a following wind, his page would have entitled him to go two turns and he quickly showed breeders the kind of animal he could pull out of his hat with Mylute, fifth in the Kentucky Derby and third in the Preakness from his first crop.

As Real Quiet's outstanding son (auspiciously out of a Dehere mare), he has a cosmopolitan outcross family and it's very interesting to see that he moved his book back up from just 56 mares in 2017 to 93 last year. Midnight Lute could not have ended the campaign more auspiciously, his unbeaten juvenile daughter Midnight Fantasy having won her second stakes race by 10 lengths at Fair Grounds on December 30. In his prime at 16, and at such a competitive fee, Midnight Lute has been given every chance by his astute farm and there's no saying what the rewards might yet be.

SKY MESA (Pulpit), $15,000, Three Chimneys

This is one seriously underrated horse. He has all the juvenile class and precocity commercial breeders seek, unbeaten in three starts at two between his Spa maiden, the GI Hopeful and the GII Breeders' Futurity. He has an immensely powerful physique. And he has a royal pedigree, out of a MGSW sister to Bernstein, their dam in turn a half-sister to champion 2-year-old filly Outstandingly (Exclusive Native); the next three dams are by Round Table, Nasrullah and War Admiral and extend directly to the great La Troienne. Oh yes–and, despite a quiet 2018, he has also compiled a record at stud that compares favourably with far more expensive stallions.

Sky Mesa's 65 black-type winners represent just a tick under seven percent of his named foals, and his 125 operators at that level exceed 13%; 24 graded stakes winners and 53 graded stakes horses weigh in at 2.5 and 5.5%. That is a very similar ratio to More Than Ready and Candy Ride (Arg), to name two $80,000 stallions too excellent to be embarrassed by the comparison. And there are many standing at fees in between who cannot match that level of performance.

True, some of those will have mustered more than three Grade I winners, but even that is good work by Sky Mesa granted the kind of mares he must have been entertaining at that sort of fee. He has just turned 19, which will doubtless cause his book (just 63 in 2018) to be confined by another baseless prejudice. But he's only a year older than Tapit and end-users, who will note his big stats already as a broodmare sire, are not going to get better value out of the Pulpit line.

CREATIVE CAUSE (Giant's Causeway), $20,000, Airdrie

This fellow found himself in a fiercely competitive intake, no fewer than 10 individual stallions having already produced a Grade I winner with only a third crop of juveniles on the track. Union Rags (Dixie Union), who has sired four, has broken clear but is now priced accordingly. Of the rest, perhaps Creative Cause has as good a chance as any of breaking into the elite.

Only the nose of I'll Have Another (Flower Alley) in the Santa Anita Derby prevented Creative Cause being a Grade I winner at both two and three and he beat Bodemeister (Empire Maker) in the GII San Felipe in between. He derailed after the Preakness but was plainly among the best of his generation and there is an air of quiet consolidation about his work at Airdrie so far: his biggest book yet this year, off a newly elevated fee, matched by a first elite scorer in Pavel, winner of the GI Stephen Foster H.; plus a Kentucky Derby fifth in $20,000 yearling bargain My Boy Jack.

Though the dam of Creative Cause was a Grade I winner, and his full brother ran second in the Belmont, it's a family that salvages some rare and neglected lines. His damsire Siberian Summer (Siberian Express), for instance, is a half-brother to European blue hen Magnificient Style (Silver Hawk), whose son Nathaniel (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) sired champion Enable (GB) in his first crop.

It feels as though this guy is one good horse away from a real breakout. In the contest to succeed his great sire, here is a Cause worth fighting for.

KANTHAROS (Lion Heart), $20,000, Hill 'n' Dale

No explanation needed, by this stage. He's just a horse on his way. And with his bigger, better books, it's only a matter of time before he gets the Grade I winners he needs to warrant bigger hikes in fee than from $15,000 last year. As it, off his $5,000 Florida covers, he has been producing black-type winners and performers at a cumulative rate superior to Malibu Moon, Kitten's Joy, Candy Ride (Arg), Flatter, Tiznow, Bernardini–er, need I go on?

LOOKIN AT LUCKY (Smart Strike) & MUNNINGS (Speightstown), both $20,000, both Ashford

These two entered the game in the same year as not only Kantharos, but also Quality Road–who has since disappeared into the $150,000 stratosphere. A tough grade, then. But both the Ashford pair made a sound start as freshmen in 2014, respectively finishing third and fourth by earnings; and Lookin At Lucky top by number of winners, remarkably mustering 29 from just 44 starters.

Their rewards in 2015, however, were radically different. Munnings, inched up to $12,500 (before a hike to $25,000 the following year), soared to 196 mares (from 94 the previous year), behind just five other stallions nationally; whereas Lookin At Lucky, raised to $25,000 from $15,000, stalled at 115 (from 121). The resulting foals will be the sophomores of 2019, while their imminent crop of two 2-year-olds likewise come from books of 182 and 126. The difference was even more pronounced in 2017: Lookin At Lucky had 76 escorts, Munnings 178.

The time has absolutely come, then, for Munnings to start walking the walk. In principle, his better mares and bigger books should kick in now, so he is in a position to make $20,000 look decent value. While Lookin At Lucky has somehow never built up much of a reputation as a sales sire, Munnings had hardly been knocking it out of the park. But at least his first $25,000 covers did what they had to in 2018, moving his average up to $80,590 from $53,849.

In principle, then, there's a rising tide to catch. But the fact remains that Lookin At Lucky was the better racehorse of the pair, and has now produced a champion in Accelerate–a famously slow burn, from his second crop. Only Monomoy Girl (Tapizar) meanwhile prevented his shuttle daughter Wow Cat (Chi) matching Accelerate's Breeders' Cup success in the GI Distaff, having already added the GI Beldame to five Group 1s won in her homeland. After serial near-misses at the elite level, Lookin At Lucky has confirmed himself eligible to produce a top-class racehorse off a middle-market fee.

Munnings had a much quieter year on the track, albeit in fairness he already had his pair of Grade I winners. And the fact is that his overall body of work features black-type and graded-stakes winners at the slightly better ratio of the pair, albeit Lookin At Lucky (consistent with his many narrow misses) edges it on aggregates of placed operators at those levels.

Bottom line is that both are at a critical point. One needs due recognition for defying the shallow consensus of the market and proving that he can sire top-class racehorses; the other, conversely, has been given every chance by the market to advance his profile, too. Possibly they will head in different directions now, but you couldn't be surprised if either were standing at a much higher fee a couple of years down the line.

AWESOME AGAIN (Deputy Minister), private, Adena Springs

There's a whole bunch of ageing stallions who are entitled to feel affronted by the kind of money commanded by showy younger sires, some with no runners at all and others trading on just one or two early stars. At WinStar alone, for instance, the veteran Distorted Humor is outrageous value at $50,000; you could argue that More Than Ready's global imprint also makes him underpriced, even at $80,000; while Tiznow is a genuine legend who is also making his name as a sire of sires at $50,000.

Awesome Again is now 25 and listed as private, so his energies are presumably being carefully managed by a farm that also stands his mighty son Ghostzapper (himself, again, reasonably priced at that level of the market at $85,000). But he has covered 117 mares over the past two years, so there's plenty of life in the old boy as yet. And what a privilege for any breeder to have the chance of a filly, in 2020, by a son of the great Deputy Minister out of a Blushing Groom mare: broodmare sire gold. Sure enough, this year in that capacity Awesome Again was represented by none other than Accelerate.

How much he can be credited for that horse's durability can perhaps be judged by the fact that Awesome Again is the sire of one of the world's toughest elite sophomores in 2018. Bravazo, Grade I-placed at two, started his campaign with a win on January 13; followed Justify every step of the way through the Triple Crown, beaten just half a length in the Preakness; and wrapped up with a neck defeat in the GI Clark H. on his 11th start of the year in November.

They won't take just any mare off the street, and I have no idea how much they'd charge, but access to Awesome Again remains a priceless privilege.

BERNARDINI (A.P. Indy), $50,000, Jonabell

So, on which side do you stand? By consecutively cutting one of the world's most beautiful and accomplished stallions from $100,000 to $85,000 and now $50,000, Darley have made it impossible to sit on the fence. At 16, he's clearly at a major crossroads. He has had a painfully slow year on the track, with just two Grade III winners, but his farm has decided to grasp the nettle and stand up for what it unquestionably an elite body of work overall.

For years Bernardini has been a knockout sales sire who has backed it up with 14 individual Grade I winners. Half a dozen of those, moreover, have come in the past five years: it's not as though he has forgotten how to come up with a star since producing GI Travers S.winners–emulating his own success in the race–from his first two crops.

For the end-user, the clincher surely has to be his spectacular start as a broodmare sire. The venerable A.P. Indy topped the 2018 table with black-type winners at 4.66 and 9.81 percent, eclipsing such broodmare sire legends as Storm Cat (2.71 percent black-type winners) and his son Giant's Causeway (2.93). Bernardini produced his at an off-the-charts 7.77 and 12.14%. Aptly enough, his latest Grade I success in this capacity came in the Travers through Catholic Boy (More Than Ready).

Darley recently produced a table ranking broodmare sires by black-type winners at the equivalent age. Yes, the expansion of the stakes program invalidates comparisons with historic greats in the sphere, but the fact remains that he is comfortably ahead of modern benchmarks in Galileo (Ire), Giant's Causeway and Shamardal.

I guess those playing the long game, at the top end of the market, are not especially bothered by such a purposeful cut to his fee. But value is available at every level of the market, and it would be rude to ignore so generous a gesture.

Value Sires Podium

Gold: Lookin At Lucky

Silver: Midnight Lute

Bronze: Sky Mesa