Stars Keeping Glitter in Midnight Sky

A “headline” horse will cover a multitude of sins for a stallion; very often, too many. If a single flag-bearer gets too far ahead, however, people tend to start asking what might have happened to the rest of the army.

In the case of Midnight Lute, there's no doubt that Midnight Bisou has helped to keep him in the game. On the other hand, her $7.25 million in earnings might seem to rebuke her sire for his failure, thus far, to come up with a second millionaire. His two previous Grade I winners, after all, both graduated from a first crop foaled a decade ago. Yet the belated arrival of his fourth elite scorer, Keeper Ofthe Stars, is a welcome cue to recall how sturdily Midnight Lute has meanwhile held his ground in that commercial no-man's-land between fashionable but unproven younger stallions and the established big hitters.

Because Midnight Lute's record actually gives him parity, in various indices, with several of the latter category. Across the board, for instance, his stats make him pretty much the same stallion–at $15,000–as the venerable Tiznow or the flourishing Twirling Candy. Those two both stand at $40,000, as does Flatter without quite matching Midnight Lute in graded-stakes ratios. In terms of graded-stakes and Grade I performers, indeed, Midnight Lute is barely a tick behind the $75,000 cracker Street Sense. (All these comparisons, clearly, should elevate his own standing rather than diminish the demonstrable excellence of his rivals.)

Midnight Lute is now 17 and it feels a long time since he launched his career at Hill 'n' Dale with a group of sophomores so exciting–besides two Grade I winners, he had a Classic-placed colt; a Queen's Plate winner; and a memorable day at Sunland Park when a son and daughter both broke track records in winning the local Derby and Oaks by an aggregate 13 lengths–that his book of 186 mares the following year was exceeded by just three other American stallions. Because while the resulting crop included Midnight Bisou herself, her sire was not permitted to tread water in the meantime and dwindled to 106, 76 and 56 mares in the next three years.

The emergence of Midnight Bisou gave him renewed currency, with books of 93 and 118, and the GI Gamely S. success of Keeper Ofthe Stars at Santa Anita a couple of weekends ago set a seal on her maturing talent at four. Moreover, Midnight Lute will be strongly represented in the GI Hollywood Gold Cup this Saturday by Midcourt, who comes from the same crop as Midnight Bisou but took rather more time. Already an emphatic winner of the GII San Pasquale S. this year, Midcourt was beaten barely half a length in his Grade I debut over track and trip last time.

With her decisive Gamely success, Keeper Ofthe Stars is now looking a formidable force in the distaff grass division. Until the shutdown in California, she had shown soundness and sustained improvement through 11 starts in 11 months since breaking her maiden on her sophomore bow last April. Her half-dozen wins in that time included a graded stakes breakthrough in the GIII Autumn Miss S., and ultimately a shock defeat of Brazilian flyer Jolie Olimpica (Brz) (Drosselmeyer) in the GII Buena Vista S.

As a turf miler, moreover, Keeper Ofthe Stars adds another dimension to her sire's diverse repertoire. For while himself a dual winner of the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint, Midnight Lute's pedigree has a Classic/two-turn flavor that has filtered into his stock from the outset.

Though Shakin It Up (GI Malibu S.) and Midnight Lucky (GI Humana Distaff/GI Acorn) whizzed round a single turn for their Grade I wins, another of his first-crop stars, Mylute, came from far back for fifth in the GI Kentucky Derby and third in the GI Preakness. Midnight Bisou herself, of course, has repeatedly pounced from off the pace through a second turn.

Nonetheless, Midnight Lute has never had much margin for error. His sheer scale, at fully 17 hands, is notorious. Likewise, the throat surgeries that not only interrupted his racing career, but also shaped it–Bob Baffert having adapted him as a sprinter primarily as a pragmatic way of managing his wind. And his sire, while one of the most brilliant Classic runners of his era, was never treated as a likely Classic influence at stud.

Yet Midnight Lute is a far more elegant and flexible consort for mares than his height implies, blessed as he is with all due balance and proportion. Certainly he is far more than a siphon of the type of crude speed we typically associate with a specialist sprinter.

And while this is one of those sire-lines that has now dangled on a horsehair through three generations, it is definitely one worth salvaging. The challenge for Midnight Lute, in the remainder of his career, is to find an heir equal to the task he performed for his own sire, and Real Quiet previously performed for Quiet American. (Of his best males to date Midcourt is a gelding, while Shakin It Up is confined to Oklahoma traffic.)

Quiet American represents a tenuous tributary of the Fappiano line, in contrast with the mighty river flowing through Unbridled, and the lively torrent of Candy Ride (Arg). Yet it contains a rare genetic gold, in the bold symmetries contrived in Quiet American by John Nerud and Tartan Farms. Famously, both Quiet American and his sire Fappiano were out of a Dr. Fager mare; and both these mares were grand-daughters of the linchpin Cequillo. So Quiet American replicates two of the great 20th Century matriarchs, Cequillo and Aspidistra, into both sides of his pedigree. (Besides Dr. Fager, Aspidistra also gave us another iconic dasher in Ta Wee plus the unraced Magic, whose grand-daughter's date with Fappiano produced Unbridled.)

The value of this package has become especially evident in Quiet American's record as a broodmare sire. One of his daughters produced Bernardini (A.P. Indy), who is doing very well as a distaff influence himself; while another produced both Saint Liam (Saint Ballado) and the dam of another Horse of the Year in Gun Runner (Candy Ride {Arg}). But the only son eligible to develop a sire-line was his outstanding runner Real Quiet, the nearest miss in all Triple Crown history.

Real Quiet likewise introduced illustrious maternal blood: his dam was out of a full sister to Majestic Prince, and traced to the same Boudoir II as did Flower Bowl (along, therefore, with her sons Graustark and His Majesty). But while his accomplished daughters included multiple Grade I winner Pussycat Doll, Real Quiet's only son eligible to extend the line was Midnight Lute.

The fact was that breeders had always sooner recalled the notorious anatomical challenges of Real Quiet's youth than the amazing things he proved able to do on the racetrack. He was never going to get them commercial balls of muscle; was always going to remain that $17,000 yearling. Real Quiet soon ended up touting his wares in Uruguay and Pennsylvania, and died in a paddock accident at 15.

But while Midnight Lute's dam Candytuft was unraced, she was evidently correct. She was also by a copper-bottomed broodmare sire in Dehere; and, no mean achievement, she managed to give Sir Cherokee a son placed in four Grade II races. And while her own graded stakes-winning mother was by the forgotten Blue Times (one of many dead ends for the Man o' War line), the next two dams are by two resonant European exports.

The first, by Sea-Bird II (Fr), was Berkut. A sister to Gyr, who chased home Nijinsky in his Derby, Berkut produced three stakes winners from six foals–notably Alydar's Best who was a Group 1-winning juvenile and Classic-placed in Europe.

Gyr was a notoriously substantial beast, and the next dam Feria II (Ity) was by Tesio's imposing champion Toulouse Lautrec (Ity). Here, no doubt, lurk the physical foundations of the Midnight Lute skyscraper; not to mention another layer of class. Feria II was an Italian Oaks winner out of an Italian Oaks winner, and bred on somewhat similar lines to Ribot (GB).

Sea-Bird II and Ribot together mean only one thing in Kentucky: Darby Dan. And the late Olin B. Gentry, whose grandfather and namesake managed Darby Dan, is listed alongside Omar Trevino and Anthony Cappola as breeders of Keeper Ofthe Stars.

Gentry signed a $55,000 docket for her unraced dam, Sociable (Run Away And Hide), out of his shared consignment (VanMeter-Gentry Sales) when she was offered, as a 5-year-old in foal to Midnight Lute, at Keeneland in November 2015.     VanMeter-Gentry then processed the weanling Keeper Ofthe Stars through the same ring the following November, to Zayat Stables for $60,000. She proved a good pinhook, sold through Lane's End for $180,000 back at Keeneland in September to Tommy Town Thoroughbreds (whose silks she carries as Keeper Ofthe Stars).

Sociable herself realized just $32,000 from Atlantic Bloodstock when VanMeter-Gentry again put her into the ring, with a Classic Empire cover, at the January Sale last year. But the initial emergence of Keeper Ofthe Stars, in the meantime, meant she could be cashed in for $155,000 to Hunter Valley Farm when recycled (in foal to Mor Spirit) through Taylor Made Sales back at the same auction this time round.

The continued progress of her daughter since means that there are now Grade I winners under three consecutive dams. For Sociable is a half-sister to none other than The Factor (War Front), whose stud career at Lane's End goes from strength to strength. And their dam Greyciousness (Miswaki) is a half-sister to GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile winner Chief Seattle (Seattle Slew), the pair out of a hard-knocking Icecapade mare.

There's plenty of Mr. Prospector floating around here. Sociable loads him 4 x 2–her sire Run Away And Hide being by his grandson City Zip; her dam being by his son Miswaki–while the top line, of course, goes through his son Fappiano. Moreover Real Quiet's grand-dam, the sister to Majestic Prince already noted, was by Mr. P.'s sire Raise A Native.

So while it remains to be seen whether her “hot” connections can maintain their current pace through 2020–her trainer Jonathan Wong is somehow pushing a 30% clip for the year; while Abel Cedillo is the jockey story of the Californian spring–there's no question that the genetic foundations of Keeper Ofthe Stars go top to bottom.

Midnight Lute had a pretty slow time at the yearling sales last fall, but these were the graduates of much the weakest book of his life. The Midnight Bisou effect will kick in now, and it's worth remembering that he had achieved an average and median of $76,000 and $60,000 at the previous round of yearling sales.     Those are both extremely creditable yields for a stallion at this level of the market, and a measure of the physical standard he reliably meets in his stock.

At his fee, Midnight Lute surely represents some of the best value around–especially for those whose strategy for the tough markets ahead is to build up families with what should be the most commercial asset of all: winners. The underlying quality of his pedigree should also make Midnight Lute attractive to breeders who would not mind retaining a filly.

The bottom line is that this was a pretty extraordinary racehorse, able to adapt his Classic bloodlines to sprinting by dint of sheer, freakish ability. The author of a 124 Beyer, unprecedented for a sprinter, Midnight Lute was able to express his speed and quality through the kind of theatrical acceleration you love to see round two turns. In the slop at Monmouth, he burst past the Breeders' Cup field to win by daylight–or what passed for daylight, that stygian afternoon. The margin, 4 3/4 lengths, was a race record; as was the time of 1:07.08 he set, in a vastly different racing environment, when retaining the trophy on Californian synthetics the following year. He also set a stakes record in the GI Forego, which disturbed some pretty historic dust.

His best runners have had corresponding flair: remember Midnight Lucky thrashing champion Close Hatches (First Defeat) by six lengths in the Acorn? Sadly she was confined to five starts, but Midnight Lute won his Breeders' Cup prizes at four and five and we now see horses like Keeper Ofthe Stars, Midcourt and of course Midnight Bisou thriving with maturity.

It's easy to say of a horse that he could have done anything, with a following wind: short, long; dirt, turf. But it's not hard to believe of Midnight Lute. It's the grail of equine athleticism, to match dirt and turf assets–speed as well as stamina; power as well as fleet-footed acceleration–and his own pedigree entitles him to just that balance.

Yes, he is now approaching the evening of his career. But Keeper Ofthe Stars suggests that new constellations will continue to spread her sire's trademark sparkle across the midnight sky.