Pedigree Insights: Temple City

As a faithful member of the Roberto fan club, I have long been intrigued by the battle for survival of his male line in North America and Europe. There have been many twists and turns along the way, with his male line effectively becoming an endangered species, even though numerous sons of the outstanding Darby Dan stallion were given their chance at stud.

Some of his Grade I-winning sons were deemed to stay too well and others were sold to Japan, but of those which remained, Silver Hawk and Lear Fan carved out solid careers and the lightly-raced Red Ransom enjoyed flashes of brilliance. In the end, though, this male line's survival in the U.S. owes its survival to two rather unlikely sources.

One branch descends from Kris S., a big, masculine, plain horse who began his stallion career in Florida. Despite being available for a very modest fee, he sired an average of only 23 named foals in his first four crops. No doubt this was partly because he didn't cover his first mares until nearly two years after his only stakes victory, in the Bradbury S. That effort had earned a rating of 116 on the Racing Form Free Handicap and it is fair to assume that Kris S. would have achieved much more had this very sizeable colt not bowed a tendon in the GII San Felipe H.

The Kris S. branch is largely reliant for its survival on his son Arch, sire of the 2010 GI Breeders' Cup Classic winner Blame, who has replaced his sire at Claiborne, and of the GI Arkansas Derby winner Archarcharch, at Spendthrift Farm.

The other surviving branch of the Roberto male line has a similarly unlikely story. It too concerns a very big, plain, masculine horse who started out at a modest fee–$5,000–after a career which fell short of Grade I standard. This horse, of course, was Dynaformer, who–like Kris S.–quickly earned a transfer to a major stallion station in the Lexington area.

Dynaformer thoroughly merited his promotion, going on to sire well over 60 Group/Graded winners, but even he was not guaranteed to sire an heir apparent. As many as 14 of his 23 Grade I winners were fillies and two of the others–Perfect Drift and Vergennes–were geldings. That left just seven Grade I-winning sons. One, the exciting GI Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, met an untimely death. A second, the GI Shadwell Turf Mile winner Purim, died in 2012, before his progeny had had much chance to prove themselves. However, he left the Grade I winners Twilight Eclipse and Undrafted among his legacy of only 218 foals. A third Grade I-winning son of Dynaformer, the GI Blue Grass S. winner Brilliant Speed, was killed by lightning earlier this year at the age of eight.

That means we are down to four Grade I-winning sons. One, the big G1 St Leger winner Lucarno, was retired to a stud geared primarily to the production of jumping horses. A second, the G1 Deutsches Derby winner Wiener Walzer, is based in Germany, where he has sired a Group 2 winner. And a third, the much-travelled G1 Melbourne Cup winner Americain, attracted only 19 mares when he was transferred to Ireland for the 2015 season and 50 when returned to Kentucky in 2016.

There is still one major contender, in the remaining male Grade I winner, Point of Entry. This very well-connected horse will have to overcome two prejudices, though, as he didn't become a stakes winner until he was four (no doubt partly because of his May 10 birthday) and he gained all five of his Grade I successes on turf. These prejudices were somewhat in evidence when his first two crops came under the hammer this year, but I am clinging to my hopes that he will eventually prove a worthy heir to Dynaformer.

But Point of Entry has a serious challenger in Temple City, as was highlighted by last weekend's Grade I double with Annals of Time and Miss Temple City. Appropriately, in view of the records of Kris S. and Dynaformer, Temple City is yet another stallion with an eye-catching record, even though he too failed to win at the highest level and started his stallion career at the Spendthrift Farm of his breeder, B. Wayne Hughes, at the cheap fee of $5,000 (made all the cheaper by the fact that payment of the Share The Upside fee in 2011 also brought with it a lifetime breeding right).

Anyone sceptical about Point of Entry's potential would do well to remember that Temple City was also unraced at two and it took Temple City even longer to become a stakes winner. Having been Grade II-placed at four, he made all to land the Grade III Cougar II H. over Del Mar's Polytrack as a 5-year-old and ended his career with another bold attempt to lead throughout in the GI Hollywood Turf Cup, when he was caught close home by Unusual Suspect. Once again we are dealing with a versatile horse who was effective from a mile and an eighth to a mile and a half.

It is also worth remembering that Point of Entry and Temple City represent pairings which enjoyed repeated success with Dynaformer. Point of Entry's broodmare sire Seeking The Gold had 15% black-type winners with him, while Temple City's broodmare sire, Danzig, had 13%. Danzig, of course, enjoyed a successful relationship with Roberto mares, siring 32% black-type winners, including a pair of Grade I winners. For good measure, four different sons of Danzig also sired Grade I winners from Roberto's daughters, so this has been a very fruitful combination.

With a son of Roberto as his sire and a daughter of Danzig as his dam, Temple City is bred along similar lines to that successful stallion Arch and to the Japanese stallion Grass Wonder, whose G1 Japan Cup-winning son Screen Hero is currently responsible for one of Japan's most outstanding older horses, Maurice.

Temple City isn't the first member of his distinguished female line to prove unexpectedly successful as a stallion, as his dam Curriculum is a half-sister to a maiden race winner called Malibu Moon. Needless to say, this son of A.P. Indy has developed into one of the stars of the Spendthrift Farm roster, despite having started his stallion career at only $3,000 in Maryland.

Macoumba, the Mr. Prospector mare responsible for Malibu Moon and Curriculum, was a Grade 1-winning 2-year-old in France and so was her dam Maximova, so Temple City always had the potential to sire progeny faster than himself.

This he is doing. The 92 named foals in his first crop include Miss Temple City, an admirably tough turf miler who has enjoyed a magnificent 2016, thanks to Grade I victories in the GI Maker's 46 Mile S., GI Shadwell Turf Mile and now the GI Matriarch S. Bolo, another of this crop's graded winners, defeated 2016 GI Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint hero Obviously to take the GII Arcadia S. over a mile on turf, while the 2014 Grade II 2-year-old winner Startup Nation gained his best success over 1 1/16 miles on turf.

Temple City also has a pair of graded winners on turf from the 72 foals in his second crop, one being Annals of Time, winner of the GI Hollywood Derby on only his fourth appearance.

Temple City's second dam is by Mr. Prospector, a stallion whose name was inextricably linked with Dynaformer's transformation from $5,000 stallion into one of Kentucky's elite sires. Mares by Mr. Prospector and his sons and grandsons supplied Dynaformer with nine Grade I winners, including Film Maker, Barbaro, Point of Entry, Riskaverse, White Moonstone and Wiener Walzer.

It comes as no surprise, then, that several of Temple City's best winners are out of Mr. Prospector line mares, with Miss Temple City and Annals of Time among them. Indeed Annals of Time is out of Lemon Haze, a Distant View mare inbred 3 x 2 to Raise A Native.

As Miss Temple City has a couple of respectable efforts to her credit at Royal Ascot, it is to be hoped that European buyers will start paying attention to Temple City, with his fine record as a sire of turf performers. They may need to be a little patient, as the stallion's 2014 and 2015 crops aren't big by today's standards, at 66 foals and 48 foals respectively. But Temple City's best years are surely ahead of him, as he has more than 150 foals in his 2016 crop, sired at an increased fee of $12,500, and he was bred to 172 mares at a fee of $15,000 this year.