Another Baby with That Special Zip

On the face of it, just another graded stakes where you could round up the usual suspects. Bob Baffert as winning trainer and Bernardini as the successful damsire. And the success of Du Jour, in the GII American Turf S. on the Derby undercard was a welcome reminder of the value offered by his sire Temple City. But what really draws attention to this emerging talent is an extraordinary female lurking in his background.

No, we don't mean either of the owners, for all that both may qualify for the same description. Instead it's the blood of none other than Baby Zip–Du Jour is out of a granddaughter of the celebrated dam of Ghostzapper and City Zip–that permits the most important of all Baffert's clientele, his wife Jill, to dream that a horse she co-owns with Debbie Lanni could someday secure a place at stud.

Baby Zip died four years ago, at 26; and City Zip followed just three months later. He has posthumously continued to enrich their mutual legacy, with both Collected and Improbable winning at Grade I level before running second in the Breeders' Cup Classic–a vivid measure of the way a precocious sprinter by Carson City gradually expanded his portfolio. Ghostzapper meanwhile overcame a rocky start at stud to recycle his exceptional flair, most recently through G1 Dubai World Cup winner Mystic Guide. Both siblings tend to deal in stock that thrives with maturity, with City Zip's 7-year-old son C Z Rocket now among the fastest in the land; while Ghostzapper, from a line of broodmare sires, already has a Triple Crown winner to his credit in that guise.

Yet there was a curious imbalance to the breeding history of Baby Zip, a stakes-winning sprinter by Relaunch acquired by Frank Stronach for his Adena Springs broodmare band at the end of her racing career. Three of her first four named foals were fillies; but nine of her remaining 10 were colts. As a result, the value of her female line was established too late to have much chance of complementing the legacy she created through her sons.

Baby Zip's first foal, a Silver Ghost filly who won a maiden claimer in a light career, was sold for $32,000 just a few weeks before her next two made their respective debuts in 2000. One, a sophomore filly by Silver Deputy named Getaway Girl, would win three of five starts at Great Lakes. The other was City Zip (Carson City), who had been discarded as a short yearling for just $9,000 but included a storied Saratoga treble (GII Sanford S./GII Saratoga Special S./dead-heat for the GI Hopeful S.) among 11 juvenile starts. It was this spree that doubtless prompted the retention of Baby Zip's next foal, but unfortunately she was by an ordinary sire in Birdonthewire and proved unable to win.

Getaway Girl, meanwhile, was culled by Adena Springs for $65,000 after City Zip's sophomore campaign had levelled into a plateau that

City Zip | Tony Leonard

saw him start his stud career in New York at $7,500. Unfortunately for her purchasers, they moved Getaway Girl as soon as the following November, for $90,000 at Keeneland. She would prove poignantly well named. Just nine days after she left the ring, now in the ownership of Indian Creek, Baby Zip's 2-year-old by Awesome Again won by nine lengths on debut for Bobby Frankel at Hollywood Park.

As Ghostzapper matured into one of the great speed-carrying Thoroughbreds of the era–in the process earning City Zip a game-changing transfer to Kentucky–their half-sister's shrewd purchasers were able to cash in a series of yearlings at prices as high as $500,000. That standout dividend came through a Bernardini filly, at the 2011 September Sale, albeit Getaway Girl's return to that stallion did not prove quite so productive when the resulting yearling, again a filly, made $100,000 from David Redvers in the same ring three years later. This was Guiltless, the dam of Du Jour.

Having shown very little as a juvenile in England in the silks of Qatar Racing, Guiltless was quickly discarded for 32,000gns at Tattersalls. “Flipped” at Fasig-Tipton just three months later, she brought $60,000 from Woods Edge Farm.

Du Jour, her second foal, raised only $19,000 as a yearling from V.C. Corp, deep in the September Sale, but proved a wonderful pinhook when sold to agent Donato Lanni at last year's OBS “Spring” 2-Year-Old Sale–eventually a summer auction–for $280,000 after a :10 1/5 breeze for Off the Hook.

Bob Baffert couldn't resist trying Du Jour on dirt, after a promising debut, but the colt didn't really respond and, restored to the grass, he's now unbeaten in three starts since. Saturday's performance was a really stylish one, under a matching ride from Flavien Prat, and more of the same in the GI Belmont Derby might already give the home team hope for the Breeders' Cup. The Europeans tend to get away without having to beat Baffert, who candidly tends to view turf as his “last resort” for struggling horses.

Woods Edge has banked limited dividends from the first three foals out of Guiltless: her first foal (modest winner by Carpe Diem) did make $90,000, but we've seen Du Jour brought little and her Klimt filly last year made less. But she is only eight and Peter O'Callaghan, a worthy bluegrass ambassador for a clan of Irish horsemen touched by genius, can surely now anticipate a due yield on an inspired investment. Next off the belt is a yearling filly by Twirling Candy, while Guiltless was reportedly bred back to Not This Time.

The fact is that Baby Zip's family had become paradoxically quiet even as its two magnificent scions made her one of the most significant mares of recent years. The matriarch herself did produce one other talented runner from that sequence of colts, in Canadian Grade III winner City Wolf (Giant's Causeway); but her handful of early daughters generally proved mediocre producers. Indeed, the one by Birdonthewire was eventually sold for $800; while Adena Springs soon gave up on Baby Zip's only daughter after producing Ghostzapper, an unraced filly by Golden Missile sold to Russia for $50,000. Getaway Girl had already proved the exception, having emulated her mother in giving Giant's Causeway a Grade III winner in Canada, but now she has sparked new life into the dynasty through Guiltless.

Temple City | EquiSport photos

So let's give Temple City some credit, for stoking up those embers. In Du Jour's pedigree, after all, he places another quite exceptional female right opposite Baby Zip. Macoumba (Mr. Prospector) was a Group 1-winning half-sister to a Group 1 winner, the pair out of a Group 1 winner, and her whose first foal was Malibu Moon (A.P. Indy). Two years later she produced a filly by Danzig, Curriculum, who never made the track for breeder B. Wayne Hughes but when mated with Dynaformer produced a colt that would eventually assist the revival of the Spendthrift roster.

Temple City won a single Grade III before rounding off his career with a narrow defeat in the GI Hollywood Turf Cup, but his genes made him a legitimate roll of the dice. Because it has been a hallmark of the Roberto line–a vital source of substance and functionality in the modern breed–that its principal conduits have often proved more illustrious in their second careers than in their first. That was certainly true of Kris S., who had to earn his passage out of Florida; and equally so of Dynaformer, who started out at $5,000 at Wafare Farm before transferring into the big league at Three Chimneys.

Unfortunately Dynaformer's quest for an heir has proved troublesome: there was a preponderance of fillies and geldings among his best performers, while those who were equipped for a stud career were cursed by ill fortune. What happened to Barbaro was bad enough, but don't forget that Brilliant Speed–who has just resurfaced as damsire of none other than Medina Spirit (Protonico)–was killed by lightning at the age of eight.

There is much at stake for Dynaformer, then, in the stud careers of Point of Entry (who faced steep commercial odds from the outset, as a slow-maturing turf horse) and Temple City.

Auspiciously, Temple City represents the same formula as Arch, who wonderfully sustained the Kris S. branch of Roberto's line, being also out of a Danzig mare. But he faced the customary obstacles, too, as a late developer impolitic enough to save his best for a mile and a half of grass.

Malibu Moon is closely related to Temple City | Spendthrift photo

Fortunately, the propensity to exceed expectations at stud is not confined to Temple City's sireline. His dam's half-brother Malibu Moon was famously confined to a maiden success before starting his stud career at $3,000 in Maryland.

So it was perhaps unsurprising that Temple City should have made such a brisk start at stud. Launched into what has proved a remarkably strong intake (including Quality Road, Munnings, Lookin At Lucky, Blame, Kantharos and Midshipman), he mustered three Grade I performers among his first sophomores, a feat matched among his peers only by Blame. The following year Temple City had two Grade I winners over a single weekend, including Miss Temple City who ended up with third such prizes in what was her third campaign. Once again, then, this is wine that ages well: another graduate of his first crop, Bolo, was as old as seven before earning his Grade I (like Miss Temple City, over a mile on turf).

Hiked to $15,000, Temple City covered 360 mares across 2016 and 2017. That was a striking tribute to his merit, as a source of runners, but we know that the racetrack holds little interest for commercial breeders and by last year he was back down to 55 mares. With that loaded pipeline, then, the emergence of Du Jour could prove a very significant straw in the wind. Whatever additional talents may emerge from those big crops, after all, can be expected to stick around and keep his name in lights.

Even last year Temple City was quietly punching his weight, his black-type footprint (five winners, 14 on the podium) toe to toe with a bunch of more expensive stallions. All he lacked was a headline horse, and that's why Du Jour has the potential to become an important contributor to the whole Dynaformer story.

Du Jour | Coady

Just like Temple City, any eligibility he can establish for stud will be supported by a landmark name pegging down his maternal line. The overall package may contain a touch too much chlorophyll for commercial tastes, though whatever enabled Macoumba to produce a dirt stallion like Malibu Moon could yet be drawn out, through his genes if not his deeds, by the familiar seeding of Du Jour's family: his first three dams are by sons of A.P. Indy (Malibu Moon's sire, of course), Deputy Minister and In Reality. The next dam, incidentally, is by Tri Jet–a name dusted off by American Pharoah's third dam–and ultimately the line tapers to the same foundation as that of the great Affirmed (plus another Derby winner in Lil E. Tee).

What's so exciting, given his genetic profile, is that Du Jour should be capable of such a dashing exhibition as a sophomore on the first Saturday in May. The resonance of that benchmark directed most eyes to a barnmate later in the day, but just think of the tide against which Du Jour is wading, in terms of precocity. Between the record of Baby Zip's stallion sons, on the one hand, and the whole Roberto line on the other, the chances are that he is only just getting started.