When Unbridled (Fappiano) entered the outside stall of the starting gate for the 1990 GI Breeders' Cup Classic, he had a lot to prove. Sure, he had won the GI Florida Derby and GI Kentucky Derby earlier in the year, but he had then suffered defeats in his next four appearances at the Grade I [...]

It was business as usual two days ago for Japan's supreme stallion Deep Impact. For the third time in four years the son of Sunday Silence was responsible for the winner of Hanshin's G1 Asahi Hai Futurity S., a juvenile race which virtually guarantees the winner champion status. And the Futurity prizemoney, worth the equivalent [...]

Memories being as short as they are, anyone could be forgiven for thinking that the youngsters who were first past the post in Los Alamitos's Saturday features were equine bluebloods. After all, the GI CashCall Futurity was “won” by Solomini, whose sire Curlin currently commands a fee of $150,000. Then the Starlet S. was taken [...]

The majority of breeders prefer not to put all their mares' eggs in one basket, choosing instead to send them to a variety of stallions. The Coolmore partners, on the other hand, often take the attitude that if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and are happy to send a mare to the same stallion [...]

The Coolmore partners, together with other owners of Galileo (Ire) broodmares, are on a worldwide quest to find stallions capable of bringing out the best in these highly valuable daughters of the world's most successful sire. The collaboration with Japan's Deep Impact (Jpn) has supplied one of Europe's most promising 2-year-olds, in the G1 Racing [...]

Almost exactly 30 years ago, I was lucky enough to visit Japan as a guest of the JRA, to report on the Japan Cup and international jockeys' series. Because of my interest in bloodstock, I was also treated to a tour of the stallion farms on Hokkaido. The vast majority of the stallions I saw [...]

Thanks to the shuttle system, breeders are sometimes forced to revise their assessment of a stallion when he returns home a conquering hero. The perfect example has to be Danehill. Although Danehill started his career at a fee of IR£25,000 in 1990, he quickly started to slip down the ranks at Coolmore, to the extent [...]

The two male Breeders' Cup Juvenile winners have never quite met, despite playing starring roles at the same venues. Friday's Juvenile Turf winner, the progressive Mendelssohn (Scat Daddy), had drawn a sale-topping bid of $3,000,000 on the last day of Book 1 at Keeneland's September Yearling Sale. And Good Magic (Curlin), Saturday's impressive winner of [...]

The decision to bestow the name Deep Impact on a royally-bred colt by the sensational Sunday Silence has proved more than a little prescient. Group 1 events in Japan rarely go by without attracting at least one Deep Impact representative and Sunday's G1 Tenno Sho (Autumn) saw the Shadai superstar supply seven of the 18 [...]

Having an enormously famous parent can be tough, as many a child with a superstar father or mother has discovered to their cost. Fortunately, though, exceptional talent does occasionally pass down the generations, as the racing world has witnessed with Galileo. When Galileo retired to stud it was surely expecting too much that he–or any [...]

With his lead now extending to nearly £8 million on the general sires' table, Galileo has long had his ninth sires' championship safely in the bag. However, the race for the broodmare sires' title is proving much more competitive, with little more than £800,000 separating the top-ranked Sadler's Wells from fourth-placed Danehill. With the QIPCO [...]

At a recent Juddmonte function, a fellow guest asked me whether there were any stallions whose sons and daughters enjoyed a markedly different level of success. The answer, of course, is that there are some notable examples and the one I cited was Spendthrift's veteran Malibu Moon, whose daughters outnumber the sons by almost two [...]