Breeding Digest: Bernardini Mares Double Up at the Spa

It's easier to identify the phenomenon of a broodmare sire than to account for it. But we certainly have a modern marvel of the genre in Bernardini, whose posthumous consolidation of what had been an exceptionally precocious emergence in this sphere reached a fresh peak as the Saratoga summer drew to a close. On Saturday, one of his daughters produced Immersive (Nyquist) to win the GI Spinaway Stakes; and on Monday another Bernardini mare gave us Chancer McPatrick (McKinzie) to achieve a reciprocal status among the crop's colts in the GI Hopeful Stakes.

Moreover the final weekend at the Spa also showed how distaff influence will continue to expand long after a sire's exit. Because Awesome Again, another resonant broodmare sire, was not only responsible for the dam of GI Jockey Club Gold Cup winner Highland Falls (Curlin), but also provided the granddams of both Immersive and the filly who ran so well against her, Quietside (Malibu Moon).

Between them, Awesome Again and Bernardini respectively attest to the tendency of noted broodmare sires either to produce sons who excel in the same capacity, or daughters who themselves deliver broodmare sires.

Into the latter bracket we can place Quiet American, whose debut crop of just 32 foals included Cara Rafaela, the dam of Bernardini, and Quiet Dance, dam of one Horse of the Year in Saint Liam and granddam of another in Gun Runner. Saint Liam obviously had limited opportunity to recycle his legacy, but from his single crop produced the dam of Sharp Azteca (as well as a champion female runner in Havre de Grace). We'll have to see whether more recent sons of Quiet American mares, like Charlatan and the globetrotter State Of Rest (Ire), can also excel at the family trade.

Awesome Again, meanwhile, has extended a male line that has achieved particular celebrity through its parallel production. His half-brother Macho Uno, who sadly left us only this week, leaves no conspicuous legacy as a broodmare sire. But Awesome Again is one of several sons of Deputy Minister to have excelled in this capacity. Dehere found no male heir but produced the dams of City of Light, Midnight Lute and Will Take Charge. (Midnight Lute, incidentally, is the damsire of Ferocious, the Hopeful runner-up.) French Deputy is damsire of 98 stakes winners, while a daughter of Touch Gold has given us a rising sire in Upstart.

Awesome Again, himself damsire of Accelerate and Keen Ice, did sire an outstandingly macho runner in Ghostzapper, but while the latter has been a very good stallion overall, his principal legacy will surely be as damsire of Justify. Another Ghostzapper mare has since produced Up to the Mark, and while Mystic Guide or Loggins may yet prove capable of extending the male line, in the meantime you wouldn't mind keeping one of their daughters.

Bernardini | Darley

Bernardini's own prospects of salvaging a male succession were tragically diminished by the loss last summer of Art Collector, who had a berth reserved at Claiborne when succumbing to laminitis—the same condition that had claimed his sire two years previously. Stay Thirsty has offered Bernardini a couple of grandsons trying to get established at stud, in Coal Front and now Mind Control. But there's no question that Bernardini's principal legacy is in the hands of his daughters, who have already produced 92 stakes winners.

What makes a great broodmare sire? Might they even deal in some kind of physiological inheritance, perhaps one as practical as helping the embryo or nursing foal to thrive? More probably these stallions, while often not especially competent at replicating those genetic attributes most adapted to athletic performance, have tended to be sent mares of good family—and ultimately something seems to percolate down from them. The outstanding example is Secretariat, who notoriously failed to establish a male line but whose daughters have had an immense influence through the likes of A.P. Indy, Storm Cat and Gone West.

To me, a well-sown family represents a far sounder foundation than the alchemy so widely proposed between tapering sire-lines. Okay, so daughters of Bernardini have produced Maxfield and Speaker's Corner for Street Sense, and now Immersive as well as Nysos for Nyquist. But three of those four examples emerged from the home herd, with all due insight into the right physical match and so on. And the bottom line is that depth across a pedigree means that is won't matter which strands of the mesh ultimately come through, because it's all good stuff.

True, there do appear to be prepotent sires that exalt ordinary mares. Yet the most dominant sire-lines seldom retain any coherent character, instead owing their reach to versatility. These are quite fundamental questions, seldom admitting definitive answers. All I know is that we often see clusters of distaff influence: the sires of Urban Sea and Toussaud, for instance, are both out of Buckpasser mares. And how many elite horses have mined their maternal ore from names like Princequillo, his daughter Somethingroyal, her sons Secretariat and Sir Gaylord, and the latter's sons Sir Ivor, Habitat and Drone?

Bernardini's sire A.P. Indy was as influential as broodmare sire as in every other capacity. But his daughters, in their prolific success as producers, may well have drawn particularly on his storied dam Weekend Surprise as a combination of the ultimate distaff brands of the era: she was by Secretariat out of a Buckpasser mare, whose own dam was by Secretariat's half-brother Sir Gaylord. And, who knows, maybe Bernardini has done the same.

Wheels within wheels, no doubt, but one way or another the one left by Bernardini is going to keep spinning for many a year yet.

RIPPLES SPREADING FROM THE POND

There's been something for everybody among the fillies to have so far emerged from the current juvenile crop. We've had the $1.8 million OBS sale-topper Miss Nooni (Win Win Win) flying high in California, and we've had the $3,500 Fasig October yearling The Queen's M G (Thousand Words) win the first two of the three big Saratoga prizes in this division. But her bid to complete the sweep ended in the slop last weekend when the GI Spinaway Stakes was instead dominated by two fillies that had never been anywhere near a sale ring.

Immersive | Sarah Andrew

Immersive's dam Gap Year (Bernardini), herself homebred, has duly made some amends for the relatively modest production record of her own mother Dubai Escapade (Awesome Again), at least relative to the covers earned by the latter as a Grade I-winning half-sister to Madcap Escapade (Hennessy).

But these breed-to-race programs call for immense patience, besides other more tangible resources. Godolphin's other homebred Grade I winner over the closing weekend of the meet, Highland Falls (Curlin), has duly continued a steep climb in the yield eventually resulting from Sheikh Mohammed's investment of $5.75 in her dam, GI Breeders' Cup Distaff winner Round Pond, on her retirement back in 2007.

For a while this family seemed to hit a flat spot. With hindsight, admittedly, Round Pound's dam Gift of Dance (Trempolino) had been given limited opportunity besides the mating with Awesome Again that produced her champion. But Gift of Dance herself failed to win in 10 starts, while her siblings Pennekamp (Bering {GB}) and Black Minnaloushe (Storm Cat) essentially failed to live up to expectations at stud.

Round Pond, naturally, was given covers commensurate with her value. Two of her seven foals never made the track, but we have already dwelt on why both could remain precious commodities, as daughters of Bernardini. Sure enough, one is Tyburn Brook, the dam of Speaker's Corner and his promising but fragile half-brother Knightsbridge (Nyquist).

Of Round Pond's five starters, meanwhile, Long River (A.P. Indy) was seven when he became a surprise Group 1 winner in Dubai, while the Dubawi (Ire) filly Lake Lucerne persevered to six to gain her black-type win in the Albert M. Stall Memorial last year.

Unsurprising, then, that the slow-burning fires of the great Curlin have made Highland Falls something of a work in progress. But his emphatic success in such a storied race puts him squarely among the leading older horses heading into the fall. Sometimes, whether on the track or off it, the long game will pay.

McKINZIE SEIZES HIS BIG CHANCE

As for Chancer McPatrick, he's obviously a massive boost to his sire McKinzie. Given how few freshman sires will ever again receive another book to match their first, in quality or quantity, it stands to reason that they need to get rolling quickly or face a ruthless turn of the commercial tide. So while one or two of his peers are conspicuously sweating on a breakout, the pressure is now off McKinzie—whose first stakes performer of any description has cut to the chase and won a Grade I.

McKinzie certainly has the numbers behind him, his farm having unapologetically responded to the huge volume trademarked by Spendthrift and Ashford by corralling 214 mares into his debut book in 2021. That gives him a cavalry of 134 named foals, narrowly behind only Vekoma (138) in this intake.

Their reception at the sales last year was impressive, given the choice available: behind his standout $1.2 million colt (out of Puca) at the September Sale, McKinzie managed a $90,000 median—three times the $30,000 conception fee.

That suggested an effective replication of his imposing physique, which had sustained him through an exemplary career (Grade I winner at two, three and four), and it can only have served his cause that his dam Runway Model was such an accomplished juvenile. Admittedly she was by Petionville, with the next two dams by Houston and Navajo, pretty leftfield seeding for a top horse, but there's plenty of black type inlaid into the family.

McKinzie had actually made a fairly quiet start on the track, with seven winners from 37 starters, but a Grade I headliner will always cover a multitude of sins. And after the historic embarrassment of last year's rookies, who mustered three graded stakes winners between them, this class is already up to five.

Chancer McPatrick was one of several big scores for McKinzie at the 2-year-old sales, having brought $725,000 from John Kimmel and Nick Sallusto, acting for Sean Flanagan, when presented by Caliente Thoroughbreds at OBS April. (The previous month, in the same ring, Kimmel and Sallusto had been underbidders on Flanagan's behalf for a son of Flatter who made $1.3 million. That colt, of course, has turned out to be Ferocious—the rival Chancer McPatrick just managed to hold off on Labor Day.)

Chancer McPatrick duly completed a spectacular pinhook, having been found by G S Inversiones Hipicas in the Denali consignment at the Fasig-Tipton July Sale for $260,000. He was bred by Rigney Racing from Bernadreamy (Bernardini), who never really built on her Churchill maiden success for that evolving program in 2017. As such she had seemed to contribute to a rather insipid production record for her dam, GI Alcibiades Stakes winner Dream Empress (Bernstein), in what proved a curtailed second career.

But Chancer McPatrick's fourth dam is the prolific producer Execution (The Axe), and it looks as though those embers have been stoked up here. The mare's half-brother by Liam's Map will duly seek to profit from his upgrade as Hip 721 at Keeneland next week.