Breeding Digest: Dresden Breeders Show A Special Eye

With so many roads now leading to Del Mar, traffic may feel pretty slow just now. But we should make a virtue of that, in that our preoccupation with the elite program tends to deny due attention to those achieving their success a tier or so below the very top. After all, such people have typically required no less skill, endeavor and patience, often denied the very highest rewards only through lacking similar parity in resources.

Take the breeder of GIII Ontario Derby winner Dresden Row (Lord Nelson), whose emergence among Canada's leading sophomores is underpinned by a pedigree as interesting as it was inexpensively contrived.

His dam Elle Special cost Richard Reed just $1,200 when culled by Calumet Farm at the 2018 Keeneland November Sale. That would have seemed a ridiculous price when she stood in the Fair Grounds winner's circle after her debut in a turf sprint in 2010. For the ability she had revealed made plenty of sense: she was by Giant's Causeway out of an unraced Seeking the Gold half-sister to G1 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winner Peintre Celebre (Nureyev).

Unfortunately Elle Special did not consolidate. In fact, she ended up running under a tag at Mountaineer, albeit she'd won a couple of minor races in the meantime. Calumet was able to buy her for $20,000 on retirement, and she made the most of such chances as she had there: her first foal, by Eye of the Leopard, managed a couple of wins in Mexico; and her second, a son of Raison d'Etat, won at Keeneland and Churchill before being beaten barely a length in his solitary try in graded company. Elle Special's next registered foal, in 2017, did better yet. A son of Oxbow sold for just $6,000 as a yearling, he remained unraced when Reed bought his dam but subsequently emerged as Hopeful Treasure to win the GIII Fall Highweight Handicap at Aqueduct.

Now the fact is that Reed and Tiffany Zammit have finite resources at TCR Ranch. They graze only a handful of mares on 100 acres, 20 minutes south-west of Keeneland, yet have bred a bunch of stakes horses over the years. The expertise required to do so was demonstrated in finding this mare, but sadly yielded scant reward. First they received just $11,000 for Elle Special's short yearling by Lord Nelson, that luckless sire having just succumbed to his final health crisis, at the 2022 January Sale. And then real disaster struck, a few weeks later, when they lost the mare and her last foal together.

Dresden Row is therefore the bequest of two tragic parents in Elle Special and Lord Nelson. He elevated his value to $70,000 when pinhooked to True North Stables at OBS last year; and has really thrived for Lorne Richards, winning five of his last six including the GIII Durham Cup against his elders and now Saturday's big race.

Super Chow | Sarah Andrew

His talent rewards quite a gamble in the choice of Lord Nelson for Elle Special, both being out of Seeking the Gold mares. But a similarly concentrated formula has produced another of Lord Nelson's principal talents, Super Chow, a triple graded stakes winner this year. Not only is his damsire Warrior's Reward is out of Seeking the Gold mare; Super Chow's granddam is actually full sister to Lord Nelson's, both by Southern Halo out of Argentinian blue hen Miss Peggy (Arg).

Anyhow the net result, for Dresden Row, is wonderful quality through the third generation: besides Seeking the Gold twice, the other gentlemen in the equation are Storm Cat and A.P. Indy; while the four ladies are the aristocrat Preach (another representative for Seeking the Gold's sire Mr Prospector); Argentinian champion Miss Linda (Arg) (Southern Halo); matriarch Mariah's Storm (Rahy); and Peintre Bleue (Alydar), whose champion son Peintre Celebre was only the icing on a sumptuous Wildenstein cake. Herself winner of the GII Long Island Handicap, she produced a further series of black-type performers and/or producers, the most recent being granddaughter Pensee Du Jour (Ire) (Camelot {GB}), a Group 2 winner in France this year.

That this is no accident can be judged from TCR Ranch offerings at the imminent Keeneland sale. Smarthalf (Smart Strike), already responsible for graded stakes performer Clayton (Bodemeister), is out of an A.P. Indy half-sister to champion juvenile filly Halfbridled (Unbridled). Offered as Hip 2445 in foal to Maclean's Music, she'll be followed into the ring by her Goldencents colt. And look out for Hip 1795, a son of highflying McKinzie out of another Calumet cast-off, Dram Girl (English Channel). This mare, out of Grade I winner Notable Career (Avenue of Flags), was found at the same sale as Elle Special and nearly as cheaply.

She was carrying a son of Big Blue Kitten who has gone on to black-type success, a rare distinction for his sire. So while a cruel fate has denied Dresden Row's breeders the chance to capitalize on his dam, perhaps the acuity they showed in taking her from Calumet will instead pay off with this parallel project.

CLEVER AND NOT SO COSTLY

No surprise to see Emery (More Than Ready) continuing to thrive, the GII Raven Run Stakes winner having laid down her foundations at Nursery Place. Her ongoing success will remind prospectors to check out that exemplary farm's weanling consignment back at the Keeneland November Sale, where she was found by the Stonestreet team for $235,000 three years ago.

Emery | Coady Media

It was obvious that they were delighted with her progress when they returned in 2022 to pick up her dam Athena (Street Sense) for only $130,000, with an Improbable filly on board.

Athena had carried the silks of Emery's breeder Mary Grum through a 7-for-27 track career featuring three stakes wins on dirt between six and eight furlongs. That made her much the best of the otherwise modest winners out of an unraced Rock Of Gibraltar (Ire) half-sister to Peeping Tom.

Winner of the GI Carter Handicap, and twice placed in the GI Met Mile while banking over $1.4 million, Peeping Tom was ingeniously named as a son of Eagle Eyed out of the Nasty and Bold mare Artful Pleasure. Herself graded stakes-placed, Artful Pleasure was among several talented performers and/or producers out of Clever But Costly (Clever Trick): her siblings included GI Futurity Stakes winner Traitor (Cryptoclearance); GII Pennsylvania Derby winner Sun King (Charismatic); four-time graded stakes scorer Ocean Drive (Belong To Me); and the unraced dam of two multiple graded stakes winners.

That's a major family to have fallen rather fallow for a generation, but the embers have been stoked now and Stonestreet will doubtless ensure that More Than Ready's growing (and global) legacy as a broodmare sire will someday be enhanced by Emery. Already this month his daughters have produced elite winners Carl Spackler (Ire) (Lope De Vega {Ire}) and She Feels Pretty (Karakontie {Jpn}).

In the meantime Emery's emergence has consoled the purchasers of Athena's previous foal, a Candy Ride (Arg) filly, for $210,000 at the 2021 September Sale. She never made the racetrack, but now finds herself a radiant broodmare prospect in returning to Keeneland as Hip 1094, in foal to Up to the Mark.

DAMSIRE DOUBLES UP IN DOWAGER

More Than Ready's big month as a broodmare sire last weekend prompted a similar posthumous push by Giant's Causeway. As already noted, one of his daughters produced Dresden Row-and next day two others sent out fillies to share a photo for the GIII Dowager Stakes. (For good measure, the third home was by his son Not This Time.)

Chop Chop (Outside) and Forever After All (Inside) | Coady Media

Julia Tuttle, who's out of a sister to Candy Ride (Arg), has already produced Tom's d'Etat by Smart Strike, and her daughter Forever After All (Connect) is similarly thriving with maturity. She took nine attempts to break her maiden but here failed by just a nose against millionaire Chop Chop (City of Light).

The winner is out of Grand Sofia, an unraced half-sister to GI Hollywood Gold Cup winner Rail Trip (Jump Start) who failed to meet her reserve at $875,000 carrying a Flightline colt at Fasig-Tipton last November. We'll have to see how ambitious connections of Chop Chop prove when she appears in the same ring; while her 3-year-old half-sister by Omaha Beach, Sweet Miss Maggie, sells at Keeneland [Hip 1635].

City of Light, incidentally, had been indebted to yet another daughter of Giant's Causeway for a further turf winner, Fearless Soldier, at Santa Anita only the previous day. More important, perhaps, was an impressive debut last Thursday by Uncle Jim, on the same Keeneland dirt that saw another City of Light juvenile, Filoso, claim a Grade I podium earlier this month. Valuable fresh blood, then, to back up Mentee–who somewhat emulated his boom-bust brother Fierceness when bouncing back from his GI Hopeful eclipse with a graded stakes success at Belmont earlier this month.

He switched surfaces there and these glimpses of chlorophyll are intriguing in City of Light, whose granddam was half-sister to Cacoethes (by Alydar, yet memorably ran Nashwan to a neck at Ascot in 1989). And of course his sire Quality Road is by the versatile Elusive Quality out of a Strawberry Road mare. Elite European programs take note.