Though one or two made a more blatant impact-above all Juddmonte, either side of the water, while McKinzie will be receiving due attention from colleague Jill Williams in her Saturday Sires series-let's start by celebrating a less obvious contribution to a fabulous weekend of racing.

It is now 30 years since the birth in Florida of a filly by Medieval Man, a sprinting son of Noholme II (the Australian sire recalled principally for his hard-knocking son, Nodouble). She was out of a hardy campaigner by Never Bend's son Distinctive, and would also prove pretty robust once reaching the racetrack, winning four of 30 starts including a Del Mar juvenile stakes under Shoemaker in 1:09.6.

Her name was Evil Elaine and she would win far wider fame in her second career through her 1995 foal by Phone Trick, Favorite Trick, the first 2-year-old Horse of the Year since Secretariat. Favorite Trick's stud career began in disappointment and ended in horror, already reduced to New Mexico mares when lost to a barn fire at the age of 11. But that tragedy by no means extinguished Evil Elaine's legacy.

On the eve of Favorite Trick's GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile, his breeders had sold his dam privately to Jane Lyon and her late husband Frank, then laying the foundations of Summer Wind Farm.

The Grindstone filly she was carrying at the time would bring $450,000 as a yearling, managing a Grade III placing before later producing an elite sprinter in Favorite Tale (Tale of the Cat). While neither of the consecutive Storm Cat foals Evil Elaine then produced for her new owners ever made the racetrack, a subsequent daughter by Unbridled did make $2.4 million to go to Ballydoyle.

A final foal, a filly by Unbridled's Song, required a nurse mare after Evil Elaine died little more than a month after delivery. Unsurprisingly, in the circumstances, Summer Wind elected to retain the filly ($475,000 RNA) and named her Unenchantedevening. While she mustered only a maiden success from seven starts, she has certainly paid her way in her second career, for both Summer Wind and its customers.

Her 2015 foal, a filly by Malibu Moon, made $650,000 but proved good value for her purchasers as Moonshine Memories, winner of the GI Del Mar Debutante Stakes and GI Chandelier Stakes at two. She was later cashed out for $3.4 million.

Unenchantedevening's next foal, another filly, also sold well as a $750,000 yearling. By Distorted Humor, she was named No Joke and for a time that seemed prescient on the part of owners Robert and Lawana Low, as she never made the gate herself and her first two foals proved limited. But her third, a colt by Into Mischief, made $675,000 as a Keeneland September yearling and, having won on debut for Bob Baffert as Citizen Bull, on Saturday erased a defeat as favorite next time by winning the GI American Pharoah Stakes.

Nor was Citizen Bull the only one to extend the Evil Elaine legacy last weekend. For even before she was sold to Summer Wind, she had produced a daughter by Crafty Prospector named Crafty and Evil. The family precocity was well to the fore in this one, who won on debut over 4.5 furlongs at Keeneland in April and returned for the fall meet to be stakes-placed. Her one and only foal, a daughter by Go For Gin, conversely did not win her maiden until she was four; and later produced two graded stakes winners by another slower-burning influence in Tiznow: Fury Kapcori was a Grade I-placed stakes winner at two, but maintained his form at four to win the GII Precisionist Stakes by half a dozen lengths; while Tizfiz won her Grade II on turf as a 5-year-old.

And Tizfiz, of course, is the dam of Tiz The Law-who responded to McKinzie's sensational weekend by coming up with two graded stakes winners of his own. Those keep him clear in the race for the freshman title, his first crop earnings now up to $1,935,683 from McKinzie on $1,662,468. Nobody, including in the Vekoma and Complexity camps, will be calling this one ahead of the Breeders' Cup.

However that plays out, it's edifying to see Tiz The Law renew his stature after arguably being cost the Derby by its rescheduling during Covid. He had seemed disproportionately indebted to the Kentucky Downs earnings of Tiztastic, but can now actually argue that he is spreading his genetic wares more evenly than his rival. For one thing, he has more winners (15/12) from fewer starters (38/48). McKinzie, moreover, has managed his headlines exceptionally well: he only has two stakes winners to date, but both have of course hit the Grade I bull's eye. Tiz The Law is now up to four black-type scorers, having raised his bar steeply when Non Compliant won the GII Oak Leaf Stakes on Saturday and another filly, Scythian, took the GII Miss Grillo Stakes next day.

It is not just Evil Elaine, however, who ties together the emerging stars of the juvenile crop. The farm that bought her, and started the trail that has now led to Citizen Bull, is also the one that bred McKinzie. In other words, of four Grade I prizes won by 2-year-olds last weekend, we owed three-at some point in the chain-to Summer Wind.

Sometimes Blood Does Tell

If we're honest, much pedigree analysis becomes little more than an exercise in post-rationalization. Certainly there doesn't seem much point in delving into the remote background of a mare like Evil Elaine in an attempt to explain her emergence as a producer. At this stage, it is perhaps enough to note that her genetic make-up (beyond her leftfield parentage) is strikingly cosmopolitan, combining strains from both North and South America, as well as Europe.

Every November you see broodmares changing hands for millions by stallions that would never get anywhere near the filly shortlists of elite programs scouting the yearling sales. It's reassuring for conventional market values, then, when aristocratic bloodlines do stand up.

One Magic Philly wins the Chillingworth Stakes | Horsephotos

And that certainly happened over the weekend, too. One Magic Philly (Good Magic), for instance, comforts us in her continued rise-after winning her maiden and allowance, she has now added the GIII Chillingworth Stakes-by extending a line tracing to the great Rough Shod via her daughter Moccasin. One Magic Philly's fourth dam is Hail Atlantis (Seattle Slew) (the GI Santa Anita Oaks-winning mother of Stormy Atlantic), who was herself out of Moccasin's daughter Flippers.

It's a branch of this great dynasty that remains vigorous: One Magic Philly's mother My Philly Girl (Empire Maker) shares a granddam with recent European moneyspinner Lord North (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}). Owner-breeder John Gallegos must be congratulated, then, for persevering with My Philly Girl-he had raced her with partners to win a couple of times in a light career-at just $40,000 at the 2016 Keeneland November Sale.

She was not in foal that day, and Gallegos needed patience before she resumed production, but she has meanwhile already produced stakes winner My Philly Twirl (Hard Spun) and now this still more eligible breeding prospect.

Though made to work for her GII Beldame Stakes, meanwhile, Raging Sea (Curlin) continues to vindicate another owner-breeder for recruiting her dam from another regal line at the preceding November Sale. The unraced Stormy Welcome (Storm Cat) admittedly cost rather more than My Philly Girl, at $600,000, but don't forget that she had changed hands for $1.6 million as a yearling, her granddam being none other than Weekend Surprise (Secretariat).

And meanwhile the biggest prize in Europe now decorates a Juddmonte family that has already produced a Kentucky Derby winner in Mandaloun. So while the breed preserves enough mystery to give the rest of us a chance, it feels equally important that this kind of thing works out often enough for the rich to keep investing, too.

A Gentrified Avenue

That said, even the elite families blow hot and cold. If you go back far enough, the runaway GI Breeders' Futurity winner East Avenue (Medaglia d'Oro) actually traces to the ubiquitous La Troienne (Fr). But it was a fairly pedestrian page that supported the breeze of his granddam Dance Card when John Ferguson bought her for $750,000 on behalf of Sheikh Mohammed at the Gulfstream Sale of 2011.

True, her sire Tapit had begun his emergence to stardom since her dam Tempting Note (Editor's Note) had been covered at just $12,500, her older brother Tempted to Tapit having done his bit when running second in the GII Risen Star Stakes. And their third dam had won a couple of Grade IIIs. But the page as it stood can be measured by Dance Card's pinhook price of $67,000, and Tempting Note's own yearling tag of $15,000.

Ferguson was soon vindicated, on the track, when Dance Card won the GI Gazelle Stakes; and of course she has quickly proved exceptionally effective in replicating her athletic prowess. Her second foal Endorsed (Medaglia d'Oro) fell a few cents shy of millionaire status, and her fourth is 2023 Horse of the Year Cody's Wish (Curlin).

In between came East Avenue's unraced dam, Dance Music, whose sire Ghostzapper is already a coveted distaff influence. In this day and age, a dominating juvenile success like the one East Avenue produced last weekend already guarantees commercial demand at stud-and he throws into mix one of the hottest pedigrees around.

Much to Recollect Behind Collected

For better or worse, somehow it often seems that different intakes of stallions turn out to share an overall caliber. There's no doubt that Collected found himself in a vintage group, and maybe that is why he remains relatively overlooked. But there really can't be many better options around at $10,000.

Collected | Sarah Andrew

Another pair of graded stakes winners at Santa Anita on Sunday, both juveniles from his third crop, leave Collected in his class behind only six-figure shooters Justify and Good Magic in terms of cumulative black-type scorers-and at a better rate than a number of more expensive covers. We shouldn't be surprised: only Gun Runner could beat him at his peak, and European breeders need to wake up to the fact that he drew on some classy turf flavors (inbred to the dam of Blushing Groom {Fr}) when starting his career on grass.

But then his is a farm that routinely punches above weight. Both his winners on Sunday, Thought Process and Iron Man Cal, were bred by its late founder Brereton C. Jones-whose legacy, happily in the very best of hands, is aptly measured by his posthumous standing as the leading breeder of black-type winners in 2024.

And don't forget that we owe Collected himself to another remarkable figure to have lately departed. For he was co-bred by Runnymede Farm, where a large and loving family bade farewell to its patriarch Catesby W. Clay last week. They, too, could comfort themselves that here is another farm where the next generation is maintaining the very highest of standards.

Books That Tell a Story

The values of the modern bloodstock market tend to be self-fulfilling and that is certainly true of its obsession with unproven stallions. In nearly every case, their first books will turn out to be much the biggest and best they ever receive. As a result, the very least they should do is produce a couple of headline acts after the manner of McKinzie and Tiz The Law last weekend.

By the same token, if a horse doesn't seize that brief window of opportunity, he can very soon expect his business to enter freefall. But the latest covering statistics, published last week, did disclose a couple of subtle shifts within that familiar situation.

After the defeat of the mare cap, a number of the more restrained farms seem to have decided that pragmatism must erode principle, at least to a degree, with the brakes being quietly eased on book sizes. At the same time, while one of the most industrial operations of recent years duly accounts for the four biggest books of last spring, it looks as though the other may be moderating a little.

Be all that as it may, it remains depressingly apparent that the average commercial mating owes very little to any eccentric interest in actually producing a runner. As I've often said, you can't blame the breeders: they are only responding to ringside demand. And it would be unfair to cite specific stallions. Suffice to say that some of the smaller books are nearly as embarrassing as some of the very biggest ones.