Breeding Digest: Monroe Line Gives Cameo Players a Starring Role

If Juddmonte keeps going like this, I might as well just copy and paste tributes already paid this summer to family trees it has cultivated through the past four decades. Before reprising that process, then, let's start with something of a detour.

Daylami (Ire) was one of the most accomplished runners ever produced by another storied breed-to-race program. A Classic winner over a mile, in maturity he won the premier all-aged turf races in Britain (by five lengths), Ireland (by nine) and America.

At stud, he was supported by both the Aga Khan, who had bred and initially raced him, and Sheikh Mohammed, who recruited him for Godolphin and then stood him in partnership with Gilltown. Meanwhile the potency of his genes was corroborated by the Darshaan(GB) half-brother delivered by his dam Daltawa (Ire) a few weeks after Daylami's retirement: G1 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winner Dalakhani (Ire). Daltawa, moreover, joined Urban Sea in suggesting their sire Miswaki to be the greatest distaff influence of all.

So Daylami just couldn't miss, right?

Well, after six years he was moved on to South Africa before resurfacing in Ireland to cover jumping mares at €3,000. He did produce one standout, G1 Irish Derby winner Grey Swallow (Ire), from his very first crop. But a yawning gap follows to a pair that respectively achieved their best ratings in Turkey and Italy. Though one of his daughters gave us Australian star Pierro (Aus) (Lonhro {Aus}), overall there's no denying that Daylami, at stud, fell dismally short of the standards he had set on the track.

Yet in 2004, Daylami was chosen as the first partner for one of Juddmonte's most precious broodmare prospects. Tantina (Distant View) had won her first four starts in such destructive style, notably a 17-runner listed race, that she started odds-on for her group debut. Unfortunately she finished lame and was not seen again. Worse still, she was tragically lost to foaling complications when only 10. Even so, Tantina managed to produce two sons, Bated Breath (GB) and Cityscape (GB), who have effectively recycled their class and toughness at stud, and in the meantime, her daughter by Daylami, Scuffle (GB), was listed-placed before also proving a very effective conduit for these genes.

Scuffle's son Logician (GB) (Frankel {GB}) won the G1 St Leger; her daughter Suffused (GB) (Champs Elysees {GB}) won three graded stakes and was denied the GI E.P. Taylor Stakes by a nose; while back in April her son Okeechobee (GB) (Time Test {GB}) won a group race at Sandown (subsequently sidelined).

Then there was a daughter by Oasis Dream (GB), Sleep Walk (GB), who won three of five starts, albeit at a fairly modest level. As a sprinter, Sleep Walk's 2018 mating with the rookie Caravaggio was clearly intended to double down on speed. It hasn't quite worked out like that, but nor could it have worked out much better.

Caravaggio's precocity and dash, as a Royal Ascot winner at two and three, guaranteed commercial demand when launched at Coolmore in Ireland. But the farm's roster was increasingly congested with alternatives from the Scat Daddy line, and Caravaggio switched to Ashford even before his first juveniles reached the track. And then, after two seasons in the Bluegrass, he was off again–this time to Japan.

Having also had an early stint in Australia, Caravaggio has an extremely wide footprint for a stallion no more than 10 years old. By the same token, it's been hard for him to develop a coherent profile. But the Japanese tend to know when we might be missing a trick, and last week Caravaggio duly reached a new peak with elite winners on consecutive days. First Porta Fortuna (Ire) followed up her Royal Ascot success in the G1 Falmouth Stakes and then Whitebeam (GB), the result of Sleep Walk's inclusion in Caravaggio's debut book, retained the GI Diana Stakes.

Like her first three dams (one juvenile start between them) and also like her dam's half-brother Logician, Whitebeam only emerged as a 3-year-old in Britain, but quickly reached stakes level before joining Chad Brown. That has proved a smart call by the current Juddmonte team, but yet again we must honor the program's founders.

Already this year, besides others working for other families, the flourishing siblings Scylla and Batten Down (both by Tapit) have caused us to celebrate the purchase of Best In Show's daughter Monroe (Sir Ivor) from Robert Sangster, during the first phase of Juddmonte.

Monroe's 17 starters and 14 winners overall, including champion juvenile Xaar (GB) (Zafonic) and her 1996 daughter Silver Star (GB), by the same sire, is the third dam of Scylla and Batten Down (not forgetting their older brother Tacitus).

The line from Whitebeam to Monroe is more attenuated. Didicoy (Danzig), one of the first Juddmonte foals delivered by Monroe in 1986, is her fifth dam. Didicoy's best runner and producer was GII Dahlia Handicap winner Didina (GB) (Nashwan), dam of Tantina. And, as we've seen, it is Tantina who has really held this branch of the Monroe dynasty together.

In the process, she has shown how these breed-to-race programs–by persevering past shallow commercial gloss–can sometimes draw out the genes that powered even champions, like Daylami, who otherwise largely fail to replicate that prowess at stud.

Words Matched by Deeds

With horses, of course, there is seldom a right way and a wrong way–only the way that works for you. So the above must be set in due context. Very few have the resources, never mind the time, demanded by a breed-to-race program.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have the Thousand Words model: a commercial freshman who must seize his one big chance while he can. And he's certainly doing that, six winners to date now, including a second black-type scorer after The Queen's M G stunned Saratoga's opening-day crowd in the Schuylerville Stakes–grabbing the baton from Vodka With a Twist, who had closed the Churchill meet days previously by landing the Debutante Stakes.

The Queen's M G | Sarah Andrew

That's the way to do it, when your first three books have comprised 184, 121 and 61 mares–the familiar, ruthless slide shared by so many stallions nowadays. It's hard to decide which is more depressing, the initial stampede, or the haste with which sires are abandoned as their stock near exposure at the starting gate.

As an unbeaten Grade II winner at two, Thousand Words offered commercial breeders useful precocity, albeit he did not in fact surface until Oct. 26 before winning the Los Alamitos Futurity in December. That air of precocity was perhaps sooner completed by his failure, overall, to keep progressing as a sophomore. But he was always in the hands of people who knew what they were about, Albaugh Family Stable and Spendthrift having teamed up on a seven-figure docket in Book 1 at Keeneland September.

That was pretty instructive of the physical quality loaded into a colt whose first three dams are by Pomeroy, Point Given and Deposit Ticket. But what's intriguing about these unfashionable antecedents is that they entwine such conspicuous “outlier” quality. His dam, as a triple graded stakes winner and dual Grade I runner-up, qualifies as Pomeroy's best runner. She was out of an unraced mare, but the next dam (multiple stakes winner) was in turn far and away the highest earner by Deposit Ticket, a son of Northern Baby who won the GI Hopeful Stakes, but ended up standing in Iowa and Arizona. The next dam, moreover, was actually a half-sister to Harlan.

So while it remains way too early to be drawing conclusions, it's very striking that The Queens M G, found for just $3,500 deep in Fasig-Tipton's October Yearling Sale, actually cost more than Vodka With a Twist, at $2,500, earlier in the same auction! I guess that's the risk breeders embrace when a $7,500 cover sends no fewer than 91 members of his debut crop into the ring as yearlings… (Thousand Words registered a median of $15,000.)

The Queens M G is out of an Oregon-bred mare (anonymous in three maiden claimers) by Grindstone, a son of Unbridled–whose sire-line is extended by Thousand Words himself through Pioneerof The Nile/Empire Maker. That being so, and with third, fourth and fifth dams by A.P. Indy, Roberto and Nijinsky, she should certainly keep on running.

Incidentally that third dam, dual graded stakes winner Parade Queen, actually figures as granddam of two elite winners in Bodemeister and She's A Julie. (The respective sires of that pair were brought into this pedigree, too. Empire Maker as grandsire of Thousand Words, while Elusive Quality is responsible for the second dam.)

Congratulations to those who unearthed these two stakes winners so cheaply, and let's hope that the respective dams could yet offer the vendors some belated reward.

Whoever This Slipper Fits…

Pretty obvious why Bullet should be high-caliber. Winner of black-type prizes in both starts, following her switch from turf to synthetics for the My Dear Stakes at Woodbine, she's by the venerable War Front out of a Tapit mare, and both her second and third dams were champions: Surfside (Seattle Slew) and Flanders (Seeking the Gold).

Surfside was bought by Gainesway as a 12-year-old, at the Keeneland November Sale of 2009, for $500,000 from the Overbrook dispersal, and the Giant's Causeway foal she was carrying that day recouped plenty of that outlay as a graded stakes winner (admittedly over 12 furlongs of synthetic).    Unfortunately Gainesway appear to have got just one other named foal out of Surfside, four years later: Marlinspike (Tapit), who showed fair ability (maiden/allowance winner) in a light career.

Bullet | Michael Burns

Sending a daughter of Seattle Slew to Tapit had obviously doubled down on his sire-line, but the choice of War Front for Marlinspike, when she came to breed, was even more pointed. Because the Claiborne veteran is out of a Rubiano mare, and Rubiano is of course very closely related to Tapit's dam Tap Your Heels. (The latter by Unbridled out of Ruby Slippers (Nijinsky); Rubiano by Unbridled's sire Fappiano out of the same mare.)

Perhaps this 2021 mating was emboldened by the GI Fourstardave Handicap success the previous summer of Halladay, for now the only notable advert for the War Front–Tapit cross. Regardless, she's already looking a sound investment for D.J. Stable ($425,000 September yearling) and the team must be looking forward to how they might someday complement such strong flavors in her pedigree.

The Reason in My Madness

After last week cherishing the memory of Shamardal, we can now add a couple of supplementary plaudits. His latest success as a broodmare sire is Star Of Mystery (GB) (Kodiac {GB}), winner of the GIII Quick Call Stakes, while Carl Spackler (Ire) (Lope De Vega {Ire}) in the GIII Kelso Stakes provided another credit to his legacy as a sire of sires.

And I'll give you this for nothing–which, no doubt, is exactly what it's worth. But I've looked into this a fair bit and, to me, the consecutive lines of Hail to Reason behind Carl Spackler are absolutely exemplary in terms for Shamardal blood.

Star of Mystery | Sarah Andrew

Carl Spackler's dam is by More Than Ready, who takes the Halo train to the Hail to Reason station, and his granddam is by Kris S., who takes the Roberto line.

If you go back to Shamardal's sire Giant's Causeway, you'll see his damsire Rahy is out of a Halo mare, and his second dam is by Roberto. As for Lope De Vega, he's famously out of a Vettori mare and therefore inbred 3×3 to Shamardal's damsire Machiavellian. That feels more about Machiavellian's dam Coup De Folie, a daughter of Halo, than his sire Mr. Prospector, who has otherwise played strikingly little role in Shamardal's best horses.

There are a couple of other things I like to throw onto a Shamardal canvas, but I think that's more than enough daubs from this lunatic palette for now.