Breeding Digest: Riding Puca's Rising Tide

If you didn't know the sophisticated people behind the mating, you might imagine that Puca went to Good Magic on no better premise than to double down on the alchemy implicit in both names.

Because a puca (or pooka) in folklore is a shape-changing sprite, capable of bringing good or bad fortune. Shakespeare named Puck accordingly in A Midsummer Night's Dream, but my favourite example is Elwood P. Dowd's invisible drinking buddy Harvey, a rabbit standing just under six feet four inches. Perhaps you've noticed his silhouette at Harvey's Bar in downtown Lexington? If not, then check out the James Stewart movie, and meanwhile settle for a mare now resident down the road at Resolute Farm as the most celebrated Puca in town.

TDN visited Puca and her latest son by Good Magic earlier this summer, after Dornoch's GI Belmont Stakes success elevated her to the select group of mares to have produced two Classic winners, his brother Mage having of course won the GI Kentucky Derby last year. In now adding the GI Haskell Stakes, Dornoch has consolidated his claims as crop leader–and so become a rising tide that floats all boats.

Most obviously he has vindicated the $2.9 million purchase of his dam by John Stewart at Keeneland last November. Even as it was, her McKinzie yearling had made $1.2 million in the same ring a few weeks previously. And just about every step taken by Dornoch since, starting in the GII Remsen Stakes, has enhanced the value of a mare still only 12 years old. No wonder her weanling is nicknamed “Preakness” on the farm.

Good Magic | Sarah Andrew

But while Puca is now serving an ambitious new force, she's also working out nicely for others with a contrasting depth of experience–each, in their different way, outstanding exemplars for anyone trying to secure a lasting foothold in this most challenging of sports.

Airdrie Stud, for instance, can now amplify the genes being recycled by Mage, who joined their roster this spring. Dornoch himself will eventually enter competition at Spendthrift, and it will be interesting to follow their fortunes, given the different approach of these two farms. Spendthrift candidly plays the numbers game, which essentially pitches lower fees against the risk of a market glut. Airdrie tends to be more restrained in book sizes, while gamely still setting value fees and trusting in an uncommon flair–one that's proving seamless, between one generation and the next–for identifying talent, and giving it a chance through an expertly assembled home herd. In fact its two most industrial rivals, Ashford and Spendthrift, owe big guns Uncle Mo and Into Mischief to Airdrie projects, in Indian Charlie and Harlan's Holiday respectively.

Physically, Mage primarily evokes their sire; Dornoch, their dam. Both, however, are powerful adverts for their upbringing by the most venerable farm in town.

Mage in the Derby | Coady

Mage was the fourth Derby winner raised at Runnymede, founded in 1867 by the great-grandfather of current chairman/CEO, Brutus Clay III. With characteristic modesty, Clay deflects credit for the farm's commercial regeneration since the 2008 wake-up to Romain Malhouitre, who supervises day-to-day operations. Regardless, the arrival of Grandview Equine, breeders of Mage and Dornoch, itself illustrates the diversification these guys have achieved in the client base. Just like Airdrie, then, this is a farm with a great history now carrying forward its legacy in dynamic fashion–with a little help from Puca.

But on this rising tide let's not forget the boat that launched Puca herself. Because her dam, Boat's Ghost, surely merits closer attention in pondering how her daughter by Big Brown has achieved stardom. After all, she had already contrived a Grade I winner by a stallion as unproductive as Powerscourt (GB).

Her own sire Silver Ghost became more notorious, at stud, for his fiery temperament than for prolific success. But he left a respectable imprint as a broodmare sire–for instance through Ascend (Candy Ride {Arg}), Yonaguska (Cherokee Run) and Roadster (Quality Road)–and his mating with Rocktheboat (Summer Squall), a mare who otherwise produced limited results from limited opportunity, somehow stoked up embers in their daughter Boat's Ghost.

Perhaps something clicked with Rocktheboat's damsire Native Royalty, by Raise A Native out of the important mare Queen Nasra, a daughter of Nasrullah. That's a strong echo of Silver Ghost's sire Mr Prospector: by Raise A Native, out of a mare by Nasrullah's great son Nashua. But don't forget that Silver Ghost himself belongs to the illustrious Gallorette family, his granddam Flight Dancer (Misty Flight) figuring as fourth dam of Gun Runner and third dam of Saint Liam.

One way or another, to produce an outlier by Powerscourt as well as a history-making mare means that Boat's Ghost, herself stakes-placed in a light career, must be revisited as a mare of consequence.

Good Magic colt out of Puca | Sara Gordon

Which is pretty unfortunate for those who culled her, aged 19, for just $17,000 at the Keeneland January Sale last year, barely a fortnight before Mage made his belated debut. As a result, however, yet another of the most exemplary operations around is prospering from Dornoch's rise. For Boat's Ghost was purchased by Nursery Place, whose peerless standards will assuredly maximize the potential of daughters by Raging Bull (Fr) (acquired in utero) and now Hard Spun (Good Magic's damsire, incidentally).

Unfortunately she missed this year, but the self-effacing master horseman who presides over Nursery Place is grateful for what they have. In fact he intends to race the Raging Bull, and refers to the Hard Spun as “a collector's item.” If that's a strong endorsement, rest assured that plans for now remain no more excitable than that she will “probably just hang out for a while.”

Hearing that, you just feel that the confluence behind Puca of beneficiaries as diverse as Airdrie, Runnymede and Nursery Place–united by a conviction that if you do right by a horse, everything else will fall in place–can be no coincidence.

THE STAR LIGHTING UP THORPEDO'S PAGE

The colorful origins of Thorpedo Anna–the premature foaling of her dam, who was then kindly donated by her owner to the people looking after her so well–have understandably dominated her back story. And we have all relished, also, this fresh evidence that you don't need to be a tycoon or sheikh to strike gold somewhere along the line. (Albeit in our hearts we know that hardly any of us will get anywhere near Kenny McPeek's ability to spot the gleam of a hidden seam…)

Thorpedo Anna takes the CCA Oaks | Coglianese

But the fairytale element should not distract us from one or two fundamentals lurking in her page.

Doubtless plenty of people out there will just be chucking her into their software as a Fast Anna-Uncle Mo cross; or, more likely, as a “Medaglia d'Oro line”-Uncle Mo cross, that kind of shorthand becoming necessary when sires are as inconvenient to any kind of “system” as Fast Anna before his sad loss to laminitis three years ago.

For him to bequeath a filly as brilliant as Thorpedo Anna as his one and only graded stakes winner is enough to divert my attention to a far more luminously obvious powderkeg behind the GI Coaching Club American Oaks winner.

Uncle Mo, then on the bubble at $27,500, has turned out to be a different class of stallion from almost all the others mated with Thorpedo Anna's granddam Pacific Sky. But that mare offered him some remarkable blood.

Apart from anything else, she combined her damsire Seattle Slew as close as 3×2, her sire Stormy Atlantic being out of one of his daughters. Moreover we mustn't forget that Stormy Atlantic extends the storied Rough Shod bloodline, via his third dam Moccasin. And that line, in her pedigree, duly stands opposite one of the few that can look Rough Shod in the eye and ask for more.

Because even producing two Grade I winners (Eskendereya by Giant's Causeway, and Balmont by Stravinsky) qualifies Pacific Sky's dam Aldebaran Light (Seattle Slew) as a fairly minor addition to the dynasty rooted in the mighty Almahmoud. Aldebaran Light (a half-sister to Grade II winner Blazonry {Hennessy}) gets to her along the Cosmah branch, her fourth dam being Halo's half-sister Queen Sucree (Ribot {GB})–herself responsible for Derby winner Cannonade (Bold Bidder).

Pacific Sky's daughter by much her most potent mate was physically prevented from tapping into all this stuff, but such a concentration of big “brands,” so close up, surely explains Thorpedo Anna far better than scratching our heads over Fast Anna.

Of course, Fast Anna represents a sireline that found, in Sadler's Wells, the most explosive combination of all between the Almahmoud and Rough Shod lines. And we could also mention that his damsire Rahy is out of a Halo mare; or even that his third dam, who additionally produced Kitten's Joy by Fast Anna's grandsire El Prado (Ire), was by Lear Fan–whose damsire Lt. Stevens was out of Rough Shod…

But those are all straws floating in the wind. Feel free to reduce everything to data, formulas, systems. Good luck, and we'll see you at the racetrack. Some of us, at least, will always be grateful that the mystery abides.

PRECOCITY DOES NOT EQUAL SPEED

Interesting to see the brilliant program that produced Without Parole (among many others) launching a couple of his first crop at Saratoga last week. One ran a very promising fifth, the other won. Over the water, meanwhile, the son of Frankel (GB) has had five winners from just 17 starters on his doorstep at Newsells Park Stud.

Without Parole | Amy Lanigan

Starting out in Britain, Without Parole himself made his only juvenile appearance a few days before Christmas but rose quickly through the ranks to win the G1 St James's Palace Stakes on his fourth start. He's a half-brother to dirt miler Tamarkuz (Speightstown) out of a half-sister to two other accomplished dirt horses in Stay Thirsty (Bernardini) and Andromeda's Hero (Fusaichi Pegasus). The next dam, by Roberto, was second in four Grade I races, and opens six consecutive generations curated by King Ranch.

Bearing in mind the transatlantic impact being made by Justify, the Gunthers are showing much bigger programs the way when it comes to reconciling the disastrous schism our industry has allowed to open between European and American gene pools. Without Parole could prove another two-way street, and maybe not just on grass either. I have never seen a turf champion that ran more like a dirt horse than Frankel.

Without Parole stood for just £8,000 this year but does not have to look far for inspiration. His £17,500 neighbor Nathaniel (Ire) produced his ninth Group 1 winner in the G1 Irish Oaks last weekend.

And yet European breeders still stampede to precocious sprint sires as an ostensible source of “commercial speed.” I hope they noted yesterday's TDN, which recorded Timeform's dismal verdict on the current European sprinters, continuing a pedestrian streak over the past five years. Remember the old saying: more haste, less speed.

As Justify is showing, the continued viability in the U.S. of speed-carrying, two-turn stallions represents a huge opportunity for European commercial breeding.