Pedigree Insights: Rock Fall

“There are a lot of similarities between him and his sire and the way they train. You wouldn't necessarily know they're as good as they are.”

So said Todd Pletcher as part of his assessment of Rock Fall after the GI Vosburgh S., in which the son of Speightstown booked his ticket to the Breeders' Cup Sprint. And that's not the only similarity between father and son.

John Moynihan, bloodstock adviser to Rock Fall's owner Barbara Banke, provided some fascinating insights following a dazzling display on the colt's third start. This came at Belmont in June last year, when the colt earned 'TDN Rising Star' status. Apart from telling everyone that Rock Fall is “a fast, fast, fast, fast horse,” Moynihan explained that “Todd thought he was going to be a top 2-year-old last year, but we were derailed by injuries.”

Fortunately these injuries were not serious enough to significantly delay Rock Fall's debut, as he made his first start in the April of his 3-year-old campaign and gained his first victory a month later. Although he was to spend more than nine months on the sidelines following his 'Rising Star' performance, his career has been much less prone to the type of interruptions which affected Speightstown's career. You may remember that Speightstown saw little or no action at the ages of two, four and five.

But as everyone knows, those interruptions didn't prevent Speightstown developing into a champion sprinter as a 6-year-old in 2004. Now, Rock Fall seems to be well on target for the same award, but at the substantially earlier age of four, as he has been following in Speightstown's footsteps.

The six-year-old Speightstown won the GII True North Breeders' Cup H., and Rock Fall won it even more decisively. Speightstown next won the Alfred G. Vanderbilt H., which in 2004 was a Grade II, and Rock Fall again emulated his sire in this Saratoga contest, now a Grade I contest. He had to show courage as well as speed, though,

The similarities ended when Rock Fall again fought his way to a narrow victory as a very short-priced favorite for Saturday's Vosburgh S. Speightstown had also started odds on to win the Vosburgh, but had to settle for a modest third place behind the Brazilian import Pico Central.

With no Pico Central among his opponents in the Breeders' Cup Sprint at Lone Star Park, Speightstown ended his career on a high, getting first run on the favorite Kela to clinch the Eclipse Award. As a winner of his last seven starts, Rock Fall must have as good a chance as any of emulating his sire one more time when the action moves to Keeneland–especially when Pletcher says he had tried to keep something in reserve for the Sprint in training Rock Fall for the Vosburgh.

With his three graded victories, Rock Fall has been the star of the Speightstown show in 2015, though there have also been American graded successes for Barbados, Recepta, Speightster and Force The Pass, as well as notable foreign performances by Tropics in England and by Reynaldothewizard and Tamarkuz in the UAE.

Their wins have come from six furlongs to a mile and a quarter, with Force The Pass's success in the GI Belmont Derby Invitational making him the fourth son of Speightstown to become a Grade I winner over a mile and a quarter. His predecessors were Haynesfield (Jockey Club Gold Cup), Golden Ticket (Travers S.) and Seek Again (Hollywood Derby). Clearly, Speightstown's talents as a sire are very varied, both in terms of distance requirements and racing surface.

Speightstown will be 18 in 2016, though, so the search is on for his rightful heir. Munnings is staking a strong claim, despite having had fewer than 100 starters from his first two crops. He leads the second-crop sires not only by cumulative earnings, but also by number of black-type winners (12) and number of black-type horses (17). He also numbers the Grade I winner I'm A Chatterbox among his three graded winners.

As Munnings never won a Grade I, it seems fair to think that anything he can do, Rock Fall should do at least as well. Rock Fall's prospects surely will be enhanced by having a stakes-winning daughter of Medaglia d'Oro as his dam. Indeed this daughter, Renda, had the distinction of becoming Medaglia d'Oro's first winner when she scored at Calder on May 31, 2008, and then became his first stakes winner. In fact, she won a couple of stakes races at around a mile as a 2-year-old and was Grade II-placed over seven furlongs at three. She has been entered for Fasig-Tipton's November Sale.

Renda received 106 on the Experimental Free Handicap, after winning half of her six starts. She was obviously much more precocious than Medaglia d'Oro, who was second in his only juvenile start, and it isn't hard to see why. Her grandsires are El Prado (Ire), a winner of four of his six juvenile starts, including the G1 National S, and Capote, who numbered the Breeders' Cup Juvenile among his three wins from four starts in his first season.

Needless to say, Renda isn't the only female member of Medaglia d'Oro's first crop to make her mark as a broodmare. Rachel Alexandra's first two foals have made quite an impact, notably her Grade I-winning Bernardini 2-year-old Rachel's Valentina.

Medaglia d'Oro was also in the news over the weekend. He had a handful of stakes winners headed by his impressive 2-year-old daughter Songbird. This filly's record now stands at a perfect three for three, including Grade I wins in the Del Mar Debutante and the Chandelier S. Coincidentally, this potential champion is out of Ivanavinalot, whose wins included one in the Brave Raj S.–a race won a few years later by Renda.

More importantly, Ivanavinalot was sired by West Acre, a son of Forty Niner. Of course it was Roar, another son of Forty Niner, who sired the dam of Rachel Alexandra. For the record, West Acre never raced, but earned his chance as a stallion in Florida on the strength of his bloodlines. With a son of Mr Prospector as his sire and Narrate as his dam, he was a three-parts-brother to two notable Mr Prospector mares in Preach, dam of Pulpit, and her sister Yarn, dam of Tale Of The Cat.

Incidentally, in addition to being the sire of a 2015 2-year-old Grade I winner and broodmare sire of another, Medaglia d'Oro had a major 2-year-old winner during the 2014-15 Australian season in the form of G1 Golden Slipper winner Vancouver. In the past we have also seen Medaglia d'Oro enjoy graded stakes juvenile success with such as Rachel Alexandra, Violence, Passion For Gold and C. S. Silk. It seems he is being helped in this area by the fact that both his parents were relatively precocious stakes winners at two–his dam Cappucino Bay gained her stakes success in the August of her first season.

Saturday, Belmont Park

VOSBURGH S.-GI, $400,000, BEL, 9-26, 3yo/up, 6f, 1:08.70, ft.

1–ROCK FALL, 124, c, 4, by Speightstown

1st Dam: Renda (MSW & GSP, $160,593),

by Medaglia d'Oro

2nd Dam: Ten Carats, by Capote

3rd Dam: Miss Waikiki, by Miswaki

“TDN Rising Star” ($250,000 Ylg '12 FTSAUG).

O-Stonestreet Stables LLC; B-SF Bloodstock LLC

(KY); T-Todd A. Pletcher; J-Javier Castellano.

$240,000. Lifetime Record: 8-7-0-0, $749,180.

Click for the eNicks report & 5-cross pedigree.

Werk Nick Rating: A+++. *Triple Plus*.