Breeding Digest

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...

When he succumbed to colic in October 2011, aged just 14, there was a poignant sense that Bernstein had never quite lived up to his glamorous billing. He was a celebrity even as an embryo, carried through the Keeneland ring at the 1996 November Sale by a $1.9 million mare--La Affirmed (Affirmed), the second most expensive broodmare auctioned in America that year--as a full-sibling to two graded stakes winners by Storm Cat. On his safe delivery, his dam's purchasers at Brushwood Farm sent Bernstein back the following November to defray...

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...

Whatever Next? It's as big a question for the throwback gelding of that name as for his sire, both standing at an exciting crossroads in their respective careers. Next's domination of a niche division of the American Turf is now such that he may now try to adapt to a more competitive, mainstream discipline at the Breeders' Cup. But whether this switch concerns distance or surface, in the Classic or Turf respectively, nobody should be surprised if the gray proves equal to the challenge. For his sire Not This Time...

To many, no doubt, her genetic contribution is by now too attenuated to merit attention. At the very least, however, it must be acknowledged an impressive coincidence that the winners of both the GIII Iroquois Stakes and GIII Pocahontas Stakes--whose shared value, as reconnaissance for the Classics over the same track next May, is recognized by allocation of the first starting points--should share as sixth dam the Darby Dan foundation mare Golden Trail. The Golden Trail dynasty entwines such productive lines as those branded by Memories of Silver, Sunshine Forever...

It's easier to identify the phenomenon of a broodmare sire than to account for it. But we certainly have a modern marvel of the genre in Bernardini, whose posthumous consolidation of what had been an exceptionally precocious emergence in this sphere reached a fresh peak as the Saratoga summer drew to a close. On Saturday, one of his daughters produced Immersive (Nyquist) to win the GI Spinaway Stakes; and on Monday another Bernardini mare gave us Chancer McPatrick (McKinzie) to achieve a reciprocal status among the crop's colts in the...

However obvious it may now appear that the "real" Fierceness didn't show up for the GIII Holy Bull Stakes back in February, he was keeping tougher company than many assumed at the time. Of the pair, in fact, things went rather more blatantly wrong for Domestic Product, bumped early before wasting energy against a slow pace and coming home wide. Domestic Product still managed to get closer to the winner than did the juvenile champion, and even in scrambling home in the GIII Tampa Bay Derby next time left a...

Once again American investors have shown an increasing receptivity to European bloodlines, this time at the big yearling sale in Deauville. For now, however, we're still only talking about a minority even among those with the resources required to import elite yearlings. But with a reciprocal curiosity also growing in Europe--thanks to Justify, in particular, but also to those breeze-up pinhookers now preparing their next raid on the September Sale--it does feel as though the overdue renewal of transatlantic traffic is beginning to gain commercial traction. We still have a...

Three 'TDN Rising Star' debutants last weekend followed up in graded stakes to confirm their place among the leading juveniles of the summer. Two were by established big guns Uncle Mo and Curlin. But GIII Sorrento Stakes winner Nooni is by a $5,000 Florida rookie who had already that day celebrated his first black-type winner, by nearly five lengths, in his backyard at Gulfstream. That's some day at the office for Win Win Win, and confirms the contrasts emerging from the early skirmishes in the freshman table. Obviously the cavalries...

There can't be many tracks that that deviate further from the standard American model than Goodwood. Even in Britain nobody today would dream of laying out a racecourse along a twisting ridge of downland, and we remain duly indebted to the militia officers who first eked out a little sport here 223 years ago. Not that the horses themselves share our appreciation for a gorgeous panorama of cornfields and woodland, focused as they are on keeping their balance over the swaying terrain and round sharp right-hand bends. Yet last week...

An interval of 136 years between Apollo and Justify, followed by one of just five to Mage, tells us all we need to know about the way modern trainers can (and increasingly prefer to) prepare their Derby prospects. So these remain very early days for the freshmen sires, nowadays responsible for such a large portion of every juvenile crop. In this era of monster books, especially, even the rookie with most action to date has barely scratched the surface. At the moment that's Vekoma, who lies second in the freshman...

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...