First Crop Sire

It is beginning to feel as ingrained a New Year ritual as the concert in Vienna: the raising of a toast not just to another record year for Into Mischief, but to the way his reign has become an apt symbol of our times. After all, the whole point of marking the turn of a year-it's just another leaf in the calendar, really, just one more sunrise in the indefinite (but never infinite!) sequence we are apportioned-is to take a step back and see whether we can discern a fresh...

by Margaret Ransom It was a busy weekend for one of the top three stallions battling it out for the crown as the best first-crop sire of 2022 as Justify was represented by a pair of winners and another two to hit the board, leaving Bolt d'Oro (Medaglia d'Oro) and Good Magic (Curlin) winless from just a single runner each. Justify's two winners on American soil both came on Sunday and started with Don Alberto Stable's homebred Alpha Bella, who graduated with a hard-fought victory by a head at Gulfstream...

3rd-Meydan, Maiden, AED82,500, 11-25, 1400m, 1:24.56, ft. ROYAL DUBAI (FR), (c, 2, Seahenge-Sand Rose {Fr}, by Aussie Rules) was making his debut, and appears to be a colt with plenty of potential after polishing off his rivals by 6 3/4 lengths at Meydan on Friday. Scrubbed on to maintain his position as the gates flew, the colt was in a four-way battle for supremacy on the backstretch and established a one-length lead entering the far turn. Tackled by Magic Petition (Good Magic) in upper stretch, he easily shrugged off that...

The racing calendar has not even officially turned the page into autumn and Coolmore Ireland's Sioux Nation brought up his 32nd winner of the season with Ancestral Land (GB) in a Chepstow novice on Thursday. 2nd-Chepstow, £6,800, Nov, 9-8, 2yo, 6f 16yT, 1:12.76, g/s. ANCESTRAL LAND (GB) (c, 2, Sioux Nation--Swing Out Sister {Ire}, by Kodiac {GB}), a June 20 first-up second over six furlongs at Windsor last time, was well away from the far-side stall and asserted for an early lead in this return. In command throughout, the 2-5...

The team at Three Chimneys could hardly have asked for a better start at stud for champion Gun Runner. The most expensive horse to retire to stud for the 2018 season, he filled a 171-mare book his first year, was the leading first-crop weanling sire the following year with an average exceeding $275,000, and again topped his class with his yearlings in 2020. By most accounts, the son of Candy Ride (Arg) has not done a thing wrong in his early stud career and yet, as his first crop was...

WinStar's Speightstown continues to prove himself as an accomplished sire of sires. Already, he's had four sons go on to produce Grade I winners and just in the last two years, he's seen eight additional sons, including GISW Force the Pass and the multiple graded stakes-winning Qurbaan, begin their stud careers. In 2017, WinStar welcomed their graded stakes-winning homebred Speightster into the same stud barn as his prodigious sire. With an initial stud fee set at $10,000, a price that has stayed in place since, Speightster has been supported with...

Xtrema (Exaggerator) rallied to a convincing first-out score to give her freshman sire (by Curlin) his first winner while going out for the same connections that campaigned the 2016 GI Preakness S. hero. Breaking as the 21-10 second choice in a five-horse group, the $55,000 KEESEP grad tracked a speed duel from a distant third through a sharp :21.75 quarter. Appearing one-paced on the turn, the chestnut came alive entering the final furlong and blew past the tiring pace actors outside the sixteenth pole to score by four lengths over...

My leading sire for this year would be Nyquist. I was connected with him in my role with Paul Reddam. It's quite rare that you see a two-year-old win three Grade I races and then come back and win the Derby as an unbeaten horse. My number two pick is Air Force Blue. He was a very good two-year-old in Ireland and War Front seems to be a good sire of sires. My favorite horse at the sale at OBS March was Hip 27, a son of Air Force Blue...