Kitten's Joy

Keeneland's five-day January Horses of All Ages Sale begins on Monday, and the catalogue includes plenty of pedigrees to pique the interest of European shoppers. We ran through the catalogue and picked out a selection to highlight from Book 1 of the sale on Monday and Tuesday. Just the second short yearling to go through the ring on Monday is a daughter of Kitten's Joy (hip 4) who is a half-sister to Protectionist (Ger) (Monsun {Ger}), winner of the G1 Melbourne Cup and G1 Grosser Preis von Berlin. They are...

An evenly matched field is set to line up at Gulfstream Saturday for the GIII Kitten's Joy S., which is running as a graded event for the first time. The morning-line nod went to Isabelle de Tomaso homebred Irish Mias (Sky Mesa). Breaking his maiden at third asking when stretched to two turns for the first time in the Laurel Futurity S. Sept. 21, he was fourth in the Awad S. at Belmont Oct. 26 and second in this venue's one-mile Pulpit S. Nov. 30. Mike Maker saddles a son...

It's hard to know quite what Kitten's Joy has to do in order to gain a commercial standing commensurate with his achievements. As it is, the champion North American sire of 2018 once again proved unable to crack the top 30 sires ranked by the average value of their yearlings in 2019. Not that he should take it personally. We all know that the American industry talks a good game about the growing importance of the turf program, but won't follow through when young stallions as well-bred and accomplished as...

Cartier Horse of the Year Roaring Lion (Kitten's Joy) appears to be on the road to recovery after undergoing surgery twice in the previous 10 days for colic and has returned to Cambridge Stud. Trained by John Gosden to win the Eclipse, Juddmonte International, Irish Champion S. and the Queen Elizabeth II S. at Ascot, the son of Kitten's Joy emerged as the champion of his generation. He covered his first book of mares in the spring but it was when he was shipped to New Zealand to stand at...

In this continuing series, Alan Carasso takes a look ahead at US-bred and/or conceived runners entered for the upcoming weekend at the tracks on the Japan Racing Association circuit, with a focus on pedigree and/or performance in the sales ring. Here are the horses of interest for this weekend--each making their racetrack debuts--running at Kokura and Niigata Racecourses: Saturday, August 10, 2019 5th-KOK, ¥13,400,000 ($126k), Newcomers, 2yo, 1700m NOCTURNE NOTES (JPN) (f, 2, Medaglia d'Oro--Summer Soiree, by War Front) is the first Japanese-bred produce for her dam, who posted her...