Pedigree Insights

Back in 2006, when the first two flashed past the winning post in the G1 Dewhurst S., they also earned themselves first and second places on the European Two-Year-Old Thoroughbred Racehorse Rankings. Galileo's unbeaten son Teofilo topped the table by 1lb from Danehill's dual Group 1-winning son Holy Roman Emperor, who had also been beaten into second place by Teofilo in the G1 National S. Holy Roman Emperor, for his part, had won four of his remaining five starts, notably taking the G1 Phoenix S. and the G1 Prix Jean-Luc...

Given that his own sire had overcome a pretty mediocre family to become no less potent, it might seem misplaced to insist on due credit for the other genetic contributors to the legacy of Deep Impact (Jpn). On the face of it, after all, the career of Sunday Silence might suggest that the bull--in his case, Halo--really can be more than half the herd. For some of us, however, even the most successful sire-line can only ever be one strand in a complex mesh--and, as such, there will always be...

"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....

To the unbridled joy of Rachel Alexandra's countless admirers, the 2009 Horse of the Year appears to be making an ideal start to her broodmare career. Each of her first two foals--the Curlin colt Jess's Dream and the Bernardini filly Rachel's Valentina--were named a 'TDN Rising Stars' during the Saratoga meet in August. And now Rachel's Valentina has wasted no time in justifying this accolade, returning to Saratoga to become a GI winner in the Spinaway S. Of course the birth of Rachel's Valentina wasn't without a price. Soon afterwards...

It was another of those weeks where the action on both sides of the Atlantic threw up some highly noteworthy action. For example, there was another hard-fought round in the battle currently being staged by Galileo and Dubawi, the two heavyweights of European breeding. Dubawi appeared to have landed a near knock-out blow in the battle for the Anglo-Irish sires' championship when his daughter Arabian Queen took the Juddmonte International, to end Golden Horn's unbeaten sequence. Galileo lost his International representative with the withdrawal of Gleneagles, but he staged a...

Despite the very considerable efforts of the Sadler's Wells male line, the leading sires list in Britain and Ireland is a forceful reminder that the most dominant force at present is the male line descending from the magnificent Danzig. Thanks entirely to his sons Danehill and Green Desert, the legendary Claiborne sire has no fewer than eight grandsons among the top 18 stallions on the Racing Post's table, plus two in–form great grandsons in Mastercraftsman and Sea The Stars. While it is the Danehill branch which is responsible for five...