Sophomore Sires

This is the second half of the latest instalment in our ongoing survey of covering options for the new breeding season. The first part can be read here. UPSTART (Flatter--Party Silks, by Touch Gold) was cleverly named and I think him a very plausible type, likely to rise pretty quickly through the ranks. Certainly there were more than enough "nouveaux riches" among his first juveniles--only Not This Time exceeded his 19 winners (from 54 starters)--for him to be pegged at $10,000 by Airdrie. His principal earner was Reinvestment Risk, who...

After surveying the four intakes since, each still safely immune from judgement on the track itself, today we finally reach the first group of stallions who have actually tested their ability to replicate the talent that first earned them--however marginally, in some cases--a place at stud. Their first juveniles, last year, at least permitted some initial response to any erosion of their reputations, through the notoriously jittery and impressionable consensus of the yearling market. Yet there are few more instructive indices of the odds against them than the contrast between...