Twirling Candy

With the 2022 breeding season right around the corner, we will feature a series of breeders' mating plans over the coming weeks. Today Carrie Brogden discuses mating plans for a few members of the 109-mare-strong Machmer Hall broodmare band. TIZ DIXIE (m, 9, Tiznow -- Comeon Dixie, by Mr. Greeley), to be bred to Constitution We bought this 9-year-old mare as a maiden for Golden Pedigree for $5,500 and we subsequently did the mating and then foaled and raised her first foal, a colt by Constitution who became stakes winner...

Twenty-four hours after producing Say the Word (More Than Ready) from last to scoop the GII Hollywood Turf Cup, jockey Kent Desormeaux rode a perfect race from the front to upset Saturday's GI Hollywood Derby with the appropriately named Beyond Brilliant (Twirling Candy) for Lee Searing's C R K Stable and trainer John Shirreffs. Midwest shipper Santin (Distorted Humor) was given a peach of a ride from the 14 hole by Umberto Rispoli and was getting to the winner late, while Cathkin Peak (Ire) (Alhebayeb {Ire}) checked in third. Desormeaux...

Gear Jockey (Twirling Candy), third at 67-1 as a maiden in the 2019 GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf at Santa Anita, delivered a career high while punching his ticket to the GI Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint. The Calumet Farm homebred sat just off the pacesetting Bombard (War Front) in second, took over under confident handling as they hit the quarter pole and took care of business from there to win for fun. Longshot Diamond Oops (Lookin At Lucky) nosed out Bombard for second. Gear Jockey, a maiden winner at ninth...

Two sons of Candy Ride (Arg)--Gun Runner and Twirling Candy--were represented by three 2-year-old Grade l winners over the weekend, and do you know one thing they had in common? Each was produced by a Storm Cat-line mare. This affinity for the Storm Cat line was also an important feature of Candy Ride's own success, and breeders appear to be copying that formula with his sons. It's not surprising; it's something that usually happens when a stallion is successful with the females of another sire line, and this type of...

I noted on Steve Byk's "At the Races" radio show last Wednesday that some stallions that enter stud for between $10,000 and $20,000 occasionally punch above their weight and find lasting success. The in-your-face examples of this are Into Mischief, Tapit, and War Front, three of the best and most expensive horses at stud, but others that have fit the profile through the years include Distorted Humor, Candy Ride (Arg), Elusive Quality, Munnings and Twirling Candy. Twirling Candy, a son of Candy Ride, was recently profiled in this space along...

4th-Churchill Downs, $100,000, Msw, 6-11, 2yo, 5 1/2f, 1:03.61, ft, 4 1/2 lengths. CANDY LANDING (c, 2, Twirling Candy--Pearl Bay, by Rush Bay) hinted at some zip with a :35 4/5 (2/21) breeze from the gate here last Thursday, but was let go at 17-1 for a barn that boasts pretty strong debut numbers. Showing speed from a high draw, the homebred dueled outside of 2-1 second timer Woodline (Gun Runner) through an opening quarter in :21.57. He always seemed to be going a bit easier than his rival, was...

Candy Ride (Arg), by Ride the Rails from Candy Girl (Arg), by Candy Stripes, came from Argentina, where he was a champion miler, and quickly established himself as both a high-class racehorse with a win in the Gl Pacific Classic and as a sire here in a similar way that Forli (Arg) and Lord At War (Arg) did before him. Make no mistake, it was quite a feat, because South American-bred racehorses, no matter how successful they are on the track in North America, most often whiff at stud in...

Love Candy became the first winner for his freshman sire Danzing Candy (Twirling Candy) with a decisive debut score at Golden Gate. Dispatched at 6-1, the gray broke sharply and settled in a tracking third early, tugging his way between rivals through a :22.733 first quarter. Breaking free of his foes in the lane, Love Candy extended clear to graduate by 2 3/4 lengths over Highland Ghost (Shaman Ghost). Danzing Candy won a trio of graded stakes for Hall of Famer Bob Baffert before his career was cut short by...

Curious how we can always explain what makes a pedigree work once a horse has shown he can actually run. They call it "ex post rationalization" or sometimes "hindsight bias". Working backward from a high-functioning racehorse, you isolate whatever elements of the page flatter your prejudices and methodology, and triumphantly announce that you have found the key to the genetic engine. You could, of course, perform pretty much the same exercise with countless slow horses whose antecedents contain equally plausible elements. Funnily enough, however, we don't bother doing that quite...

Fresh off his first-ever Classic victory in last weekend's GI Preakness S., trainer Michael McCarthy joined this week's TDN Writers' Room to talk on his newly-crowned Grade I winner Rombauer.

Classic hero Rombauer (Twirling Candy), who races for John and Diane Fradkin, shipped in to Belmont Park around 10 a.m. Monday ahead of an intended start in the June 5 $1.5-million GI Belmont S. presented by NYRA Bets. The colt earned a 102 Beyer for his GI Preakness S. heroics at Pimlico Saturday for trainer Michael McCarthy. He will be stabled with trainer Jonathan Thomas. Groom Leonel Orantes Aguilar reported that Rombauer had vanned to New York "very well". "It seems like he's in good physical shape," McCarthy said, who...

The vast majority of the headlines leading up to the 146th renewal of the GI Preakness S. had to do with one horse, one trainer and one subject. But when the dust had settled at Pimlico at approximately 7 p.m. Saturday, the narrative had suddenly changed. In the span of 1 3/16 miles, the story was no longer one of rumors and speculation. It became a story about an improving horse, John and Diane Fradkin's Rombauer (Twirling Candy), that finally had his chance to prove his mettle on the big...