Tapping Into Turf Potential

When one considers effective crossover sires between Europe and America, there are a few in particular that spring to mind like War Front, Kitten's Joy or Giant's Causeway.

Champion sire Tapit is not usually one of them, but upon closer inspection the turf record of Gainesway's grey is better than it first appears, and his early results as a broodmare sire have turned out differently than one may expect.

Raced by Winchell Thoroughbreds and trained by Michael Dickinson-also known as the creator of Tapeta-Tapit was a Grade III winner at two and the following spring in 2004 took New York's key GI Kentucky Derby prep, the GI Wood Memorial, before finishing ninth behind Smarty Jones on the first Saturday in May.

Tapit's paternal and maternal grandsires, A.P. Indy and Unbridled, are two of the greatest dirt influences in the American studbook, and that combined with the fact that the son of Pulpit ran exclusively on the dirt and started out at $15,000 removes the mystery of why European breeders weren't clamouring for him.

With 12 crops to race, Tapit has marked himself undoubtedly one of the great modern influences of the American breed. He has sired 25 Grade I winners and the earners of over $153-million; 28 $1-million-plus sales yearlings, and his sire sons are now truly hitting their strides: he had last year's first-crop sire sensation Constitution, while Flashback provided the champion 2-year-old filly British Idiom; Tapizar has sired the Classic-winning champion Monomoy Girl; Concord Point sired the dual Grade I winner American Gal and Tonalist is the sire of the promising 3-year-old filly Tonalist's Shape. Tapit's fastest son, Frosted, has his first runners this year.

Tapit's accomplishments in America far outshine his results anywhere else-120 stakes winners in the U.S. compared to 16 in all other countries combined-but that, as we should well know by now, can be very much a self-fulfilling prophecy: he doesn't have the numbers elsewhere because he simply hasn't been given the chance. He has had 997 starters in the U.S., and just 36 in Britain, Ireland and France combined.

With those 36, his strike rate has been good: from 17 runners in Britain he has had 11 winners (seven on turf, four on the all-weather), three stakes horses and one stakes winner, while in France Tapit has had eight winners from 13 runners and five stakes horses.

Tapit's British stakes winner is George Strawbridge's homebred Wissahickon, out of his Grade I winner and excellent producer No Matter What (Nureyev). Wissahickon's G3 Winter Derby win was on the all-weather at Lingfield, but in September of 2018 he won Newmarket's prized Cambridgeshire H. on the turf. Wissahickon (114) is one of three winners for Tapit in Britain rated 100-plus. The others are Christophermarlowe (109), who won his first three starts on the turf, including a Derby trial, before being sold to Hong Kong, where he won three more times; and Sheikh Hamdan's Tathqeef (100), who broke his maiden first out on the all-weather and was third in a pair of key early 3-year-old stakes on the turf: the Listed Feilden S. and Listed Fairway S. Four of Tapit's five French stakes horses did their best running on the turf, headed by As de Trebol. That colt very nearly gave Tapit a European group win on the turf in his first crop in the G3 Prix du Palais-Royal, however he was demoted to second in the stewards' room after crossing the wire first.

Tapit is the sire of two Grade I winners on the turf in the U.S., Ring Weekend and Time and Motion, and he issued a timely signal on Saturday when his Jehozacat became a new graded winner on the turf when going gate to wire in the GIII Endeavour S. at Tampa Bay Downs.

Tapit's real legacy on the grass, however, could come as a broodmare sire. Like his record as a sire of sires, it could take Tapit's true potential as a broodmare sire some time to really show, as he started at a low fee and for the first few years covered much lesser mares than he is receiving now. In fact, the very earliest progeny of Tapit daughters that were bred at six-figure fees are only just hitting racetracks.

Nonetheless, Tapit's first two Group 1 winners as a broodmare sire have both come on in Classics on the turf: Gran Alegria (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn})-a daughter of the dual Grade I winner and $1.85-million mare Tapitsfly–in the G1 Oka Sho and Qafila (Aus) (Not A Single Doubt {Aus}) in the G1 South Australian Derby. He also provided the dam of Ballydoyle's 2018 G3 Cornwallis S. winner and dual listed winner Sergei Prokofiev (Scat Daddy), and Godolphin's 2019 G3 Prix Djebel victor Munitions (War Front). Yes, all of these stakes winners received significant turf influence from their sires, but these results allow breeders with daughters of Tapit to think far and wide when making their mating plans.

Outside of the U.S., Tapit has particularly excelled as a broodmare sire in Japan, where he has 21 winners from 34 runners and three stakes winners. The Yoshidas clearly haven't been afraid of investing in high-class daughters of Tapit to supplement their turf programmes: In addition to Tapitsfly, his other two stakes-producing daughters in Japan are the $850,000 Laragh and the $2.1-million Zazu. In Australia, Hush Writer (Jpn)-one of two stakes winners from four runners out of Tapit daughters Down Under-is out of Zazu's full-sister Star of Sapphire. Those, notably, are also full siblings to Tapit's Grade I sire Flashback.