John Moynihan shook a lot of hands after the proceedings ended at Wednesday evening's Kentucky Thoroughbred Association/Kentucky Owners and Breeders awards dinner, but after the crowd around him dispersed, he had a moment of quiet to turn around and examine the reason why he was so popular.
On the table behind him was a sizable collection of trophies that the Stonestreet Farm bloodstock adviser accepted on behalf of the operation for the various Kentucky-bred champions they bred that received honors for the 2022 racing season. Looming over the divisional champions' statues of foals learning to use their legs was a bronze plaque commemorating Stonestreet homebred Dreaming of Julia being named 2022 Kentucky Broodmare of the Year.
Moynihan shook so many hands on Wednesday night because his fingerprints were all over those prizes.
A member of the Stonestreet operation since 2005, Moynihan was a key cog in the farm's acquisition of Dreaming of Julia's dam, Dream Rush; and the Broodmare of the Year's most successful partner in the breeding shed, two-time Horse of the Year Curlin. He was also a guiding voice in planning the matings that produced Dreaming of Julia's two graded stakes winners: champion Malathaat and Julia Shining.
If this sounds like a story of the best being bred to the best and producing the best, that wouldn't be entirely wrong, but more importantly, this is a story about second chances.
The first flashpoint on the path to the Broodmare of the Year plaque came in the aftermath of the 2007 Fasig-Tipton November sale, which the Stonestreet team left feeling rather dejected.
They'd secured a pair of top-dollar recruits for their fledgling broodmare band, but Moynihan and Stonestreet owners Jess Jackson and Barbara Banke had been targeting Dream Rush, a daughter of A.P. Indy who had impressed in a pair of Grade 1 sprint victories in New York over the summer. In both the Prioress Stakes at Belmont Park and the Test Stakes at Saratoga, Dream Rush led at every point of call and won by at least two lengths.
Dream Rush hammered to Halsey Minor for $3.3 million at the November sale.
“There was one mare that we desperately wanted out of the Night of the Stars sale, and that was Dream Rush,” Moynihan said. “We were very close to being the underbidders, if we weren't the underbidders. We left there that night going, 'You know what, we bought some nice mares tonight, but the mare we should have bought was this mare.'”
Dreaming of Julia's journey could have ended right there, years before it even started. Dream Rush raced under Minor's colors for two seasons, never quite recapturing the same level of success she enjoyed with her previous connections. She was retired after a couple starts in 2009 and sent to Lane's End stalwart A.P. Indy for her inaugural mating soon thereafter.
If Dream Rush had suffered a grave injury on the track, Dreaming of Julia would have never come to be. If Minor had kept Dream Rush for his own broodmare band, or held onto her for the November sales, Dreaming of Julia might have never come to be as we know her today.
Instead, Minor's people called Stonestreet's people. After an unsuccessful bid at Dream Rush two years earlier, Stonestreet got a second chance.
“When the opportunity came up to buy her, I asked who she was in foal to, and they said she was in foal to A.P. Indy, who we were going to breed her to,” Moynihan said. “I didn't even ask for the price. I just said we'd take her…That one broodmare purchase has been so instrumental to a lot of the success we've had.”
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If you appreciate our work, you can support us by subscribing to our Patreon stream. Learn more.Dreaming of Julia was the first foal out of Dream Rush, who would become a cornerstone of Stonestreet's tippy-top shelf broodmare band. While Dreaming of Julia would go on to become a Grade 1 winner in her own right, Dream Rush also went on to produce multiple Grade 3 winner Dream Pauline, stakes winner Atreides, and stakes-placed Perchance.
Stonestreet takes plenty of its homebreds to the races under its own colors, but the farm is also a commercial operation. The phrase “Stonestreet Bred & Raised” can be found at the top of many pages during select sales in Kentucky and New York, and with such a deep-pedigreed broodmare band, the foals they sell often sell big.
Dreaming of Julia was slated to be part of the Stonestreet crop that went through the sale ring as a yearling. Being the first foal out of a Grade 1 winner by a proven commercial stallion would have all but ensured that she would have sold for a big price to a capable buyer that could have campaigned her to a Grade 1 victory and had all the pieces fall into place to one day become Broodmare of the Year. Or, perhaps one single domino goes askew along the way and she ends up with an entirely different career at the fall of the hammer.
This time, Moynihan said Banke granted herself a second chance.
“When we were about to sell her as a yearling, Barbara looked at me and said, 'You know what? She's going to be my birthday present to myself.'”
The decision paid immediate dividends. Dreaming of Julia won each of her first three starts at two, culminating with a hard-fought score in the G1 Frizette Stakes. She finished third in the 2012 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies, and she was an Eclipse Award finalist for champion 2-year-old filly, eventually won by Beholder.
Dreaming of Julia added a win in the G2 Gulfstream Oaks to her record during her 3-year-old campaign, and she retired at the end of the season with four wins in eight starts for earnings of $874,500.
Naturally, the filly had a stall waiting for her in Stonestreet's broodmare barn the moment the plug was pulled on her racing career. She was sent to Ghostzapper for her first mating, due for the 2016 foaling season, and the ensuing colt was unraced and unnamed.
Her second foal was Golden Julia, a Medaglia d'Oro filly who died in a stall accident as a 2-year-old. Moynihan has never been one to over-inflate the success of a Stonestreet runner or broodmare in conversation, so when he spoke so glowingly about what Golden Julia could have been, it stands out.
“We've been around a lot of great horses, and she was the best 2-year-old of any sex we had at our training center that year,” he said. “It was an unfortunate thing to lose her.”
Two foals, no wins, no runners, and one that didn't even get a name with The Jockey Club. Not a great start for a young broodmare in a high-level breeding operation.
The next second chance for Dreaming of Julia came when she first visited Curlin; arguably the flagship equine of the Stonestreet operation if you're willing to vote for him over Rachel Alexandra. Dreaming of Julia was bred to Curlin for the first time during the 2017 breeding season.
“At the time, Curlin had shown a little affinity with the Seattle Slew line,” Moynihan said, referencing A.P. Indy's sire. “Dreaming of Julia is by A.P. Indy, and was an amazingly precocious horse herself, not necessarily by a precocious stallion in A.P. Indy, and we thought all of those things would benefit Curlin.”
That mating produced Malathaat, a filly who sold to Shadwell Estate Co. for $1.05 million at the 2019 Keeneland September Yearling Sale en route to becoming the top filly of her generation. She retired at the end of the 2022 racing season with two Eclipse Awards and six Grade 1 victories, including the 2022 Breeders' Cup Distaff and the 2021 Kentucky Oaks. Malathaat also earned Stonestreet the champion older dirt female trophy at Wednesday's Kentucky-bred awards dinner.
Dreaming of Julia was sent to Medaglia d'Oro the season after conceiving Malathaat, and that colt died as a yearling. She then went back to Curlin for the 2020 foaling season, which produced Julia Shining.
Stonestreet held on to that filly, and last year, she won the G2 Demoiselle Stakes, making her and Malathaat the first pair of sisters to win that race since Coquette and Celandria, both out of Adriana, won the race in 1914 and 1915. Julia Shining will aim to continue following in her full sister's footsteps on Friday in the G1 Ashland Stakes at Keeneland and eventually the Kentucky Oaks, both of which Malathaat won during her own sophomore campaign.
Though Malathaat and Julia Shining share common parents, both of them of Grade 1 caliber on the racetrack and pedigree page, Moynihan had his leanings as to who gets top billing for the success of the two fillies.
“We own Curlin, we love Curlin, but I think all credit goes to Julia,” he said. “Her foals really take after her. Her foals look very much like her. I would venture to say she puts more in the foal than the potential stallion does.
“You've got to raise the horses the right way, you've got to breed them the right way, all these different things, and she's one of those amazing Thoroughbreds that takes so much of the luck out of it, because she delivers for us every year,” he continued. “Every one of her foals, on the scale of one to 10, is like a 12. These kind of broodmares come around once in a lifetime.”
Looking to the future, Dreaming of Julia has a still-to-be-named 2-year-old Medaglia d'Oro filly aiming to start her racing career later this year. Dreaming of Julia has a yearling Curlin filly, and she is currently pregnant to Into Mischief for the current foaling season. Moynihan said current plans call for her to be bred back to Curlin for 2024.
Looking at a map of where the Broodmare of the Year plaques are located around Central Kentucky provides a “who's who” list of the industry's top breeders. Operations like Godolphin, Claiborne Farm, and Hermitage Farm display them in their offices, while others have kept them in the barns where the mares resided. The late Robert Courtney Sr. kept his sign for 1984 Broodmare of the Year Hasty Queen with him on the wall in his downtown Lexington, Ky., apartment until his final days.
Membership in that fraternity — or sorority, if we're talking about the mares themselves — was not a matter taken lightly by Moynihan. For an operation built so heavily on establishing a world-class broodmare band, Wednesday's result was the highest affirmation that Stonestreet had achieved just that.
“This is, to me, one of the most coveted awards, right up there with an Eclipse Award,” he said. “You can win Eclipse Awards for racehorses, and we've won those with our racehorses, but to have a Broodmare of the Year, it's the pinnacle of a breeding operation. That's the way we feel, and it's an extremely coveted award.”
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