TDN Snippets: Week of Mar. 21 – Mar. 27

Triple Crown season might be heating up but the well-bred handicap divisions are keen on having a say in how the big stage shapes up. Here's who's been shouting the loudest this week.

Stonestreet Gold Again a Rising Star…
The famous silks have done it once more, this time with Marsalis (Curlin) adding another 'TDN Rising Star' accolade to GISW Hot Dixie Chick's already impressive tally as a broodmare. Full-brother and New York's Leading Second Crop sire Union Jackson also claimed Rising Stardom in his racing days; while half-sister Pauline's Pearl (Tapit) added a victory in the GIII Houston Ladies Classic S. and a second in the GII Azeri S. to her million-dollar resume. Considering the dam also earned the TDN seal of approval, this female family really seems to enamor us in all the best ways and what's better than a Rising Star producing more Rising Stars?

A Titan Among Us…
With freaky-fast Olympiad (Speightstown) either breaking track-records or just missing them two races in a row en route to graded stakes victories, LNJ Foxwood's 'breeding stars' momentum doesn't look to be going away any time soon. The brilliant colt is one of his sire's 63 graded winners, and 128  black-type earners. The $700,000 KEESEP grad is bred on the same cross as MGISW Rock Fall (Speightstown), who tore through five victories in a row in 2015 including the GI Vosburgh and Alfred G. Vanderbilt S. in the Empire State.

It's Not This Time all the time…
The 2022 racing season is still young, but Not This Time has already begun to stake his claim as one of the most exciting young sires in the States. Counting GII Louisiana Derby winner Epicenter, Melody of Colors S. winner Last Leaf, and Midnight Stroll waltzing home in the Stonehedge Farm South Sophomore Fillies S. this past weekend, the stallion has 18 black-type winners. Taking into account his 144 lifetime starters as of calculation Mar. 28, he's hitting 17.36% stakes horses (25), 12.5% stakes winners (18), and 4.17% graded winners (6).

Where does the time go?
American Pharoah is about to enter a new stage of his breeding career…being a broodmare sire. And so, the ever elusive construct thus continues to move ever forward. With the retirements of As Time Goes By and Merneith, the ranks of blue-blooded broodmare prospects with him in the pedigree grow: the former in particular bred for success being out of Broodmare of the Year Take Charge Lady (Dehere) and a half to sires Will Take Charge (Unbridled's Song) and Take Charge Indy (A. P. Indy). As Time Goes By is expected to visit Into Mischief. Merneith ends her career Grade I placed and a multiple graded-stakes winner with no immediate stallion plans announced.

Japan takes over the world one race at a time…
Anyone who has tracked November auctions the past several years was not surprised when Japanese horses either won or hit the board in five of six open stakes on the Saudi Cup card bar one…the main event. We were even less surprised when they parlayed those incredible results into an even bigger Dubai World Cup night: winning, dead-heating, or placing in every single race minus the G1 Al Quoz Sprint and the Dubai Kahayla Classic, the latter they had no entries. Japanese connections have been scooping up quality American bloodlines for decades including, perhaps most famously, Sunday Silence, who went on to be 10-time Champion Sire in the country. Now the Land of the Rising Sun could set their eyes once again on the GI Kentucky Derby with Crown Pride (Jpn) (Reach the Crown {Jpn}), a great-grandson of the aforementioned legend through his sire. His trainer already willing after his G2 UAE Derby victory secured a spot in the gate, should the ownership group agree, a Japanese-bred descendant of Seattle Slew and Kingmambo will be in the starting gate on the first Saturday in May. As an added note on the American influence here, Crown Pride's dam was recently bred to Nadal (Blame).

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As Time Goes By, Merneith Retired

Leading Southern California dirt mares As Time Goes By (American Pharoah) and Merneith (American Pharoah) have been retired from racing, trainer Bob Baffert told Daily Racing Form.

Twice a Grade II winner last year as a 4-year-old, Coolmore's As Time Goes By retires on a three-race winning streak and picked up the first Grade I victory of her career last out in the Beholder Mile S. Mar. 5 at Santa Anita. A half-sister to Grade I winners Will Take Charge (Unbridled's Song) and Take Charge Indy (A.P. Indy) out of MGISW and champion broodmare Take Charge Lady (Dehere), she retires with a record of 14-7-3-1 and earnings of $955,600 and is slated to be bred to Into Mischief.

“Mares like that, from such a powerful family, they're so valuable,” Baffert told DRF regarding As Time Goes By. “I could have kept her [to race], but after she won the Grade I, they retired her to breed her.”

Merneith, a $600,000 OBS March purchase in 2019, was a stakes winner at three and earned successes in back-to-back renewals of the GII Santa Monica S. in 2021 and earlier this year. She retires with a record of 12-5-4-2 and earnings of $493,620. Breeding plans for the HRH Prince Sultan Bin Mishal Al Saud-owned bay are yet to be determined.

Baffert also told DRF that GI La Brea S. heroine Kalypso (Brody's Cause) has been transferred out of his barn to a trainer at Oaklawn.

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Mating Plans, Presented by Spendthrift: Bonne Chance Farm

With the 2022 breeding season underway, we continue to feature a series of breeders' mating plans. Today we have Leah Alessandroni, Bloodstock and Office Manager of Bonne Chance Farm.

GLORY AND POWER (m, 8, Medaglia d'Oro – Dance Quietly, by A. P. Indy) to be bred to Essential Quality

   We bought this mare as a weanling and she went on to become a winner for us. Her first foal was Momentous (Speightstown), who was an debut impressive winner at Fair Grounds on Feb. 19. This mare is out of a half-sister to MGISW Saint Liam (Saint Ballado) and Quiet Giant (Giant's Causeway), who of course is the dam of Gun Runner, so it's a really big and active family. We bred her to Tapit in 2019 and that colt was really well-received as a yearling. She has a Street Sense yearling that is also really nice.

Knowing that Glory and Power might not yet have a runner when we were looking at matings for 2022, we really thought hard about this mare. We were getting good reports from WinStar on Momentous, we liked all the other foals she'd had, and she was actually one of the last mares we settled on. We decided to send her to Essential Quality. She can be a bit of a tricky mare to mate physically and he is such a good physical. He's a strong horse and his race record speaks for itself. He was one of the more exciting first-year stallions this year. With this mating we also liked that she had already been to Tapit and it's a similar cross, but with Elusive Quality on the bottom it really offers us access to a different line. I think it's a really interesting mating in terms of the pieces coming together and it's one we're very excited about.

Bonne Chance Farm welcomed their first second-generation foal this year, an Uncle Mo filly out of SW Iva | Bonne Chance Twitter

IVA (m, 6, Scat Daddy – Sushi Empire, by Empire Maker) to be bred to Quality Road

   This is a really special mare for us. She was one of the first foals that was born here at our farm in Kentucky in 2016. We actually bought her dam, Sushi Empire, when she was in foal with Iva. Iva herself became a stakes winner for us, winning the 2019 Cincinnati Trophy S. That was our first blacktype win as breeders. This year Iva had her first foal, an Uncle Mo filly, and it was kind of a full-circle moment for us with her giving us our first second-generation foal as breeders.

This mare is from a really nice family that includes MGSW Marchfield (A. P. Indy) and her dam, Sushi Empire, was also a stakes winner.

Iva is exactly what you would expect a Scat Daddy mare out of an Empire Maker dam to look like. When we were thinking of matings, we wanted a bigger, rangier stallion that offered some stretch. Quality Road had such an incredible 2021 with the champion 2-year-old and he had huge sales. This year he has already had Emblem Road win the G1 Saudi Cup. He's definitely a stallion that when you're looking to breed a quality, proven sire to a young mare, it's a no-brainer. In contrast to Glory and Power, this was probably the first mating that we decided on this year.

GOIABA (m, 8, Speightstown – Christies Treasure, by Belong To Me) to be bred to Curlin

   Goiaba is a full-sister to the Japanese Group 1 winner Mozu Superflare (Speightstown). She is another mare that we bought early on as a yearling and she was a winner for us. She is from one of the most active families that we have on the farm right now. Mozu Superflare is doing great things in Japan and she has two half-sisters who have produce Grade I winners or Grade I-placed horses. It's the family of GIIISW Sacristy (Pulpit) and GISP Flor de La Mar (Tiznow).

Goiaba herself is a really nice, honest mare. She's a strong physical and is what we would consider a pretty typical Speightstown mare. She had her first foal last year. It's an Into Mischief filly that is without a doubt the nicest yearling we have this year. This year she is in foal to Medaglia d'Oro.

When we were looking to find a stallion for her this year, we thought long and hard about it. Any time you have a horse with a pedigree like this, you have to look at the big guns and so we settled on Curlin. We actually haven't bred to him yet, and so when we came to the table this year to talk about matings we all agreed that if we didn't use Curlin, we were missing a big opportunity this year. This mating will be offering a different branch of Mr. Prospector and it's maybe not super conventional, but it's another one we're excited about in sending Curlin a mare of this caliber with such an up-and-coming family that is actively producing all over the world. It's one of our biggest star power matings of the year.

LUCAS STREET (m, 18, Silver Deputy – Ruby Park, by Bold Ruckus) to be bred to Maxfield

Lucas Street is one of our more veteran mares here and she is the dam of 2015 GI Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Sprint winner Wavell Avenue (Harlington). We bought this mare privately a few years ago. She had a colt by Improbable this year.

Because she's a proven producer, when we purchased her it was an opportunity to get into some of the more commercial, popular stallion lines. Considering that she's a highly-desirable mare, we really wanted to breed her to a first-year stallion this year. The stud fee price point is usually appealing for those guys and you can see a return at the sales.

The stallion that we settled on for her this year was Maxfield. We are very conscious about who we breed this mare to physically and as soon as he walked out, it was a no-brainer for us. I think he's one of the strongest physicals of the group of stallions this year and he was such an honest, hard-knocking racehorse. With him being a Street Sense out of a Bernardini mare, those are two individual sires that we had considered for her in the past and for whatever reasons we never landed on them, so now we have the opportunity to get to both of those sires here.

From a breeding standpoint, this is going to be a very commercial pedigree and it still gives us a lot of options. If it's a colt, maybe we're a little more commercial. If it's a filly, she will have a strong pedigree under her and we've set ourselves up nicely to have a future broodmare. There was really no downside to this one.

ELEMENTAR (m, 10, More Than Ready – Val Marie, by Coronado's Quest) to be bred to American Pharoah

   This is a bit of a younger mare whose pedigree is developing. She is a half-sister to MGSW Grand Adventure (Grand Slam), a champion Grass Horse in Canada. Elementar has had several foals for us including Ready To Purrform (Kitten's Joy), who won the Laurel Futurity last year. Her 2020 foal is a filly by Bernardini and not long after she foaled, we had pretty much decided to keep her to race ourselves. She also has a yearling colt by Runhappy.

The stallion we settled on for her this year is American Pharoah. Every year he has been in the conversation for her, but in the past we weren't sure if she warranted the stud fee. When Ready to Purrform won the Laurel Futurity, the mare earned her way to that level. I think at $80,000 this year for American Pharoah, that has to be a gift with what he's already done this year. This is probably my favorite mating physically. She's a beautiful, balanced mare and all of her foals have been really good movers and I think the same can be said of American Pharoah. This direct cross has already been extremely successful with G1SW Café Pharaoh and MGSW Four Wheel Drive, so all that gave us confidence to send her to him.

MAY BE NOW (m, 14, Smart Strike — Dans La Ville (Chi), by Winning) to be bred to Uncle Mo

   May Be Now is a three-quarters sister to GISW Al's Gal (English Channel) and she is the dam of champion and MG1SW Ivar (Brz) (Agnes Gold {Jpn}). This mare was in our operation in South America and she was brought here to our American operation with the intention to sell. We sold her in 2017 in foal to Hard Spun and shortly after, Ivar hit the track and set the world on fire in Argentina. We quickly set to buy this mare back and when we did, she was again in foal to Hard Spun. That filly, foaled in 2020, is now in our racing stable. May Be Now also has a lovely yearling by Yoshida.

She is not in foal this year but we are sending her to Uncle Mo. He's a stallion that we all love. I think we've used him almost every year. This mare has not always been sent to super commercial stallions in the past, so this can generate a commercial mating but at the same time if it's a filly, we have the option of having a really strong broodmare. The mare is a very typical Smart Strike and I think Uncle Mo offers some size that she will benefit from.

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American Pharoah Filly Brings $1m at OBS

A filly by American Pharoah (Hip 532) added to a banner OBS March sale for Jimbo & Torie Gladwell's Top Line Sales, bringing $1-million from Donato Lanni, who was bidding on behalf of Susan Chu. The :10 flat breezer was bred by the Gladwells and E.V.S. Corp. The filly will be trained by her sire's Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert.

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