Friday’s Insights: Full-Sis to Caledonia Road Debuts at Belmont

4th-BEL, $90K, Msw, 2yo, f, 6 1/2f, post time: 2:20 p.m. ET
Vegso Racing Stable homebred CELESTIAL (Quality Road), a full-sister to champion 2-year-old filly and GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies heroine Caledonia Road, kicks off her career for Hall of Famer Bill Mott. She RNA'd for $700,000 as a FTKSEL yearling last year and is drawn widest of all in post nine.

Magnier, Tabor, Smith and Westerberg's Sweet as Pie (Tapit), a $490,000 FTKSEL yearling produced by a full-sister to GISW Streaming (Smart Strike), debuts for Hall of Famer Todd Pletcher. Her third dam is the legendary bluehen mare Better Than Honour (Deputy Minister). The 2-1 morning-line favorite has been assigned the rail. TJCIS PPs

6th-KEE, $84K, Msw, 2yo, f, 6f, post time: 3:55 p.m. ET
SOCIAL MATRIX (Jimmy Creed), a $500,000 FTKSEL yearling and a half-sister to champion 2-year-old filly and GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies heroine British Idiom (Flashback), takes on a full field in this debut run for Brad Cox. The OXO Equine colorbearer worked five furlongs from the gate in 1:01 3/5 (28/53) at Churchill Downs Oct. 2. TJCIS PPs

8th-SA, $61K, Msw, 2yo, f, 6f, post time: 7:29 p.m. ET
Hall of Famer Bob Baffert unveils $750,000 KEESEP yearling graduate BROCADE (Into Mischief). The half-sister to MSP Kansas Kis (Constitution), owned by Sarah Kelly and Jane Wiltz, worked four furlongs from the gate in :47 4/5 (2/40) at Santa Anita Sept. 24. The Into Mischief over Tiznow cross is also responsible for GSW & MGISP Comical. Aqua Julia (Exaggerator), a half-sister to GISW Mushka (Empire Maker), debuts for Richie Baltas. TJCIS PPs

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Two Fresh Forces For The Next Cycle

Every year, like the fireflies, they emerge with the gathering heat of summer. Even as the more established sophomores hobble out of the Triple Crown series–many requiring rest or recuperation, some even menaced by retirement–a second wave reliably reinvigorates the crop. Sure enough, in recent days a couple of new names have volunteered themselves to test the resilience of those Classic protagonists who do persevere to Saratoga and beyond.

But while both share a fresh, progressive profile, in other respects they could scarcely be more different. 'TDN Rising Star' First Captain (Curlin), winner of the GIII Dwyer S. on his stakes debut Monday, is beginning to live up to his onerous billing as a $1.5 million Fasig-Tipton Saratoga joint sale-topper by one of the world's leading stallions. In contrast Masqueparade, who won the GIII Ohio Derby the previous weekend, belongs to the very first crop of Upstart, an aptly named $10,000 foil at Airdrie to Hill 'n' Dale's $175,000 veteran.

If anything, First Captain's pedigree has become even more aristocratic since his presentation by one of the greatest of our horsemen, Arthur Hancock of Stone Farm, at the Humphrey S. Finney Pavilion in 2019. For he represents a celebrated dynasty already refreshed this year not only by GII Fasig-Tipton Fountain of Youth S. winner Greatest Honour (Tapit), but also by the 4-year-old Cezanne, another son of Curlin to have vindicated the top price at an elite sale. (Though it must be acknowledged that the $3.65 million Gulfstream 2-year-old has again evinced his fragility since that stunning return in the GIII Kona Gold S.).

Greatest Honour, Cezanne and First Captain all trace their ancestry to the matriarch Blush With Pride (Blushing Groom {Fr}), the GI Kentucky Oaks winner of 1982 whose daughter Better Than Honour (Deputy Minister) famously produced consecutive winners of the GI Belmont S.–Jazil (Seeking the Gold, 2006) and Rags to Riches (A.P. Indy, 2007). Both Greatest Honour and Cezanne do so through Better Than Honour herself, as second and third dam, respectively; but First Captain's mother, the Grade III winner America (A.P. Indy), is a granddaughter of Better Than Honour's half-sister Butterfly Blue (Ire) (Sadler's Wells).

It is remarkable to remind ourselves now that Blush With Pride was cashed in at the age of 18, for $635,000 at the Keeneland November Sale of 1997. At that stage, Better Than Honour was still only a yearling, but John Magnier and his partners in Coolmore–as so often–were ahead of the game even with an ageing mare who had appeared to make patchy use of her opportunities. By the time Better Than Honour had developed into an excellent track performer, and then an even better broodmare, Blush With Pride had closed out her own breeding career in Ireland with four foals by Coolmore's champion sire Sadler's Wells.

The first of these turned out to be the Group 1-placed juvenile Maryinsky (Ire), who later produced elite runners in Peeping Fawn (Danehill) and Thewayyouare (Kingmambo). And the next was Butterfly Blue (Ire), who only broke her maiden on the final of nine starts (albeit highly tried on occasion) for Aidan O'Brien and was culled with a maiden cover by Fasliyev, a precocious sprinter by Nureyev, for $610,000 to Horse France at Keeneland November in 2004.

The filly she was carrying that day was sold in the same ring 12 months later, for $290,000, to the late Jim Sapara of Winsong Farm. And it was only a couple of weeks after this filly, meanwhile named Lacadena, had added a stakes placing to her debut success at Woodbine in 2007 that her dam's half-sister was credited with her second Belmont success.

Her family tree having duly obtained a historic new distinction, Lacadena failed to meet her reserve at $1.4 million at Keeneland that November. Nonetheless, she resurfaced the following year in the silks of Bobby Flay, and though unable to win in a light sophomore campaign, she would prove a fertile investment.

Most obviously, when returned to Keeneland in 2015 to realize $1.3 million from Heider Family Stables. In the meantime, however, she had produced two significant daughters. One, Paris Bikini (Bernardini), brought $425,000 on finishing a mildly successful track career–only to work a big profit for WinStar last year when sold to Katsumi Yoshida for $1.95 million at Fasig-Tipton last November, her homebred daughter Paris Lights (Curlin) having won the GI Coaching Club American Oaks.

The other high achiever bred by Flay from Lacadena was America, the dam of First Captain. She was boldly retained at $725,000 as a Keeneland September yearling, a gamble that paid off fairly handsomely. For a start, she proved a productive performer for Bill Mott, winning five of 22 starts and adding podiums in the GI Mother Goose S. and GI Delaware H. to success in the GIII Turnback the Alarm H. And she was then, very presciently, mated with the sire of Paris Lights just days after that filly was foaled. The result is First Captain, who topped the Saratoga Sale just weeks before she was offered with an Uncle Mo cover at Fasig-Tipton in November 2019. Once again, the reserve was both ambitious–she was retained at $3.1 million–

and astute. Her half-sister, remember, would only be exalted by the rise of Paris Lights the following year.

The docket for her Curlin colt had been signed in as many as seven different names, but that of Flay himself has meanwhile resurfaced alongside three of them–West Point Thoroughbreds, Siena Farm and Woodford Racing–in the partnership registered behind First Captain for his belated, but immaculate start for Shug McGaughey. After beating a next-out 'Rising Star' Mahaamel (Into Mischief) over seven furlongs in April, he graduated to an allowance score over a mile of slop before landing the odds, albeit not in the most flamboyant fashion, by reeling in a front-runner in the Dwyer. In fairness, he was forced wide entering the stretch and a second turn will doubtless tell us more about the feasibility of the GI Runhappy Travers S.

Given his trainer's admirable circumspection, the Curlin S. may well appeal not just for its aptness, but also as a less-searching rehearsal than the GII Jim Dandy S. Whatever happens, he will surely keep progressing. Even at the most elementary level, you would expect a Curlin colt out of an A.P. Indy mare to flourish with maturity and distance; and the anterior intervention of Sadler's Wells in one of the modern breed's landmark Classic families can only serve that orientation.

A.P. Influence Behind the 'Masque'…

A.P. Indy is also a significant presence behind Masqueparade, who is by a grandson and whose damsire is out of one of his daughters. This is a different kind of slow burn. Whereas First Captain was late on the scene, but landed running, Masqueparade did get onto the track at two (albeit only just) but then required four attempts round the Fair Grounds to break his maiden. With those foundations laid, however, he proved a revelation when Al Stall Jr. brought him up to Churchill, winning an allowance on the Derby undercard by just shy of a dozen lengths; and he then consolidated that breakthrough by seeing off some quite accomplished rivals at Thistledown.

I do like the antecedents of this horse, who represents not only a model barn, but also one of the most exemplary programs in the Bluegrass, having been bred by Brereton C. Jones in support of Upstart's debut at Airdrie Stud. (A $100,000 weanling pinhook, he made $180,000 from FTGGG as a yearling.) Masqueparade's dam, Cry War Eagle (Any Given Saturday), was recruited to the farm on her retirement for just $40,000 at Keeneland January 2015. It says plenty about our strange industry that her value as a weanling had depreciated so steeply–she had changed hands for $170,000 in the same ring-despite winning five of 20 starts in the meantime.

That record was sewn from hardy genetic reserves: her half-brother Actin Good (Yes It's True) was a stakes winner or graded stakes-placed in four consecutive seasons, including the GIII Pegasus S. among five wins in 25 starts overall. And their dam was a half-sister to Voice Of Destiny (Mane Minister), teak winner of 24 races (including a couple of graded stakes) between the ages of two and 10! Moreover, the next dam is an Alysheba half-sister to GI Breeders' Cup Sprint winner Very Subtle (Hoist the Silver) plus another brisk one in Schematic (Upper Mile), whose respective win tallies ended up 12-for-29 and eight-for-15.

We can rely on Airdrie to draw out such wholesome ingredients not just in their broodmare band, but also in their stallion roster. Sure enough, Upstart was Grade I-placed at two, three and four, besides thrashing Frosted by five and a half lengths in the GII Lambholm South Holy Bull S.

How very auspicious, then, that Upstart should have made such a businesslike start with his first juveniles last year. Reinvestment Risk romped in an early maiden Saratoga to become a 'Rising Star' before twice chasing home speedball Jackie's Warrior (Maclean's Music) at Grade I level, while only the runaway train Not This Time mustered more freshman winners. Consistent with his own track profile, Upstart is now maintaining that momentum in a second campaign where only the eccentric case of Protonico deprives him of the highest earnings-per-named-foal among active Kentucky stallions in this intake.

In the meantime, moreover, he was again in conspicuous demand at the 2-year-old sales, advancing what was already a good yield for his second crop of yearlings (his $45,159 average held up well against fee, not least in a pandemic market and while rehousing as many as 41 out of 47 into the ring) as high as $113,250. Moreover, he has already bucked the usual trend, his first yearlings having been received so warmly (average $63,608) that his fourth book, a notoriously challenging one for most sires, went right back up to 90 after taking the customary slide from 146 to 86 and then just 38.

Both as a runner and a sire, Upstart has introduced more precocity than we associate with the Flatter brand. But remember how another son of Flatter, West Coast, is one of the best recent examples of the type of late-on-the-scene sophomore under discussion. (Though credited with beating all three Classic winners in his Travers, it would be churlish to pretend that they had made it to Saratoga in the same kind of form). So don't be surprised to see Upstart consolidate from here.

Other new names will doubtless emerge to challenge those who have absorbed the grueling Triple Crown trail, though Mr. Wireless (Dialed In) tore up the script prepared for odds-on Fulsome (Into Mischief) in the GIII Indiana Derby Wednesday. Remarkably, the breeders of Mr. Wireless, John and Iveta Kerber, had also been responsible for Iowa Derby winner Stilleto Boy (Shackleford) just five days previously. The Kerbers remain involved in Stilleto Boy and will be hoping to secure due reward for this notable achievement when he enters the ring at Fasig Tipton next week as hip 557 at the Horses of Racing Age Sale.

Not all of these later developers, of course, will cope with the raising of the bar. Some, like those fireflies, will fade away as shyly as they have emerged. But one or two, perhaps, will discover a glow that endures even until mirrored by the Pacific sunset at the Breeders' Cup in November.

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Cezanne Brings New Honor to Storied Family

While it remains too early to acclaim a masterpiece in the making, even these first, bold brushstrokes have plainly been mixed from an unusually vivid genetic palette. And if Cezanne (Curlin) can complete the canvas the way he has started, with a confident new flourish in the GIII Kona Gold S. last weekend, then he could become an exhibit for one of the principal galleries of the modern breed.

Happily it has the most discerning of curators in John Sikura, who has been devotedly cultivating this family–Cezanne's third dam is the celebrated Better Than Honour (Deputy Minister)–since the turn of the century. Sikura's Hill 'n' Dale Farm co-bred Cezanne with St. Elias Stable, whose owner Vinnie Viola retained a stake alongside the Coolmore partners when the colt topped the Gulfstream Sale of 2019 at $3.65 million.

Poignantly, that proved to be the parting bow of Viola's great friend Jimmy Crupi, who passed away shortly after preparing Cezanne for the sale. And the horse who hurtled :10 flat that week himself appeared to go into mourning, not making his debut for Bob Baffert for over a year. His first couple of starts proved worth the wait, but after apparently failing to cope with a rise in grade he disappeared again until resurfacing at Santa Anita last Sunday. His performance there suggests that he is now poised to make up for lost time for a family tree that has already blossomed anew this spring through Greatest Honour (Tapit), a grandson of Better Than Honour who retains potential to top the crop despite unfortunately sitting out the Derby.

Cezanne is trying to become one of those horses that makes sense of the way an entire industry strives for viability. He represents principles that need to work out sufficiently often to maintain investment at the highest level, even if it's no less important that other successes appear less accountable. For Sikura (with various partners along the way) has ensured that this royal line has been seeded by the very best broodmare sires: Cezanne is out of a Bernardini mare, herself out of a daughter of Storm Cat. And Better Than Honour's sire, the legendary distaff influence Deputy Minister, is also the damsire of Curlin. As Sikura puts it: “Sort of molasses on top of sugar on top of an artificial sweetener. About as rich as you can make it.”

John Sikura | Keeneland photo

Sikura's original engagement with this family, buying and selling Better Than Honour twice over, is not just familiar but outright historic. First time, she soon passed through his hands: a private purchase from Robert Waxman, in whose silks she had won a Grade II, she was sold on to the Gumberg family's Skara Glen Stables with the proviso that if her first foal proved to be a filly, Sikura would keep her. That proved a turning point, as Better Than Honour delivered a daughter by Storm Cat.

Though she did not make the track until four, Teeming won all three starts after her debut. “She was wonderfully talented, but unsound,” remembers Sikura. “She had superstar ability, and just a magnetic personality: beautiful face, well-made, just an exquisite creature.”

And, as it would turn out, she also had a useful propensity to deliver fillies. But meanwhile her mother was busy upgrading the pedigree, famously giving us consecutive GI Belmont S. winners in Jazil (Seeking the Gold) and Rags to Riches (A.P. Indy) to emulate her own granddam Best in Show (Traffic Judge) as a Broodmare of the Year. So when Mike Moreno of Southern Equine partnered with Sikura, with a brief to seek the best possible mares, their first purchase was Better Than Honour. At that stage, Rags to Riches had been beaten on her solitary juvenile start. By the time the partnership was dissolved, in 2008, Better Than Honour had made herself worth $14 million, a broodmare auction record, for Moreno to buy out Sikura.

Remarkably, Teeming turned out seven winning fillies, most notably Streaming (Smart Strike) who won the GI Hollywood Starlet S. One day Viola enquired if there might be any access into the dynasty. “I don't sell that family,” Sikura replied. “But if I ever do, I'll call you.”

Viola's chance came through Teeming's second daughter, a maiden winner by Bernardini named Achieving. Sikura had raced her in partnership with the late James A. Sapara of Winsong Farm, Alberta, whose share was originally acquired by George Prussin before ultimately being traded on to Viola. By that stage she had three foals on the track, two of them black-type winners including Arabian Hope (Distorted Humor), Group I-placed over a mile in Europe for Godolphin. Viola's esteem for Curlin is well known, so fortunately the mare had a repeat date with Hill 'n' Dale's top gun after delivering Cezanne. The resulting full-sister, now in Florida preparing to join Todd Pletcher, became all the more precious after the premature loss of Achieving.

Curlin at Hill 'n' Dale | Sarah Andrew

“She colicked, it was tragic,” Sikura said. “But you know in this business things won't always follow your plan. My son said, 'Dad, how come only the good horses die?' I said, 'I guess our goal is to be surrounded by good horses. So that means anytime something will go on, it will be an enormous loss.' Of course, equine life is always precious. But when you have a unique, special, one-off type of animal, it makes it even harder. But that's the business, I'm sad to say. And things go on.”

They sure did, with Cezanne–albeit for a while that didn't seem terribly likely. They put him in the September Sale as a yearling. He was very correct, but a touch plain and they never could work off a bit of girth.

Viola came to the barn on the day of the sale and asked: “How are we doing?”

“We don't have anybody,” Sikura replied. “There's been no scoping. Had people look, but I don't think he's going to get sold.”

They agreed not to put him through the ring but to send him down to Crupi in Florida, and the rest is history. That's what Sikura is hoping, anyway, because he makes it a rule not to ask about horses he has sold–especially at that kind of money. “Because if they're good, it's common knowledge,” he says wryly. “And, if they're no good or something went wrong, you hate to put someone on the spot.”

So while he doesn't know quite what it was that interrupted Cezanne's career, he is gratified to see him thriving now for a team for whom he has the utmost regard.

“It was great he sold so well,” Sikura says. “But as important, for you to continue to restock and be in business, is that those horses are successful for the new owners. He has certainly shown that he has brilliant ability and now it's up to the racing gods. But he's in the hands of a master, he's owned by the smartest horsemen in the world, and it's a wonderful family–one of the few international pedigrees that performs in America, that performs in Europe, and at the highest level. Coolmore know the quality of that family [Better Than Honour's half-sister was dam of their champion Peeping Fawn (Danehill)]. So it's worked for them, and it's worked for us. We've had many daughters and I hope it will continue to proliferate, so that you end up with only one dam on the page and that's it.”

Cezanne leaving the Fasig-Tipton ring in 2019 | Fasig-Tipton photo

Admittedly Cezanne hasn't necessarily jumped through quite the expected hoops to this point. He was bought as a ready-to-roll flying machine who also had a Classic, two-turn page. Two years later, he has just made his fourth start, and in a sprint. It may be that Baffert just didn't want to stretch him on his comeback and, having pounced off an obligingly wild pace at Santa Anita, Cezanne may yet be restored to a second turn. That can be left to the seasoned judgement of his trainer and ownership group. All that really matters is that he bears the family hallmark.

Which is what, exactly? “There's randomness in all genetics, but there seems to be less here,” Sikura says. “It's a richness of blood that doesn't seem to wane, doesn't water down. It doesn't skip a generation. The transmission of quality is just so consistent. It's a rarity, but every once in a while, mares do that.”

Sikura suspects that such mares were slightly less uncommon in the past. (If he's right, then maybe that's something to do with the loosening of quality inevitable in modern stallion books: in times past, only the most eligible mares deserved access to top sires.) Regardless, he looks at the way Courtly Dee and her daughters were managed, and dares to dream of a similar legacy someday–“where one becomes two, becomes five, and then you've got 10, 12 daughters, granddaughters, great-granddaughters, all providing racehorses with relevancy today, tomorrow, and yesterday.”

If anything, Sikura felt that the family had fallen a little dormant over the past couple of years. But his expectations never wavered, and he has retained fillies from different branches so that he can control his own destiny, can keep that quality tight: a War Front here, a Candy Ride (Arg) there. But he's delighted, of course, that the line should have been newly invigorated by his own farm's premier stallion.

“It's very rewarding to breed a good horse, to see another generation come through under your care,” Sikura says. “You try with all of them, but only sometimes are you lucky enough to have the right vine, that outperforms the other vines. I guess that's what makes Chateau Lafite, and that's also what makes great dynasties in cattle or hunting dogs. Every once in a while, there seems to be such a concentration of genetic stuff that the fault lines are very thin. The expectation, the commonplace, is excellence and superiority–whereas in virtually every other mare, it's happenstance.

“In Better Than Honour and through Teeming and her daughters, greatness always seemed imminent. The family produces unfiltered quality so reliably they are generational influencers on the breed. Supreme quality and prepotency that only the rarest of families beget are hallmarks of this page. The fact that Greatest Honour and Cezanne emerged this year is a reminder of the relevancy and influence of this family each generation from Blush With Pride, Better Than Honour, Teeming and now Achieving.”

But you can't be in a hurry for that stuff. Even in the brief span of Cezanne's adolescence, after all, there has been a repeated need for patience.

“I remember saying how we had no action on this horse, and then all of a sudden he was the wild talking horse at Gulfstream,” says Sikura. “So well done to everybody. He's well owned, he's well trained, he's well bred. I don't see any deficit in the horse. I hope the sky's the limit.

“It's nice when you have a deal where genuinely everybody prospers, where everybody benefits and shares in the reward. It doesn't happen that often, there aren't that many opportunities, but this I believe is a deal that is giving back to everybody. They were brave to buy him and hopefully they're going to be rewarded with a blue-blooded stud prospect that has achieved on the racetrack.”

Andre Pater's painting of Teeming | courtesy Hill 'n' Dale

Aptly enough, a precious contributor to this tale has been actually rendered in paint. With eerie timing, as though anticipating both the imminent disaster and the consolations that would follow, Sikura for the first time decided to commission a portrait of one of his mares. Just days after Andre Pater came out for an initial study, Teeming was dead. (She suffered complications after twisting a gut.) Pater had wanted to pose her against a tree and Sikura requested that it should unobtrusively extend a dead limb with seven new sprouts.

“Nobody will see it or know it, but I will and that will represent the seven daughters,” he explains. “So there's the rejuvenation, the rebirth. Even now when I think of the day she died, I just hit bottom.  But if there wasn't so much bad in this business, the good wouldn't feel as good.”

And, by the same token, greatness seldom comes our way. “It has to be so rare that people think, are you sure it can happen?” says Sikura. “And then, just when you don't think it can happen anymore, it does happen. It's frustrating along the way, but it's much like with the Triple Crown. People said you have to change dates, it doesn't work this way, it doesn't work that way. And then here come two Triple Crown winners, including one that didn't run as a 2-year-old, which was an impossibility.”

Yet however rare, greatness can have a clockwork quality, too. With Best in Show a Broodmare of the Year, and her granddaughter the same, how about a granddaughter of Better Than Honour someday following suit?

“That would just be history-making,” Sikura says. “That would be something that would last forever. You wouldn't want it for personal accolade, or to say 'look what we've done.' It would be for the family; it would be to recognize something that is going to be there for eternity, as one of the unique mares of the Stud Book. You could only dream of that happening. But the possibility is there.”

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Bloodlines Presented By Diamond B Farm’s Rowayton: Greatest Honour Was Built For Classic Success

After a relatively quiet year in the classics during 2020, Tapit is loaded for this year's preps to the classic races of 2021. In addition to the champion juvenile colt, Essential Quality, the multiple leading sire added a new graded stakes winner to his list of accomplishments when Greatest Honour won the Grade 3 Holy Bull Stakes at Gulfstream Park on Jan. 30.

The sire of 141 stakes winners, Tapit now has a pair of graded stakes winners among his classic prospects, along with Proxy, who was second in the G3 Lecomte Stakes at the Fair Grounds on Jan. 16. Although Tapit did not get a classic winner last year, his son Constitution did, with Tiz the Law winning the Belmont Stakes and finishing second in the Kentucky Derby to Horse of the Year Authentic (by Into Mischief), and Tapit's son Tapiture sired Jesus' Team, who ran third in the Preakness and was recently second in the Pegasus.

Now Tapit has fired up a progressive classic prospect in the tall, scopey Greatest Honour, who swept round his competition on the turn in the Holy Bull, then pulled away to win by 5 3/4 lengths in the race at a mile and a sixteenth. Trainer Shug McGaughey said, “He picked up his horses quick today. I think the farther we go, the better.”

The big bay's racing style certainly indicates he will be suited to classic distances, and the colt's pedigree backs that up in spades.

Bred in Kentucky by the Courtlandt Farm of Donna and Donald Adam, Greatest Honour is out of the Street Cry mare Tiffany's Honour. The mare didn't finish in the money in any of her three starts for owner-breeder Southern Equine, but when consigned to the 2015 Fasig-Tipton November sale in foal to Tapit, Tiffany's Honour was bought back for $2.3 million. Courtlandt Farm acquired the mare privately, and the mare's first foal was a Tapit colt who died.

The second foal out of Tiffany's Honour is the 4-year-old War Front gelding Semifinal, who brought $1.1 million at the 2018 Keeneland September yearling sale. He is unplaced from two starts and was vanned off the racetrack after the second.

Greatest Honour is the mare's third foal, and he won his maiden in his fourth start, going 8.5 furlongs on dirt at Gulfstream Park on Dec. 26. Although clearly more talented for two turns, Greatest Honour is not afflicted with a case of the slows. He was twice third in maiden specials at Saratoga and Belmont; each time, the second horse was Caddo River (Hard Spun), who won the listed Smarty Jones Stakes at Oaklawn on Jan. 22.

In his third start, going nine furlongs at Aqueduct on Nov. 8, Greatest Honour was second by a head to the Curlin colt Known Agenda, with the third horse 21 lengths farther behind. The penny had dropped, and Greatest Honour has won his next two starts.

The size, the scope, the lack of sprint speed, and yet the ability to show form late at two and improve markedly at three is the trademark of the A.P. Indy line of classic stock. And it's not coincidental that the best racehorse in the second generation of this pedigree is A.P. Indy's Belmont Stakes winner Rags to Riches, a winner in five of seven starts, four times at the Grade 1 level (Belmont, Kentucky Oaks, Santa Anita Oaks, Las Virgenes).

Rags to Riches and Belmont Stakes winner Jazil (Seeking the Gold) are elder siblings to Tiffany's Honour, who was the ninth and next-to-last foal out of their dam, the splendid racehorse and producer Better Than Honour (Deputy Minister). Winner of the G2 Demoiselle at two, Better Than Honour was second in the G1 Acorn and third in the G1 Mother Goose at three. At stud, she produced four stakes winners. In addition to her two Belmont Stakes winners, Better Than Honour is dam of Casino Drive (Mineshaft), winner of the G2 Peter Pan, and Man of Iron (Giant's Causeway), winner of the Breeders' Cup Marathon.

This family fairly reeks of stamina, but it responds well when matched with high-class speed, which is what happened with the mating of French champion and leading sire Blushing Groom (Red God) to fourth dam Best in Show. The result was Greatest Honour's third dam, G1 Kentucky Oaks winner Blush With Pride, who also won the G1 Santa Susana, was second in the G1 Spinster, and third in the G1 Mother Goose.

At stud, Blush With Pride produced three stakes winners, and this is the family of four-time G1 winner Peeping Fawn (Danehill), a granddaughter of Blush With Pride, and of G1 Hollywood Starlet winner Streaming (Smart Strike), a granddaughter of Better Than Honour.

The esteem in which breeders hold this family is evident from the sales prices of its members, and after Tiffany's Honour produced Greatest Honour, Courtlandt sent the mare to the 2018 Keeneland November sale. In foal to Medaglia d'Oro, Tiffany's Honour brought $2.2 million from Katsumi Yoshida, and the mare was exported to Japan. Tiffany's Honour foaled a filly in April 2019, was barren from a cover to Duramente for 2020, and was bred to the Deep Impact son Kizuna last year for a 2021 foal.

Greatest Honour has already provided a major update for his siblings, and the classics await. This colt is strengthening and should be a better horse in three months than he is today.

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