Tag: Bloodlines

Breeding two horses that win graded stakes in less than a week is a notable success, made more notable by the fact that John Mayer's Nursery Place is a relatively small operation. Nursery Place was the sole breeder of the 5-year-old Hopkins (by Quality Road), who won the Grade 3 Palos Verdes Stakes at Santa Anita on Feb. 5, and the farm is one of three partners that bred the 3-year-old Litigate (Blame), who won the G3 Sam F. Davis Stakes at Tampa Bay six days later.

Both horses were raised and sold by Nursery Place, as well, and through several decades of work in breeding and raising horses, as well as selling them, Mayer and his associates have developed a reputation for producing good horses.

As a result, the right buyers will have a look at them, and both the graded winners sold out of the Nursery Place consignments. Mayer said, “We were well-paid for them, and now we just hope that they keep on doing well for their owners.”

Bred in Kentucky, Hopkins is the second stakes winner and fourth stakes horse out of the Salt Lake mare Hot Spell, who was second in a stakes at Golden Gate. Her other stakes winner is Saratoga Heater (Temple City), and she has a pair of stakes-placed racers in Of a Revolution (Maclean's Music), who was second in the G2 Gallant Bob and third in the G3 Swale, and Malocchio (Orb), who ran second in the Sorority at Monmouth.

With those kinds of relations, people came to see Hopkins when he was presented as a yearling, and they clearly liked what they saw because the powerful bay brought $900,000 at the 2019 Keeneland September yearling sale. Expected to travel to Dubai for the upcoming Golden Shaheen Stakes, Hopkins races for SF Racing LLC, Starlight Racing, Madaket Stables LLC, Stonestreet Stables LLC, Golconda Stable, Siena Farm LLC, and Robert E. Masterson.

The Palos Verdes was the third victory in seven starts for Hopkins, who has a trio of seconds. His only unplaced effort was a sixth in the G2 San Antonio on Dec. 26.

His dam will be bred to first-year sire Olympiad (Speightstown) this year. On selecting the mating, Mayer noted that “a good many years ago, a wise man told me to breed quality older mares to promising young sires and my nice young mares to proven, older sires.”

With that philosophy, Mayer planned matings for his nice young Mineshaft mare Salsa Diavola. “We started her off like she was a good mare, with the mating to Ghostzapper,” Mayer said, “but it was the third foal (Litigate) who got her off the mark” with a stakes winner.

Bred in Kentucky by Nursery Place, Donaldson, and Broadbent, Litigate has now won two of his three starts, earning $182,590 for owner Centennial Farms. The bay was well-received at the 2021 Keeneland September yearling sale and sold for $370,000 to Centennial for one of its partnerships. Litigate was the top-priced yearling colt for his sire in 2021.

Now, Litigate is the second stakes winner of 2023 for his sire, who ranks as a top value sire in the Kentucky stallion market at $25,000 live foal. The stallion has Litigate on the Kentucky Derby trail, and his other stakes winner of 2023 is Godolphin's Wet Paint, who will be pointing for the Kentucky Oaks in similar fashion to last year's winner Secret Oath (Arrogate), who took the path from Oaklawn Park to Churchill.

The partners' faith in Blame has paid off further. Litigate's dam Salsa Diavola is in foal to Blame and “is due in a couple of weeks,” Mayer noted. The partners haven't decided who to send her to in 2023 … yet.

“I've been partners with these fellows for 25 years,” Mayer said. “In doing this sort of thing, you develop relationships, and ours has worked very well. We normally buy young mares and sell them in foal. We got lucky, and it didn't work out to get Salsa Diavola sold,” when she was bought back for $130,000 carrying her first foal to Ghostzapper.

Since then, the mare has become a graded stakes producer, like nearly everything in her family, tracing back through her dam Miss Salsa (Unbridled), the dam of G3 winner Pacific Ocean (Ghostzapper); her dam Oscillate (Seattle Slew), dam of stakes winner and sire Mutakddim (Seeking the Gold); her dam G1 winner Dance Number (Northern Dancer), the dam of champion juvenile Rhythm (Mr. Prospector); her dam champion Numbered Account (Buckpasser), dam of G1 winner and leading sire Private Account (Damascus); then back through multiple top producers to Numbered Account's fifth dam La Troienne (Teddy), dam of champion Bimelech and several major producing lines, and herself a half-sister to Prix de Diane winner Adargatis (Asterus).

This is the family that keeps coming back, generation after generation. Litigate is the latest.

Mayer said that “this sort of success is great for my kids and for the people on the farm; it jazzes them up. But you can't live on the expectation of having a week like that, not if you want to survive. There has to be something in it, day to day, that gets you out of bed and provides some kind of personal reward. Because, at the core, it's just farming.

“But it has been a real nice week.”

The post Bloodlines Presented By Mill Ridge Farm: ‘A Real Nice Week’ For Nursery Place appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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“We might never have known how good this filly was on dirt,” Price Bell pondered at Fasig-Tipton on Monday, where I quizzed him about the latest graded stakes winner for Mill Ridge Farm's young sire Oscar Performance, “if only Churchill Downs had had a turf race for her.”

Sometimes you're lucky; sometimes you're good. The filly in question, Red Carpet Ready, is both.

Already the winner of the 2022 Fern Creek Stakes at Churchill on Nov. 26, Red Carpet Ready was making her 3-year-old debut in the Grade 3 Forward Gal at Gulfstream and is now unbeaten in three starts. The good-looking dark bay had won her first start by 10 last year, racing six furlongs on dirt at Churchill, then had come back in the 6 ½-furlong Fern Creek, and the seven furlongs of the Forward Gal posed no problem. After attending the pace to the half-mile, Red Carpet Ready punched away to a 2 ½-length lead and maintained her dominance while ridden out through the finish.

Lucky as Red Carpet Ready is, her owners – Glenn Bromagen and Patrick Lewis – may be even luckier. Bromagen had gone to the Saratoga select sale in 2021 with a plan: “I had identified the horses I wanted at Saratoga, and Oscar Performance was the level of sire power that I thought I could buy there. I thought $200,000 was enough to buy probably the best Oscar Performance, as opposed to being what you'd pay for a bottom-level yearling by a more established sire.”

Red Carpet Ready certainly qualified as a top yearling for her sire. Beautifully balanced and proportioned, she had a very good shoulder and hindquarters, as well as a lovely, athletic walk. Yet, “when she was in the ring,” Bromagen recalled, “from the pacing I felt I was bidding against the reserve. Then when I pulled up at $170,000, I thought she went RNA and was heading out to Mill Ridge to ask about buying her. And as I was going out, I saw Deuce Greathouse signing the ticket.

“That was a sinking feeling, but I went up to Deuce and asked who he was going to send her to. He said he wasn't sure because he'd bought her on 'spec,' and I said I really liked her.

“He said, 'Well, you can buy her from me.' I asked how much he wanted: $190,000. You know, I was prepared to go to $200,000 for her; so I bought her, and she's been a wonderful filly at every step of the way.”

The buyer noted that Greathouse went back and bought the full sister in last year's Saratoga sale for $65,000. “He may be the smartest of us all,” Bromagen said. “My partner Patrick Lewis had been talking about getting into the game, called me up after I'd bought this filly, and this is his first flat-racing Thoroughbred. I've ruined him because now he thinks the game is easy” with an unbeaten filly who's just won a graded stakes.

Bred in Kentucky by Lynn Schiff, Red Carpet Ready is the second winner from three foals to race out of Wild Silk, an unraced daughter of champion 2-year-old colt and Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense (by Street Cry) and the stakes-winning A.P. Indy mare Spun Silk.

Although no granddaughter of Arlington Million winner Kitten's Joy (El Prado) and Street Sense would qualify as “sprint bred,” there is certainly plenty of speed in this filly's heritage. The speed begins with her sire, who must have given his jockey a whiplash when racing a mile in record time of 1:31.23 to win the G3 Poker Stakes at Belmont.

The filly's third dam is stakes winner Spunoutacontrol (Wild Again), a half-sister to leading sire Tale of the Cat (Storm Cat) and European highweight Minardi (Boundary), as well as to the dam of champion Johannesburg (Hennessy). The fourth dam of Red Carpet Ready is a full sister to G1 winner Preach (Mr. Prospector), the dam of leading sire Pulpit (A.P. Indy).

A G1 winner four times, Oscar Performance won three of his four starts at two, including the G3 Pilgrim and the G1 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf. He followed up with Grade 1 victories in the Belmont Derby, Secretariat, and Woodbine Mile, among other graded successes. The handsome bay out of the Theatrical mare Devine Actress earned $2.3 million for Amerman Racing LLC and retired to stud at Mill Ridge Farm, where he was syndicated into 40 shares and entered stud at a fee of $20,000 live foal.

With five graded stakes performers from his first crop so far, Oscar Performance is booked full with a limit of 140 mares for 2023 and stands for the same fee ($17,500 to those who have previously bred to the horse).

The post Bloodlines: Red Carpet Ready’s Star Turn For Sire Oscar Performance appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Rather than being 15-1, there was a day when winning the Grade 1 Pegasus at Gulfstream Park would have been the expected result from Art Collector, a handsome son of champion racehorse and sire Bernardini (by A.P. Indy).

At the midpoint of the horse's 3-year-old season, few if any of his contemporaries were rated more highly than Art Collector, winner of four straight races and both the Blue Grass Stakes and Ellis Park Derby during the weird summer of 2020, when Covid-19 had derailed the scheduling for the Triple Crown.

That year, the Preakness Stakes was raced last of the series, after Tiz the Law (Constitution) had won the 2020 Belmont Stakes over nine furlongs in June and Authentic (Into Mischief) had clipped the Belmont winner in the Kentucky Derby on Sept. 5. Authentic was the favorite for the Preakness, raced on Oct. 3, with Art Collector the second choice, but both were upset by the swashbuckling filly Swiss Skydiver (Daredevil), with Authentic second and Art Collector fourth.

Then Art Collector went a bit off the path, but he has kept on racing and winning at the highest level. From 21 starts, the horse has won 11 races, and it's either won or done for Art Collector because he has nine off the board, with a second only in his debut. (The horse actually finished first in yet another but was disqualified due to a medication positive prior to being transferred to Bill Mott's training stable.)

One of the fascinating things about Art Collector is that he has remained in training, remained sound, and has retained his level of ability through the beginning of his 6-year-old form. He came back at four to win a trio of races culminating in the G1 Woodward Stakes, then returned last year, after a debacle in the G1 Saudi Cup, to win a listed stakes at Saratoga and then the G2 Charles Town Classic. The Pegasus was his seasonal debut.

This winner of $4 million was bred in Kentucky by Bruce Lunsford from a family of historic vintage and classic character.

The Pegasus winner is out of the stakes winner Distorted Legacy (Distorted Humor), also bred by Lunsford, and Distorted Legacy won the Sky Beauty Stakes at Belmont and was stakes-placed three times. She showed the best form of her career with a second in the G1 Flower Bowl Invitational and with a fourth in the G1 Breeders' Cup Filly Turf, beaten a length by Perfect Shirl (Perfect Soul).

Distorted Legacy is one of four stakes horses out of Bunting (Private Account). Bunting had won a maiden at Saratoga as a juvenile, then proceeded to race competitively in graded stakes at three, placing second in the G1 Ashland at Keeneland and in the G2 Black-Eyed Susan at Pimlico in 1994. Then, Lunsford and partners purchased the 3-year-old filly out of the Greentree racing stable dispersal at the 1994 Keeneland November sale for $500,000, with Seth Hancock signing the ticket, and Bunting won an allowance and placed in two others for her new owners before retiring to stud the following spring.

There, she met with immediate success from her mating to leading sire Storm Cat. The resulting colt was named Vision and Verse, and he became a graded stakes winner. The scopy bay came home first in the G2 Illinois Derby, but he gained even more notice for seconds in the G1 Belmont Stakes and the Travers. Both of those seconds were to Lemon Drop Kid (Kingmambo) by a head and three-quarters of a length, respectively. After earning slightly more than $1 million, Vision and Verse was sent to stud in Kentucky at Hill 'n' Dale Farm.

Bunting's second foal for Lunsford was the Broad Brush mare Broadway Express, who won twice and placed second in the 2000 Sam Houston Oaks. Bunting also produced Performing Diva, a full sister to Vision and Verse who ran second in the 2005 Alcibiades Stakes at Keeneland. Then in 2007, Bunting foaled Distorted Legacy.

Bunting was a daughter of the Hoist the Flag mare Flag Waver, winner of the Rampart Handicap and the third stakes winner out of Bebopper (Tom Fool). The mare's previous stakes winners were leading sire Stop the Music (Hail to Reason), winner of the Champagne Stakes (on the disqualification of Secretariat for nudging the other colt out of his way) and the Dwyer; and Hatchet Man (The Axe), winner of the G1 Widener and Haskell, as well as the Dwyer. Both were successful sires, especially Stop the Music, sire of Belmont Stakes and Travers winner Temperence Hill, who was champion 3-year-old colt; the G1 winners Dontstop Themusic (Spinster, Vanity), Music Merci (Del Mar Futurity), and Cure the Blues (Laurel Futurity), plus G2 winner Play On, also second in the 1984 Preakness.

Greentree bred all the foals out of Bebopper and raced them. The operation acquired this family with the purchase of the French-bred Bebop (Prince Bio), a stakes-placed half-sister to 1954 Oaks winner Sun Cap (Sunny Boy) and 1952 Prix Jean Prat winner La Varende (Blue Moon). Another of Bebop's daughters, the stakes-placed Stepping High (No Robbery), is the dam of Peter Pan Stakes winner Buckaroo, the sire of 1985 Kentucky Derby winner Spend a Buck.

The family had shown its classic quality in Europe, and the pursuit of the classics was clearly Greentree's intention in acquiring and breeding the mares the way they did. Lunsford has followed suit, and it has paid off with quality racers and now a Pegasus champ.

The post Bloodlines: Pegasus Winner Art Collector Extends Legacy Of Whitney Family’s Greentree Stable appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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The victory of Instant Coffee (by Bolt d'Oro) in the Grade 3 Lecomte Stakes at the Fair Grounds brings more than hopes of classic glory to the talented colt. It also reminds us of the great rivalry between Lecomte and Lexington, both sons of the great American racehorse and sire Boston (Timoleon).

Lecomte and Lexington were foaled in 1850, the year that California entered the Union, and each was a racehorse of very high quality. Lecomte was unbeaten until his defeat by Lexington, and Lexington met his first and only defeat from Lecomte.

Lexington won the Great State Post Stakes from Lecomte, then the latter turned the tables in the 1854 Jockey Club Purse. At these races, the interstate rivalry was so intense that tens of thousands of dollars, probably hundreds of thousands, changed hands on the results. The deciding race was the 1855 Jockey Club Purse, when Lexington won the first four-mile heat and Lecomte was withdrawn from the second.

After Lexington had defeated Lecomte the second time, the bay son of Boston was retired due to failing eyesight and went to stud that year in Kentucky at W.F. Harper's stud near Midway, Ky., for a covering fee of $100, $1 to the groom. Robert A. Alexander of Woodburn Farm had gone to England to purchase bloodstock, there met Lexington's owner Richard Ten Broeck, and purchased the horse for $15,000, an American record price for a horse at that time.

As talented a racer as Lexington was, he proved even more important as a sire. He was the leading sire in the country 14 times in a row, with an additional two more sire titles for 16 total. The great blind stallion died at Woodburn in July 1875 at the age of 25, and his skeleton was preserved and is at the Kentucky Horse Park.

An interesting facet of Instant Coffee's pedigree is that both these great rivals figure in the pedigree of the Lecomte Stakes winner.

The role of Lexington is not a surprise. He is present in essentially all pedigrees. Among other notable connections, Lexington is the sire of 1865 Travers winner Maiden, the sixth dam of Nearco (Pharis), and Mumtaz Mahal (The Tetrarch) has Lexington twice in her sixth generation because her second dam, Americus Girl, is by Americus, who was inbred 3×3 to Lexington through Norfolk and his full sister The Nun.

So Lexington is pervasive in pedigrees the world over, but the same cannot be said for Lecomte.

After Lexington ambled off to stud, the chestnut Lecomte raced on, although he, like his sire Boston, covered mares while still remaining an active racer. Lecomte was bred in 1855 and 1856, then after defeats from a horse named Pryor (Glencoe), was sold to Lexington's former owner Richard Ten Broeck toward the end of 1856.

From breeder-owner Thomas Jefferson Wells, Ten Broeck purchased not only Lecomte for $10,000 but also his younger half-sister Prioress (Sovereign). Together with Pryor, the two offspring of the great producer Reel shipped to England as Ten Broeck's troika to take on the best of English racing.

For Pryor and Lecomte, the trip was a disaster. Lecomte had a sore ankle and could not stand a proper training regimen; Pryor fell ill on the trip overseas and never recovered his form. Lecomte suffered colic and died on Oct. 7, 1857, and Pryor died 15 days later, per their obituaries in the Spirit of the Times.

The sole bright spot for this tragic expedition was that Prioress raced into a triple dead heat for the 1857 Cambridgeshire Handicap and won the run-off.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the final foals by Lecomte had been born in 1857. The best racer among these was bred in Kentucky by Ten Broeck. He was a bay colt out of Alice Carneal (Sarpedon) and a half-brother to Lexington by his great rival.

Named Umpire, this colt was taken to England by Ten Broeck, and he was notably successful, at one time the actual favorite for the Derby at Epsom. On the day, Umpire started as third choice 6-1 behind The Wizard, who had won the 1860 2,000 Guineas, and Thormanby. The bettors had the first two tagged but in the wrong order, as Thormanby won by 1 ½ lengths, and Umpire was seventh in a field of 30.

Later in 1860, Umpire raced for the St. Leger at Doncaster, with Thormanby favored, but after taking the lead, Umpire could not hold on and finished seventh behind the winner, St. Albans, as the fifth choice in a field of 15. Thormanby finished 11th.

Sound and athletic, Umpire raced on, winning the Queen's Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot in 1863, by which time he was owned by Lord Coventry.

Sent to stud, Umpire had some foals, and his son Decider earned a place in history as the sire of one of the best-named winners of the Grand National at Aintree: Wild Man From Borneo, the victor in the great steeplechase in 1895.

In the present day, however, pride of place goes to one of Lecomte's daughters. This is the Lecomte Mare 1857 out of Edith, otherwise unnamed. She was bred by Wells and is the 15th dam of this year's Lecomte Stakes winner Instant Coffee.

As with Instant Coffee, nearly all of the contemporary connections to Lecomte come through the Lecomte Mare's granddaughter Mannie Gray, the dam of Correction and her full brother Domino. Together, they exerted an extraordinary influence on American breeding, especially in the first half of the 20th century, but are still present in pedigrees today.

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