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Bloodlines Presented By Caracaro: Cowan Carries The Torch For Successful Overbrook Farm Family

Unbeaten in his three starts, all at two, Kantharos was never a racer who lacked for speed, and it came as no surprise to the O'Farrell family in Florida when the chestnut son of Grade 1 winner Lion Heart became a leading freshman sire. Sent to stud at Vinery in Florida for his first two seasons at stud, Kantharos was transferred to the O'Farrells' historic Ocala Stud in late 2012.

Mike O'Farrell noted at the time that, “Kantharos has his first crop of weanlings this year, and what sold me on the idea of standing the horse was how he's passing on his own very good looks to his offspring. We have a couple of his first weanlings here on the farm, and they're outstanding individuals. We didn't just get lucky; we're hearing great things around town about the horse's babies. It's always a good sign to see a stallion stamping them like he is.”

Indeed.

From his first racers, Kantharos was the leading freshman sire in Florida in 2014, then the leading second-crop sire in the Sunshine State in 2015. By the end of that year, Kantharos had 10 percent stakes winners from his first crop of 51 foals, including graded winners X Y Jet and Mr. Jordan.

By the end of 2016, Stonestreet had reached an agreement with Hill 'n' Dale Farm in Kentucky to send their new stallion sensation to the Bluegrass, and the powerful chestnut has continued to climb the ladder of sire success.

Just last weekend, the stallion added a pair of new stakes winners when Magic Circle won the Busanda at Aqueduct and Cowan took home the gold and glory in the Duncan F. Kenner at the Fair Grounds.

The 4-year-old Cowan got the Kenner on the disqualification of Just Might (Justin Phillip), who has won and kept six of his last eight races. A striking chestnut, Cowan was bred in Kentucky by Hill 'n' Dale Equine Holdings and sold to Bill and Corinne Heiligbrodt for $185,000 at the 2019 Keeneland September yearling sale.

Sent back to auction the following year, Cowan was bought back for $385,000 at the OBS March auction of juveniles in training. The powerhouse chestnut had turned in a strong work of :10 flat for a furlong, showing a stride length of nearly 25 feet and earning a BreezeFig of 74 (excellent) for the effort.

When he made a winning debut, going four and a half furlongs at Churchill Downs on May 22, Madaket Stables and Spendthrift Farm already were on the ownership line with the Heiligbrodts, and that ownership has campaigned the racer through 13 starts, including a half-dozen stakes placings, before his victory in the Kenner. The colt's current earnings stand at $826,602.

Out of the stakes-placed Smart Strike mare Tempers Flair, Cowan has a pedigree distinguished by quality and exceptional speed.

The colt's second dam is the stakes-winning Cloudburst (Storm Cat), winner in two of her four starts, including the Mardi Gras Stakes, going 5 1/2 furlongs at the Fair Grounds. Strikingly similar to her famous sire in color and looks, Cloudburst is a half-sister to champion juvenile colt Boston Harbor (Capote).

Both of these classy performers were bred and raced by W.T. Young's Overbrook Farm. Boston Harbor won six of his seven starts at two, including the Grade 1 Breeders' Cup Juvenile and G2 Breeders' Futurity, when he was named champion of his division in 1996. Boston Harbor was fourth in the Santa Catalina, his only start at three, then was retired after a work injury and sent to stud at Overbrook in 1998. In 2001, the JBBA purchased Boston Harbor and exported him to stand in Japan on the island of Hokkaido.

Boston Harbor and his younger half-sister were the two stakes winners out of Harbor Springs, a stakes winner by Vice Regent that trainer Wayne Lukas bought for Overbrook out of the 1990 Keeneland July sale for $500,000. A winner of seven races from 11 starts, including the Wishing Well Stakes at Turfway, Harbor Springs became a distinguished producer for the farm.

The mare was also one of the last sold off in the Overbrook dispersal, bringing only $23,000 (covered by Street Boss), at the 2010 Keeneland January sale. Cloudburst had sold earlier, and in foal to leading sire Tiznow, she had brought $900,000 at the 2009 Keeneland November sale.

Harbor Springs was one of two stakes winners out of the Restless Wind mare Tinnitus, and the other one was champion sprinter Groovy, winner of the G1 Vosburgh, as well as a winner of the Forego and the Tom Fool twice each. A winner of more than $1.3 million, Groovy cut a dashing figure trying to sprint to victory in the 1986 Kentucky Derby. That didn't work out, but the charismatic colt showed exceptional talent in sprinting to victory in the Tom Fool at Belmont, then the Forego at Saratoga.

Acclaimed the fastest colt of his generation, Groovy was ironically outpaced in both the 1986 and 1987 Breeders' Cup Sprints by the fillies Very Subtle and Pine Tree Lane.

The history of high speed in this family was doubtless one of the attractions for the buyers when the handsome chestnut Cowan went to the sales, and the interest in the family has not paled.

The Heiligbrodts purchased the now 2-year-old half-sister to Cowan at the 2020 Keeneland November sale for $250,000. The daughter of Candy Ride is still unnamed, and Tempers Flair has a yearling filly of 2021 by Constitution (Tapit).

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Bloodlines Presented By Caracaro: When A Stallion’s Road To Success Takes A Detour

Races in California and in Florida on Jan. 15 highlighted the high stakes that farms and breeders contend for in breeding each crop of racers. The highest stakes are played for the top stallion prospects each year, and the keystone of each new breeding season is the acquisition of these premium stallion prospects, who are the objects of intense competition from the leading farms in Kentucky.

The best-organized and -financed farms bid as much as the market will bear to bring in those highly attractive sire prospects and the consequent large books of mares and attendant prestige from working with leading breeders and marketers.

The result is that the top prospects for each crop are priced as high as the marketplace can accommodate, and the expectations for these highflyers are as high as their stud fees.

This isn't an evaluation of whether this is the most effective way to select stallions; it's just a description of the way the marketplace, especially in America and Europe, works in response to the stallion acquisition model currently in use.

Once the farms and their annual stallion prospects are into this process, there isn't much they can do except to provide the best opportunity, management, and promotion available to maximize their new sire prospects. And hang on for the ride.

Because there is a considerable amount of unpredictability in the stallion market on the performance side of the equation. First, there is the unpredictability of genetic transmission, and second, there is the unpredictability of training and racing Thoroughbreds.

The genetic transmission of athleticism and excellence is difficult to evaluate, but study of the results of stallion prospects' offspring on the racetrack shows us that fewer than half of the annual stallion prospects transmit their own genotype and phenotype effectively enough to become successful stallions; perhaps 15 to 20 percent do this well enough to be consistently good stallions.

Breeders, owners, buyers, sales companies, and advisers to all attempt to do this ahead of the curve, and inevitably, they are more wrong than right because most stallion prospects are going to fail.

The looming sense of failure is inevitable because most entities in racing score success by stakes victories and black type earned. With only about 3 percent of horses winning stakes annually, that means 97 percent do not. That's a statistical hump that is hard to get around, and the sire who does so with some finesse, in the manner of Mr. Prospector, Storm Cat, or Into Mischief, is a paragon of many virtues.

Faults be damned.

Any competent horseman could have looked at the progeny of the sires above and said he didn't like this, that, or the other. But those same sires didn't just tickle the brass ring, didn't just catch the ring. No, they hit that sucker so hard, they turned it into a dinner plate.

That's what a breed-changing sire can do and does. But this column is about the great majority of stallions and stallion prospects: those who don't get the ball out of the park, or at least not immediately.

The result of the intense competition among stallions, owners, farms, and trainers is that most stallions are surplus to needs after only a few years at stud. As a result, they are frequently sold on to racing jurisdictions that have room for a stallion with potential to work in their racing and breeding community.

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Among the most consistent buyers of American stallions over the past years are breeding organizations like the Korean Racing Authority, the Japan Bloodstock Breeders Association, and the Jockey Club of Turkey.

In the last weekend's racing, the results were littered with the names and the domestic descendants of stallions who have gone to stud in Kentucky, then been sold to stand elsewhere.

For instance, the Pasco Stakes at Tampa Bay went to Markhamian (by Social Inclusion), and his broodmare sire, Colonel John (Tiznow), is in South Korea. Leggs Galore won the Sunshine Millions Filly & Mare Turf Sprint, and her sire Bayern (Offlee Wild) is now at stud in South Korea after purchase last summer by Sangil Choi. Gatsby won the Sunshine Sprint at Gulfstream Park; his sire Brethren (Distorted Humor) is still evading 'gators in Florida, but his broodmare sire, Aldebaran (Mr. Prospector), was sold to stand in Japan, beginning with the 2009 breeding season. And at Santa Anita, Aligato (Kitten's Joy) won the Unusual Heat Turf Classic. The sire still enjoys considerable popularity in Kentucky, but the broodmare sire, Rock Hard Ten (Kris S.), was sold to the KRA in November 2012, and stood at their Jeju stallion station until his death on Nov. 17 last year.

Short of a change in the economics of stallion acquisition and management, this is the pattern of the present and the future.

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Bloodlines Presented By Caracaro: Under The Stars Further Solidifies A Proven Cross

Some things are too obvious to require heavy interpretation. The winner of the Grade 2 Santa Ynez Stakes, Under the Stars, illustrates one of these. Three of the four stakes horses out of the Storm Cat mare Untouched Talent are by Belmont Stakes winner Empire Maker (by Unbridled), Empire Maker's best stallion son, Pioneerof the Nile, and his son, Triple Crown winner American Pharoah.

Untouched Talent's three stakes horses just mentioned are Grade 1 winner Bodemeister (Empire Maker), who won the Arkansas Derby, then finished second in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness; Under the Stars (Pioneerof the Nile), winner of the G2 Santa Ynez on Jan. 8; and Himiko, a $1-million weanling by American Pharoah, who ran third in the Iowa Distaff last year as a 4-year-old.

From the evidence of three quality black-type performers by sires from Mr. Prospector's Fappiano line out of 11 foals, Untouched Talent matches well with the aptitude and physical quality of this line, perhaps with Mr. Prospector sires overall. The mare's fourth stakes horse is Fascinating, a daughter of Mr. Prospector's very successful son Smart Strike, who ran second in the G1 Del Mar Debutante and third in the G1 Chandelier.

In addition to the quality that Untouched Talent is sharing with her offspring, the mare had plenty of talent herself. She won two of her four starts, including the G3 Sorrento Stakes at Del Mar, where she also placed second in the G1 Del Mar Debutante. Shipped across the country to Keeneland, Untouched Talent was second in the Alcibiades.

Untouched Talent is one of two stakes winners and several racers of ability from the A.P. Indy mare Parade Queen, winner of a pair of stakes at the Grade 3 level. She produced Grade 3 winner Untouched Talent; listed stakes winner King Gulch (Gulch); Top Billing (Curlin), third in the G2 Fountain of Youth; Kydd Gloves (Dubai Millennium), winner in two of three starts and dam of Grade 1 winner She's a Julie (Elusive Quality); and Obay (Kingmambo), who was a champion in Saudi Arabia.

Parade Queen was the only stakes winner from her dam, Spanish Parade, a stakes winner by English Derby winner Roberto. But Spanish Parade also foaled a full sister to Parade Queen, the A.P. Indy mare Post Parade, who produced four stakes winners, two here in the States and another pair in Japan.

From this material alone, this is clearly a very solid pedigree: wall to wall with quality sires, producers, and performers.

Generation after generation of the tabulated pedigree indicates that the genetic ancestry of excellence is proving out on the racecourse in athleticism and competitive ability. Ricked up like this in a five-cross or six-cross pedigree, we can see the volume of production and performance that results in true depth of family for a Thoroughbred.

Depth of family is the concept that superior racers are developed through repeated layerings of high-class sires onto dam lines of similar athleticism. The overarching principle is that if each generation has shown its ability to race effectively or produce stock that does, a breeder doesn't have to fill holes or compensate for weaknesses.

Under the Stars, for example, is by a sire of proven classic importance, and the succeeding sires include winners of the Belmont Stakes and English Derby, the American and the English Triple Crowns.

English Triple Crown winner Nijinsky is the sire of the Nijit, fourth dam of Under the Stars. On the racetrack, Nijit placed second in a couple of minor stakes and was third in the G2 Cotillion. Her full brother Beaudelaire did somewhat better, winning four of seven starts, including the G2 Prix Maurice de Gheest.

They are out of a mare named Bitty Girl, who showed herself one of the best juvenile fillies of 1973 in England, when she won the Queen Mary, Lowther, and Molecomb Stakes. Her successes helped to make her sire Habitat (Sir Gaylord) the leading freshman sire of 1973 in England, as well as the leading sire of juveniles overall. Habitat's son Habat was the highweighted colt of the crop; Bitty Girl was co-highweight among the fillies.

Sent to America and retired to stud, Bitty Girl was covered by Nijinsky and set this sequence of excellence in motion.

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Bloodlines Presented By Caracaro: Alittleloveandluck To Kick Start Arrogate’s First Crop

Getting the New Year off to the right start, Alittleloveandluck (by Arrogate) became her sire's first stakes winner with a powerful finish in the Ginger Brew Stakes at Gulfstream on Jan. 1.

The racers by the champion 3-year-old of 2016 have generally been horses of good size, and like their sire, they have the look of athletes who probably would appreciate some time as they come along. When Khalid Abdullah's Juddmonte Farms bought Arrogate as a yearling in the 2014 Keeneland September sale for $540,000, there were hopes of his being a bit more forward.

Juddmonte's Garrett O'Rourke said, “When we bought him, he wasn't what I thought of as a leggy Unbridled's Song, but by August of the next year, he'd grown into a leggy animal, and then we had to let him have time to balance out and strengthen into that frame.

“When horses are growing, they can look awkward. They will grow out of proportion in one way or another, and it's common sense that they should be better athletes if you let them get it together on their schedule. When they do get balanced, they run up to their abilities.

“This fellow was worth the wait.”

Indeed, Arrogate was worth everything. After finishing third on debut on April 17 of his 3-year-old season, Arrogate buried his competition in a maiden special and a pair of allowances with the manner of a horse who had places to go.

So trainer Bob Baffert sent him to Saratoga, and the Grade 1 Travers was his stakes debut. The galloping gray won by 13 1/2 lengths and set a new track record of 1:59.36. With exhilarating victories in the Travers and Breeders' Cup Classic in 2016, then the Pegasus Cup and Dubai Cup in 2017, Arrogate proved himself the best horse in training during that period.

His final three starts were losses against competition he'd been handling previously and left a sense of perplexity for those assessing form, but at his best, Arrogate was a marvelous racer and breeders sent him a book of mares that indicated their assessment of the horse was as high as handicappers.

Retired to Juddmonte for the 2018 season, Arrogate covered good-sized books of mares in his first three seasons at stud. The results from the juvenile racing have been slow coming, including from Juddmonte's own stock, all of whom were retained in the American training program.

“We had a lot that went through the typical stages,” O'Rourke said. “They were showing talent, got runs in, then had a tibia soreness, bone bruising, or sore shins. We brought those home, either for turnout or light activity to keep them ticking over, and a lot of them have gone back to training. We're hoping a few nice, talented ones are in the group.”

Knowing when to go on and when to ease up is a key exercise of horsemanship, especially for breeders racing their own stock. Often enough all owners get a horse who develops the muscle to go on but possibly not the physical sturdiness or maybe the bone hardness or even the mental readiness to take on the challenges of racing. Except with time.

From her race results, Alittleloveandluck wasn't one who needed time off, beginning her racing at Saratoga in August and continuing monthly thereafter until she scored a maiden special victory at Gulfstream on Nov. 11. The Ginger Brew was her next start.

Out of Canadian champion turf mare Points of Grace (Point Given), Alittleloveandluck is a half-sister to 2016 Canadian champion juvenile filly Victory to Victory (Exchange Rate).

This filly was one of a baker's dozen juveniles by Arrogate who won their maidens last year, and their cumulative results were good enough to push the sire to 13th on the freshman sire list. From the first crop of 100, 35 have started, for earnings of $876,759 from a first's season's racing that produced no black-type horses.

Until the first day of 2022.

Progress from the stallion's colts and fillies is a point of considerable interest to racing fans, as well as to breeders and buyers, because there won't be an endless supply of Arrogates.

In late May of 2020, the 7-year-old was found lying in his stall at Juddmonte, unable to rise. Some of the most celebrated veterinarians from Hagyard and Rood & Riddle equine clinics were brought in to assess and evaluate the situation. But there was nothing to be done.

Arrogate was euthanized on June 2.

“The autopsy showed that he had a core lesion on his spinal cord,” O'Rourke said. “When evaluating the situation, the best vets available could not determine an external cause for the injury.

“Arrogate was such a high-energy horse that could not keep his legs on the ground. He loved to buck and run in his paddock; it was his playtime. The only thing that I've been able to think is that maybe he just played around so hard that his own exuberance caused the problem.”

A reason wouldn't make the result any better.

“It was a very hard pill to swallow,” O'Rourke said, “but we hope that he will leave a legacy.”

That hope for the great gray casts a hint of rose on the morning clouds, adds hope to the normalcy of farm life, and brightens the dream that one of those yearlings or young race prospects might be the one.

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