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Bloodlines Presented By Indiana Thoroughbred Alliance: Connect Enters The Lead Pack In Freshman Sire Race

Victory in the Grade 1 Breeders' Futurity at Keeneland made Rattle N Roll the first Grade 1 winner for his sire Connect (by Curlin), who ranks now as the second-leading freshman sire behind crop leader Gun Runner (Candy Ride).

Connect is the third freshman sire from this group to have a G1 winner, so far, and the Lane's End stallion stood for $15,000 live foal in 2021. Three Chimneys Farm stallion Gun Runner has a pair of G1 winners, Echo Zulu (Spinaway and Frizette) and Gunite (Hopeful), and Caravaggio (Scat Daddy) has Tenebrism, winner of the Cheveley Park at Newmarket on Sept. 25.

The latter ranks fourth on the freshman list, with progeny earnings of about $30,000 less than Practical Joke (Into Mischief) and with about $100,000 more than juvenile champion Classic Empire (Pioneerof the Nile). The latter trio all stand at Ashford Stud, and the quintet are at least a quarter-million ahead of the nearest pursuer in the 2021 freshman sire race.

If this group appears rather above average, with three already siring a G1 winner, the sale and resale markets have likewise placed them highly those young sires likely to succeed.

In 2020, the first yearlings by Connect brought an average price of $51,266 for 59 sold, and in 2021, his first juveniles in training brought an average price of $112,118, with 34 sold.

Rattle N Roll is Connect's second stakes winner, following G3 Pocahontas Stakes winner Hidden Connection, and the young stallion has a pair of stakes-placed runners, as well.

Bred in Kentucky by St. Simon Place, Rattle N Roll is out of the Johannesburg mare Jazz Tune. He is the dam's third foal and first winner. The mare's first foal, a Mineshaft filly named Jazz Festival, brought $160,000 at the Keeneland September yearling sale in 2018; so she looked the part of a good prospect. She is unraced, however, and the next foal, a filly by Outwork, is a nonwinner in four starts.

Jazz Tune has a yearling colt by Belmont Stakes winner Tapwrit (Tapit) who brought $55,000 at the Keeneland September sale last month.

Rattle N Roll brought the same price as a weanling at the 2019 Keeneland November sale and then resold for $210,000 at the September sale last year. The chestnut colt brought the second-highest price for a yearling by his sire last year.

The buyer was trainer Kenny McPeek, agent for Lucky Seven Stable, who now has a live prospect both for the Breeders' Cup and for the classics next year.

The trainer said, “We're still walking him. I like to give them three days of walking after a race, and he's going back to Churchill Downs on Wednesday. I'm still wondering whether it might not be best for this colt to point for something like the Kentucky Jockey Club to finish this year and then the classics next year. I believe this colt really wants 10 furlongs. He's a big, leggy colt who stands over a lot of ground, and there's a lot of stamina back in his pedigree, with Pleasant Tap as the sire of the second dam and Dance Review (Northern Dancer) as the third dam.” The latter produced three stakes winners, including G1 winners Another Review (Buckaroo) and No Review (Nodouble).

Rattle N Roll is the first G1 winner for this branch of Dance Review's family since the pair above, but another mare out of Dance Review, the winning Pleasant Colony mare Promenade Colony, is the dam of three-time G1 winner Cavorting (Bernardini), who's the dam of 2021 G1 winner Clairiere.

With Rattle N Roll's victory in the Breeders' Futurity, Connect becomes the second son of Curlin to sire a G1 winner; the stallion's first-crop classic winner, Belmont Stakes winner Palace Malice, had a first-crop G1 winner in Structor, victor in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf.

It is one of the fascinations of breeding that both sons have sired a G1 winner at two, when Curlin was unraced and which is not the prime strength of the stallion as a sire. Instead, he is one of America's eminent classic sires, already counting a Belmont winner and a Preakness winner (Exaggerator) among his progeny. In addition to those two, Curlin's champion juvenile, Good Magic, was second in the Kentucky Derby, and the sire's other G1 stars include older champion Vino Rosso (BC Classic), Stellar Wind (Apple Blossom, Beholder Mile, Santa Anita Oaks, etc.), Keen Ice (Travers), Curalina (Acorn), Global Campaign (Woodward), Off the Tracks (Mother Goose), and five G1 winners this season: star 3-year-old filly Malathaat (Kentucky Oaks, Alabama); Known Agenda (Florida Derby), Clairiere (Cotillion), Idol (Santa Anita Handicap), and Grace Adler (Del Mar Debutante).

As a sire who produces a consistent stream of G1 performers, Curlin also sires colts and fillies of equal high merit, as well as juveniles, 3-year-olds, and older horses. He is a stallion who had it all on the racetrack: speed, stamina, consistency, and toughness, and he is proving to reproduce those attributes in his offspring under a wide variety of conditions and trainers.

Curlin was also a yearling that McPeek picked out at the September sale, when the brawny chestnut was still a work in progress and was faulted by some. The son of Smart Strike, however, proved a sterling performer who won 11 of 16 races over two seasons, including the Preakness, BC Classic, Jockey Club Gold Cup twice, Woodward, and Dubai World Cup, all under the training of Steve Asmussen.

How fitting would it be, then, if McPeek found himself back at the Kentucky Derby with a son of Curlin?

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Bloodlines: What A Fast Start Means, And Doesn’t Mean, For A Young Horse

In winning the premier events for 2-year-old colts on each coast in the U.S. over the weekend, Corniche (by Quality Road) and Jack Christopher (Munnings) made themselves more likely candidates for further glory in the championship event at the Breeders' Cup.

In the American Pharoah at Santa Anita, Corniche brought his unbeaten record to two, and in the Champagne at Belmont Park, Jack Christopher did the same.

Each was making his stakes debut after an impressive first-out victory. In the case of Corniche, he had won his first start at Del Mar on Sept. 4 by 4 1/4 lengths, racing 5 1/2 furlongs in 1:03.01. Jack Christopher had won at first asking at Saratoga on Aug. 28 by 8 3/4 lengths, racing 6 furlongs in 1:09.85.

That each was an obviously talented young athlete who had been training well in the morning was further proven by each being the favorite in his first start.

Likewise, each has taken the step up in distance, and Corniche won the mile and a sixteenth American Pharoah and Jack Christopher the mile Champagne. Of the two other Grade 1-winning juvenile colts, Gunite (Gun Runner), the winner of the Hopeful, was fourth in the Champagne, and Pinehurst (Twirling Candy), the winner of the Del Mar Futurity, is training up to the Breeders' Cup Juvenile.

Of those four, and a handful of others, the winner of the Breeders' Cup Juvenile would almost certainly be elected divisional championship. And just so, a statistical and inherently variable proposition is made to appear linear and sequential.

The development of horses is not random. A nickel claimer from Finger Lakes doesn't show up and win the Champagne, for instance. But neither is it lacking in variability or chance. From the 1,500 most progressive premium yearling colts a year ago, we are not actually down to “just four.”

This quartet, right now, appear to be the most ready and capable of upper echelon of colts. Some of their cadre aren't yet fully fit, or fully hardened, or mentally seasoned – for example – to tackle Grade 1 company, yet.

Some of those will get to the Grade 1 ranks. For some, it will be later this year; others will rise to the higher level at three, and a few will be persevered with and become Grade 1 performers at four and five. Much of it, so much of it, depends on what their trainers and owners think of them and how the colts respond to those perceptions.

And, even among the colts who are knocking the barn down and burning up the track right now, the difference between days or weeks, the subtleties of trips and works or feet and digestion, contribute to the final results on the racetrack at the premium level, in particular.

Looking back at the last 10 winners of the American Pharoah, for example, two won the Breeders' Cup Juvenile. Game Winner (2018) and Nyquist (2015) were the two, and eight did not; that did not mean they weren't exceptionally good horses, maybe even the best of horses.

The colt for whom the race is named, for instance, won the race when it was called the FrontRunner in 2014 but was unable to race in the Juvenile due to a foot problem. American Pharoah came back the next year to become a legend. In his stead at the 2014 Breeders' Cup at Santa Anita, FrontRunner third Texas Red (Afleet Alex) had a tremendous day and won the event.

Looking at the Champagne with the same point of view, only one winner in the last decade, Shanghai Bobby (Harlan's Holiday) in 2012, went on to win the Juvenile; so winning one of the great preps is not a simple, straight-line, sequential process to arriving at a winner of the Breeders' Cup Juvenile and probable divisional champion.

At this level, each race is effectively a coin toss, using a handful of coins, and only the very best of the very best can overcome the odds time after time to win and win again and again. That is why we run races; to test the participants and effectively gauge their comparative abilities.

And, as we race horses fewer and fewer times, we have a less-accurate gauge of their abilities, as well as their toughness, durability, versatility, and enthusiasm for sport. This situation is contrary to the best interests of the sport, the fans, the bettors, the racetracks, the breeders, the owners, and the breed itself.

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Bloodlines: A Toast To The Elder ‘Stakesmen’ Of Horse Racing

Fans of the sport and others involved in racing have to listen to a lot of foolishness from those with a dim view of the breed. Many of us can hear the darling, nasal whine of the PETA-phile: “Thoroughbreds are too fragile; they're born to break down.”

Phooey.

Clearly, some horses are hustled off for breeding too early, frequently sound and healthy to race, but those are economic decisions; I'm not here to argue with that. Might as well fuss about the rain coming down.

The results of racing over the weekend, however, put a sizable dent in the argument for anyone suggesting that the breed isn't sound and capable of racing at a high level well past the early years we tend to feature in the headlines.

By my count, seven 5-year-olds won stakes on the weekend, along with multiple stakes winners aged six or seven. Among the 5-year-olds were the Afleet Alex horse Tiergan (Ashley T. Cole Stakes), the Stay Thirsty horse Mind Control (Parx Dirt Mile), the Curlin mare Golden Curl (Ricks Memorial), and the Galileo horse Nayef Road, winner of the Rose Bowl Stakes at Newmarket in England.

These are solid performers, some with quite good pedigrees, and yet they are mere colts and fillies in comparison to the genuine elder stakesmen (sic) of the racing community.

Consider, for example, that Pink Lloyd won again, this for the 27th time. He's a chestnut beast by Canada's leading sire, Old Forester (by Forestry), and is also a Horse of the Year in that lovely racing jurisdiction north of the 49th Parallel.

Unraced at two and three, Pink Lloyd won three of five at age four, was third in the Grade 2 Kennedy Road. The next year at five, Pink Lloyd became Canada's Horse of the Year. That was the same year that the 5-year-olds mentioned above were yearlings. Every year since, Pink Lloyd has won a Sovereign Award as champion in at least one division in his homeland.

From 36 starts to date, the gelding has won 27, with three seconds and two thirds, for lifetime earnings to date of $1,737,917.

A regular homebody who loves his Woodbine racecourse, Pink Lloyd has never raced anywhere else, and his triumph on Saturday in the G3 Bold Venture Stakes was the 9-year-old's 24th black-type success. He practically fills a catalog page by himself.

Others among the elder stakesmen include the world traveler Benbatl, a homebred in England for Darley who races under the banner of Godolphin. Benbatl has raced in five countries (England, Germany, UAE, Australia, and Saudi Arabia).

Unraced at two, Benbatl progressed so rapidly at three that he was entered in the Derby as the winner of a maiden, although placed second in the G2 Dante Stakes in his prep for the main event, and finished a creditable fifth. The son of Dubawi won his first G1 in the Dubai Turf as a 4-year-old, then followed with another G1 in Germany and the G1 Caulfield Stakes in Australia in the span of slightly more than six months.

At times in his career, then now-7-year-old Benbatl has been ranked the highweight on year-end handicaps in England, Germany, and the UAE. The winner of 11 races so far, Benbatl has earned more than $7.8 million.

Although Pink Lloyd and Benbatl are horses of championship level who have continued to race past the typical age for modern Thoroughbreds, the majority of older races are not so exalted. They make no headlines, earn no awards, but show the spirit of their forefathers and the quality of their foremothers.

Some campaign to quite an age, and the eldest stakesman of the weekend was the Talent Search sprinter Hollywood Talent, who won the Parx Turf Monster Stakes at five furlongs in :59.51.

Age 10, Hollywood Talent won his first graded stakes in the G3 Turf Monster, and that made an even dozen victories for the gelding, who has 11 seconds and seven thirds for total earnings of $635,071.

A quick horse from the start, Hollywood Talent won his debut at Keeneland in April of his juvenile season, then was second in the G3 Bashford Manor Stakes and third in the G2 Saratoga Special. In between those races and the Turf Monster, Hollywood Talent has plied his trade in minor stakes and allowance, occasionally dropping into claiming races and then starter allowances.

Brave and fast, Hollywood Talent is an example of the Thoroughbred who is an athlete to the core, and on his day of days, he rose to the occasion and stood in the winner's circle as a graded stakes winner and an ambassador for the breed.

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Bloodlines: Looking Back On A Classic Trio From Keeneland September A Decade Later

With the end of the Keeneland September yearling sale clearly in view for Friday, readers and buyers can pause to reflect on sales past and the classic season from 10 years ago when all three Triple Crown winners walked the path of the Keeneland pagoda through the September sale of 2009.

Yes, each of the 2011 Triple Crown races – the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes – went to a different September sale yearling, and all of them were chestnuts too.

The sales season of 2009, however, was not the bustling and booming market we have seen at Keeneland, and elsewhere, this year. Instead, 2009 was the first yearling sale season fully impacted by the global economic crisis and Great Recession that began in 2008.

As a direct result, prices for some of the better yearlings were lower than expected, but two of our subject horses – Animal Kingdom and Ruler On Ice – brought $100,000 when put through the Keeneland auction. And the third, Shackleford, brought the highest hammer price of the trio at $275,000 but was bought back by breeders Mike Lauffer and Bill Cubbedge.

A big, rangy chestnut with a “turf” pedigree, Animal Kingdom (by 2005 turf champion Leroidesanimaux) was bred by a Team Valor partnership and was consigned by Denali Stud. The buyer was another Barry Irwin partnership under the banner of Team Valor International. The colt's results were surely the best for any Team Valor partnership because Animal Kingdom was a truly world-class racer at 10 furlongs, and he won the Kentucky Derby at three and the Dubai World Cup at five.

In contrast to those who previously had perceived the colt as a turf horse, the Derby is raced on dirt, and the World Cup was on the synthetic track at Meydan in 2013.

In between those two victories, Animal Kingdom had suffered a cracked hind cannon in the Belmont Stakes, was laid off for the rest of his 3-year-old season, and had a recurrence of a bone crack after his 4-year-old season debut. Then, Animal Kingdom showed what a truly versatile animal can do.

After more than six months away from racing, the big chestnut returned to Grade 1 competition in the 2012 Breeders' Cup Mile on turf at Santa Anita. Sent off a little-considered 10-1, Animal Kingdom rallied like a champion and finished second to turf champion Wise Dan.

Following the World Cup victory in 2013, Animal Kingdom was retired at the midpoint of his 5-year-old season to enter stud in Australia, having earned $8.3 million. He retired to stud at Arrowfield in Australia and shuttled to Darley at Jonabell in Kentucky. In October 2019, Animal Kingdom was sold to the Japan Bloodstock Breeders' Association and now stands in Japan.

At the same 2012 Breeders' Cup, Shackleford (Forestry) raced in the G1 Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile, where he finished seventh. The previous year, Shackleford had been second in the Dirt Mile, and earlier in 2012, the prancing chestnut had won the Metropolitan Handicap at Belmont Park.

The flashy grandson of Storm Cat had personality plus, making him a favorite with fans, and he had denied Animal Kingdom's closing rush in the 2011 Preakness to prevail by a half-length. Amazingly enough, the Preakness was the first stakes victory for Shackleford, although he had been second in the G1 Florida Derby earlier in the year.

After the Preakness, Shackleford finished second in the G1 Haskell, likewise the BC Dirt Mile, then won the Metropolitan at four and ended his career with victory in the G1 Clark Handicap at Churchill Downs in 2012.

A winner of $3 million, Shackelford retired to stud in Kentucky at Darby Dan Farm in 2013 and, in 2020, was sold to the Korean Racing Authority to stand at stud in South Korea.

Just as Shackleford had done in the Preakness, Ruler On Ice (by the Fusaichi Pegasus stallion Roman Ruler) won his first stakes in the classic Belmont Stakes. Amazingly enough, it proved the only stakes the gelding ever won.

Bred in Kentucky like the two other winners of the 2011 Triple Crown races, Ruler On Ice was bred by Liberation Farm and Brandywine Farm, then sold at the September sale to George and Lori Hall.

Stakes-placed coming into the Belmont against the winners of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, Ruler On Ice was a genuine longshot to win the Belmont, and only two of the 12 racers were at odds longer than his 24.75 to 1. One of those, Isn't He Perfect, broke to the inside sharply at the start, pushing Mucho Macho Man into race favorite Animal Kingdom, who came out of the race with an injury.

Ruler On Ice tracked the pacesetting Shackleford from the start, and when the Preakness winner tired after 10 furlongs, the son of Roman Ruler took control and held off Stay Thirsty to win by three-quarters of a length.

Subsequently, Ruler On Ice was third in the G1 Haskell, fourth in the Travers, second in the Pennsylvania Derby, and third in the Breeders' Cup Classic. Those performances confirmed the racer's quality, and he raced to the midpoint of his 5-year-old season. Retired, he now lives on the farm of his owners near Versailles, Ky.

As with the classics a decade ago, when we look back on the September sale of 2021, someone may very well have taken home a classic winner.

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