Bloodstock | Horse Racing Free Tips

Vancouver Notches First North American-Sired Winner

Coolmore's dual-hemisphere sire Vancouver was represented by his first winner at stud on Tuesday when Nicky Two Shoes won a maiden special weight at Thistledown, Thoroughbred Daily News reports.

Nicky Two Shoes stalked the leaders from the outside in the five-furlong race, then was taken inside by jockey Luan Machado, where they eventually gained the advantage and won by a half-length. They stopped the clock in 1:00.46 over a muddy sealed track for trainer William Cowans and as a Kentucky homebred for Southern Comfort Farm.

The bay colt is out of the placed Invasor mare Wendy Wow, who was purchased by Southern Comfort Farm for $14,000 in-foal to Summer Front at the 2017 Keeneland January Horses of All Ages Sale.

Vancouver, an 8-year-old son of Medaglia d'Oro stood the 2017 Northern Hemisphere breeding season at Coolmore's Ashford Stud in Versailles, Ky. His full-time base is at Coolmore's farm in his native Australia.

Vancouver won four of five starts during his on-track career, and earned Australia's champion 2-year-old male honors with a campaign that included victories in the G1 Golden Slipper Stakes, the G2 Todman Stakes, and the G3 Canonbury Stakes.

Bred in Australia by Fairway Thoroughbreds, Vancouver is out of the stakes-placed Danehill mare Skates, whose runners also include Australian Group 1 winner Juste Momente. His second dam is the multiple Australian champion Skating.

Well-Bred Trapezium Sells For $327,000 to Top Keeneland’s Inaugural Online Select Horses of Racing Age Sale

Trapezium, a half-sister to multiple graded stakes winner Honorable Duty, sold for $327,000 to St. Elias Stables to top Keeneland's inaugural June Select Horses of Racing Age Sale, the first stand-alone online auction held Tuesday via the new Keeneland Digital Sales Ring platform.

Consigned by Juddmonte Farms, Trapezium is a 3-year-old filly by Hard Spun out of the A.P. Indy mare Mesmeric. Her second dam, Grade 1 winner Toussaud, is the dam of Belmont Stakes winner and sire Empire Maker and Group 1 winner and sire Chester House. Trapezium finished second in her last start, a maiden special weight race at Gulfstream Park on Feb. 2. She was cataloged as a racing or broodmare prospect.

“Trapezium comes from one of (Juddmonte's) elite families,” Juddmonte Farms general manager Garrett O'Rourke said. “I wasn't sure in this format buyers would recognize her value. I was wrong. Our phone began ringing very early on; people were paying attention, doing their homework and she sold accordingly.

“The online sale format was well received and embraced by buyers,” O'Rourke added. “There were some growing pains with registering to bid, etc., but buyers adapted quickly. It was productive and went very smoothly – to be able to pull together buyers and players and turn the sale around in such a short time. We needed to move some horses and it was a big help to us.”

John P. Sparkman, pedigree consultant for St. Elias Stables, said plans call for Trapezium to train in New York with Todd Pletcher.

“She jumped out at us because of her pedigree,” Sparkman said. “Most of the Juddmonte horses are grass-oriented. This family is mostly dirt-oriented, with Empire Maker and Honest Lady, and that is primarily what we are looking for. Tom Evans of Trackside Farm was able to go by and look at her for us and he liked her. So that sealed the deal.”

Today's one-day sale grossed $829,500 for 12 horses, for an average of $69,125 and a median of $32,750. Summary results of the sale are available by clicking here.

“The successful launch of the Digital Sales Ring marks a milestone in Keeneland's storied auction history because it enables us to deliver another high-quality sales option to our clients,” Keeneland vice president of racing and sales Bob Elliston said. “This sale met the needs of the market by providing buyers, as tracks reopen around the country, the opportunity to purchase proven, ready-made racehorses from top-flight consignors.”

Bringing the day's second-highest price was Eloquent Speaker, a 3-year-old filly by Flatter out of the Broken Vow mare Spoken Not Broken, sold for $200,000 to Anthony Mitola. Offered as a racing prospect, the filly won her maiden at Belmont on June 12. She was consigned by Niall Brennan Stables, agent.

Juddmonte Farms also consigned a pair of 3-year-olds by Into Mischief that brought bids of $65,000 each. Steven W. Young, agent, purchased Oak Room, a colt out of French stakes winner Privet Hedge, by First Defence. Valletta, a filly out of the winning Tapit mare West Riding, was bought by Big Dom Racing Stable.

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Bloodlines: Tiz The Law Puts Sire Constitution At The Head Of His Class

Tiz the Law's victory in the Grade 1 Belmont Stakes on June 20 made him the first grandson of multiple leading sire Tapit to win a classic, and the colt's success cemented his sire, Constitution, in a special place as the sire of the first classic winner from the freshman stallion crop of 2019.

Those horses include Horse of the Year American Pharoah (by Pioneerof the Nile), who was the leading freshman sire of 2019 over Constitution, with the Belmont Stakes winner Palace Malice (Curlin) and the speedy Liam's Map (Unbridled's Song) and Tapiture (Tapit) filling the first five spots.

In addition to getting multiple graded stakes winners last year, Constitution was represented by Grade 1 winner Tiz the Law, who won the Champagne Stakes at Belmont Park, and the sire's stock has shown considerable improvement through the early months of 2020, even with the limited racing available to them.

Constitution has three stakes winners this season and six stakes-placed, and the overall success of his racers has put him in first place among the second-crop sires of 2020 with earnings of $2.4 million, ahead of Honor Code (A.P. Indy) and American Pharoah in virtually the same slot with progeny earnings of $1.269 million and $1.262 million. Belmont Stakes winner Tonalist sits fourth with $1.2 million and fifth-place Khozan (Distorted Humor) fifth at slightly less than $1.2 million.

Tiz the Law leads all racers by Constitution with $1,133,300 in earnings this season.

The blaze-faced bay colt was bred in New York by Twin Creeks Farm and sold for $110,000 at the 2018 Fasig-Tipton sale of select New York-bred yearlings at Saratoga. Jack Knowlton of Sackatoga Stable was the buyer.

Six years earlier, Twin Creeks had bought the Kentucky-bred Constitution from WinStar Farm for $400,000 at the 2012 Saratoga select yearling sale conducted by Fasig-Tipton. WinStar retained a portion of the colt, who won the G1 Florida Derby and Donn Handicap, then retired to stand at stud on WinStar Farm outside Versailles, Ky.

“Constitution was a star yearling; in every way, he was so complete a package as potential racehorse that we wanted him badly enough to pay the price,” said Twin Creeks' Randy Gullatt. “At Saratoga, he had the presence and the pedigree to be a horse that you stretched for. He was just wonderful and then showed it on the racetrack.”

As a buyer Gullatt said, “I'm attracted to the well-muscled, good-sized, lengthy yearlings who are not overly heavy and who aren't soft in the pastern. I'm essentially looking for two-turn speed horses. American racing is geared around the 3-year-old prep season, and if you have a horse who's good at the end of his 2-year-old season, then he's likely to be able to progress and improve at three to challenge for the classics through the early-season preps.”

That's what Constitution did, and although he missed the classics himself, the scopy bay son of classic sire Tapit has marked out some Triple Crown territory for himself with Tiz the Law.

In comparing the sire and the son, Gullatt said, “Constitution was a very different horse early on from Tiz the Law. Constitution was a big, grand-looking yearling. In contrast, Tiz the Law was a little smaller. He was an average-sized yearling and stands 15.3 3/4 [hands], I was told over the weekend. He was a really smart young horse who never had a bad day, was very willing to learn, very easy to work with, possessed a great mind and attitude.

“However, Tiz the Law wasn't the typical star yearling that buyers spend a ton of money on at the sale. That's what a lot of the Constitutions were like at the sales; as a result, they sold well but not outside of the norm of expectations.”

The Belmont Stakes winner himself sold for $110,000, which ranked him 15th among the 82 sales yearlings by Constitution, and his price compared quite favorably to the sire's yearling average of $68,152 in 2018.

Those numbers will be adjusting noticeably in 2020.

From a first-season stud fee of $25,000 live foal, Constitution stood for $40,000 for the 2020 season, and there's no question that demand for the stallion will rise following his current-year successes.

When Twin Creeks partnered with WinStar to race Constitution, then send the horse to stud, the Twin Creeks organization also acquired mares to help support their interest in the horse. Gullatt said that Twin Creeks retains nine shares in Constitution and that the operation bought the Belmont Stakes winner's dam, Tizfiz (Tiznow) because “she was value and was an outcross to all our stallions,” Gullatt noted. “Physically, she was a stocky mare about 15.3, which is where Tiz the Law got his size, I'd guess. She looked like a Tiznow sprinter but was a Grade 2 winner who could go long. Just the sweetest, classiest mare to be around.”

Purchased in 2014 for $125,000 at the Keeneland November sale in foal to Horse of the Year Mineshaft (A.P. Indy), Tizfiz produced the Belmont winner as her second foal (fifth overall) for Twin Creeks. Since then, she has a 2-year-old filly named Angel Oak and a yearling colt by the Twin Creeks sire Mission Impazible (Unbridled's Song). Tizfiz is in foal to Constitution for 2021.

On the racetrack, Tizfiz won the G2 San Gorgonio Handicap and three other stakes, and she placed third in the G2 Buena Vista Handicap. The 16-year-old mare is a full sister to Fury Kapcori, winner of the G3 Precisionist Stakes and second in the G1 Hollywood Futurity. Their dam is by Kentucky Derby winner Go for Gin (Pleasant Tap) and is out of a stakes-placed half-sister to Horse of the Year Favorite Trick (Phone Trick).

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Study: Did Thoroughbreds Really Descend From Arabians?

One of the hard and fast rules of the Thoroughbred breed is that a registered horse must have descended from one of three foundation sires: The Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Arabian, or the Byerley Turk. A study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests those stallions might not have been Arabians at all.

The study, led by Ben Shykind of Prevail Therapeutics and Elissa J. Cosgrove and Raheleh Sadeghi of Cornell University examined the genetic makeup of 378 Arabian horses from 12 different countries to see how Arabians related to other horse breeds and found “no significant genomic contribution of the Arabian breed to the Thoroughbred racehorse, including Y chromosome ancestry.”

However, the study did find “strong evidence” of Thoroughbred blood in recent generations for Arabians used in flat racing.

The three foundation stallions that are the basis of the modern Thoroughbred were imported to England from the Middle East in the early decades of the 1700s. However, analysis of Y chromosome haplotypes (genes inherited from a single parent) for the Darley Arabian found his lineage actually traces back to the extinct Turkoman horse, an ancient breed from the Middle East and Central Asia under the same grouping of “Oriental Horse” breeds as Arabians, but a different offshoot.

The study does not doubt the existence of Thomas Darley's stallion purchased from the Middle East who went on to shape the modern Thoroughbred, but it does suggest that “its breed was likely of yet unknown genetic origin,” and that the horse's nomenclature carried on the idea that the horse was indeed an Arabian, thus his descendants sprung from that breed. Doubts about the true genetic origin of the Thoroughbred breed, it is noted in the study, were brought up two decades ago in Alexander Mackay-Smith's book “Speed and the Thoroughbred: The Complete History.”

In plotting the 378 horses included in the study by their use – including endurance racing, flat racing, and showing – the 34 Arabians used for flat racing shared the most genetic makeup with Thoroughbreds, while those bred for show purposes traced back to the Egyptian branch of the Arabian breed, and endurance runners tracked with the Polish wing. The researchers found genomic segments in racing Arabians tracing back to Thoroughbreds ranging from two percent up to 62 percent, with some near-full length chromosomes coming from Thoroughbreds.

Five of the 10 male Arabian racehorses traced directly back to the Byerley Turk though their Y chomosomes. Another three shared Whalebone, a significant Thoroughbred sire in the early 1800s, as a common ancestor.

“The presence of Thoroughbred-specific Y chromosome haplogroups among Arabian racehorses indicates that the large chromosomal blocks of Thoroughbred origin detected in flat racing Arabian horses are likely derived, at least in part, from crosses with Thoroughbred stallions that occurred after the emergence of the “Whalebone” haplotype in the 1800s,” the study reads.

Read more about the study, Genome Diversity and the Origin of the Arabian Horse, here.

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