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Taking Stock: Gun Runner Flexes Candy Ride/Storm Cat Nick

Two sons of Candy Ride (Arg)–Gun Runner and Twirling Candy–were represented by three 2-year-old Grade l winners over the weekend, and do you know one thing they had in common? Each was produced by a Storm Cat-line mare. This affinity for the Storm Cat line was also an important feature of Candy Ride's own success, and breeders appear to be copying that formula with his sons. It's not surprising; it's something that usually happens when a stallion is successful with the females of another sire line, and this type of repetition of a successful pattern is what's known as a nick–something that's been around as long as people have been breeding racehorses.

Three Chimneys's Gun Runner, whose first crop is two, was represented by two of the top-level winners: Gl Hopeful winner Gunite, from black-type winner Simple Surprise, a daughter of Cowboy Cal (by Giant's Causeway, a son of Storm Cat); and Gl Spinaway winner Echo Zulu, out of Gll winner Letgomyecho, by Menifee (by Harlan, a son of Storm Cat).

Lane's End's Twirling Candy, the best and most proven son of Candy Ride to date, is the sire of Gl Del Mar Futurity winner Pinehurst, who's from unplaced Giant Win, by Giant's Causeway. Note that Twirling Candy's current Gl Preakness winner Rombauer is bred similarly. Rombauer's dam is by Cowboy Cal, who as noted above is by Giant's Causeway.

Giant's Causeway is also the broodmare sire of Gun Runner, making Gun Runner a product of the same Candy Ride/Storm Cat nick as his Grade l winners. However, when Gun Runner is bred to mares with either Giant's Causeway or Storm Cat in their pedigrees, a duplication to one or the other takes place. Essentially, breeders who send Storm Cat-line mares to Gun Runner are copying the pattern that produced him and are consciously inbreeding as well to Storm Cat, one of the great modern stallions, or to his best racing and sire son Giant's Causeway, if a mare by the latter or one of his sons is used.

Gunite is inbred 3×3 to Giant's Causeway, and Echo Zulu is 4×4 to Storm Cat.

Gun Runner's wins included the Breeders' Cup Classic during his 2017 Horse of the Year campaign | Breeders' Cup/Eclipse Sportswire

For Gun Runner, getting two Grade l-winning 2-year-olds in the first crop is a big deal, and this achievement marks the Horse of the Year, who was best at four and five, as something special. It's natural to expect that his offspring should continue to get better with age, giving him a high ceiling to anticipate.

But there's more to Gun Runner already. He also has two Grade ll winners, and their dam's pedigrees also contain Storm Cat. Pappacap, winner of the Gll Best Pal, is from a Glll-placed daughter of Scat Daddy (Johannesburg/Hennessy/Storm Cat), making him 4×5 to Storm Cat; and Wicked Halo, who won the Gll Adirondack, is out of the Tapit mare Just Wicked, who also won the Adirondack. Just Wicked's dam, black-type winner Wicked Deed, is by Harlan's Holiday (Harlan), and Wicked Halo, therefore, is 4×5 to Storm Cat.

Three of these four–Gunite, Echo Zulu, and Wicked Halo–are raced by Winchell Thoroughbreds, which raced Gun Runner in partnership with Three Chimneys. Winchell also raced Tapit, and it's no surprise that Wicked Halo is a homebred from a mare by their standout Gainesway sire. Winchell bred Gunite and bought Echo Zulu, a half-sister to Gl winner Echo Town (Speightstown) and Glll winner J Boys Echo (Mineshaft), for $300,000 as a Keeneland September yearling.

Steve Asmussen trained Gun Runner, and he trains the Winchell trio.

Sire Clusters

First off, let me say that by speaking of the stallions in a pedigree, I'm not diminishing the importance of physical attributes nor the contributions of the female family, which is as important. The dam of Echo Zulu, for example, was already an accomplished black-type producer before her Gun Runner filly won at the highest level.

And Gun Runner, an attractive and refined 16.2-hand specimen, himself is a product of a great female line that stretches back for generations full of high-class runners. Closer up, Gun Runner is from Grade ll winner Quiet Giant–a half-sister to Horse of the Year Saint Liam and fellow Three Chimneys stallion and Grade l winner Funtastic.

However, stallions have exponentially more foals than mares, and sire patterns–not just nicks, or sire-line crosses, as they are also known, but also clusters of favorable sires–are more easily discernible in pedigrees.

Lane's End stalwart Candy Ride | Lane's End

Candy Ride is a Fappiano-line stallion from an unusual path (Ride the Rails/ Cryptoclearance/ Fappiano), and he's had success with other lines aside from Storm Cat, such as with A.P. Indy and Fappiano himself through other, more familiar branches.

Gun Runner, for example, is bred on the Candy Ride/Storm Cat sire-line cross, but his dam also has Fappiano in her pedigree, making Gun Runner 4×4 to Fappiano. Therefore, in his case, the cluster of Storm Cat and Fappiano form a favorable basis.

Current 3-year-old Candy Ride Grade l winner Rock Your World is from an Empire Maker (Unbridled/Fappiano) mare whose dam is by Giant's Causeway; therefore, he's also 4×4 to Fappiano with Storm Cat present in the pedigree though Giant's Causeway.

Grade l winner Mastery, a son of Candy Ride at Claiborne with first-crop 2-year-olds, is from a mare by Old Trieste (A.P. Indy) whose dam is by Storm Cat.

The aforementioned Gun Runner 2-year-old Grade l winner Gunite is from a Cowboy Cal (Giant's Causeway) mare and the next dam is by Pulpit (A.P. Indy).

And the Gun Runner filly Wicked Halo, noted earlier from the Tapit (Pulpit/A.P. Indy) mare, not only has Storm Cat in the pedigree but also Fappiano through Tapit's broodmare sire Unbridled, making her 5x5x5 to Fappiano in addition to 4×5 Storm Cat. She's got a three-strong sire cluster of Storm Cat, Fappiano, and A.P. Indy girding her pedigree.

Candy Ride Stallions

Earlier this summer, I wrote about the investment in Candy Ride stallions that stud farms in Kentucky and in regional areas have made. One of the stallions mentioned is Unified, who has his first 2-year-olds racing this year. The Lane's End-based sire is represented so far by two black-type winners, Roger McQueen and Behave Virginia. The former is out of a Storm Cat-line mare and has Fappiano in the dam's pedigree (5×4 Fappiano); the latter is from a Mineshaft (A.P. Indy) mare and also has Fappiano in the dam's pedigree (5×4 Fappiano).

I also wrote about the once-raced Candy Ride stallion Valiant Minister at Bridlewood Farm in Ocala. Valiant Minister is the sire of Outfoxed, a filly who won the restricted $200,000 FTBOA Florida Sire Susan's Girl S. at the end of last month and looks like a future open company stakes winner. Though her sire stands for $3,000, she was a $360,000 OBS April 2-year-old. Her broodmare sire? It's former Florida stallion Kantharos (Lion Heart/Tale of the Cat/Storm Cat), who is a Storm Cat-line horse.

Sid Fernando is president and CEO of Werk Thoroughbred Consultants, Inc., originator of the Werk Nick Rating and eNicks.

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Bloodlines: Rombauer’s Success Blends Speed In Female Family With Classic Branch Of Mr. Prospector Line

Becoming the fifth Grade 1 winner by his sire Twirling Candy, Rombauer rocked the racing world back on its heels with a 3 ½-length victory in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Md., on Saturday.

Furthermore, if we consider classic success the pinnacle of Thoroughbred achievement, then Rombauer appeared to add another dimension to his pedigree, especially to his quality female family, which has proven itself one of the fastest in the world.

The Preakness winner's dam, the unraced Cowboy Cal mare Cashmere, is a half-sister to the tremendous sprinter California Flag, a winner five times at the G3 level sprinting. The gelded son of Avenue of Flags (by Seattle Slew) earned $1.2 million making an exhibition of speed, won the Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint, and set a course record at Santa Anita for 6 ½ furlongs.

California Flag's full sister was the highly talented Cambiocorsa. She won half of her 18 starts, earning more than a half-million, and becoming the victor in a pair of G3 races. Despite those significant accomplishments, she has shown even more at stud.

And one of the most fascinating things about Cambiocorsa is that she has translated her speed into performers who race with distinction at longer distances than she excelled at herself.

Cambiocorsa is the dam of four stakes winners, and two of her stakes-winning daughters, Moulin de Mougin (Curlin) and Schiaparelli (Ghostzapper) won at the G2 level. Also, both of them showed their form at distances beyond sprints. Moulin de Mougin won the G2 John C. Mabee at Del Mar, and Schiaparelli won the G2 Royal Heroine at Hollywood Park.

As daughters of stallions who each won a Breeders' Cup Classic at 10 furlongs, Moulin de Mougin and Schiaparelli had reason to show form over longer distances than their dam, but some families do not move up when bred to classic sires. Instead, some families lose both speed and class, becoming lesser performers at distances short or long.

Rombauer winning the Preakness

In addition to the racetrack successes of these two fillies, their half-sister Vionnet, by Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense, ran third in the G1 Rodeo Drive. A stud, Vionnet has produced the outstanding Roaring Lion (Kitten's Joy), who won a quartet of G1 races in England and Ireland at distances from 8 to 11 furlongs. Roaring Lion was placed at the top of the handicap rankings in Ireland and England for performers from 9 ½ to 11 furlongs.

That is a sharp upgrade in distance and level of achievement from “just” being a good-class sprinter family.

Now Cashmere, a half-sister to Cambiocorsa and California Flag, has done her part by producing a U.S. classic winner in Rombauer. Since she was unraced, we don't know the racing class of Cashmere, but it would appear to have been useful, at least, because she has four winners from four runners, with three of them earning well into six figures, and a pair have black type, with Cono (Lucky Pulpit) being stakes-placed.

It might seem surprising that the classic winner for this family came from Twirling Candy (Candy Ride), whose best victory was the G1 Malibu at seven furlongs. The horse also won a trio of G2 races at nine furlongs, as well as placing a close second in the G1 Pacific Classic at 1 1/4 miles. From the start, moreover, Twirling Candy has shown that his stock are not limited to sprints, and his best go a mile or more.

In addition to siring last year's winner of the Queen's Plate in Canada (One Bad Boy), Twirling Candy has G1 winners Gift Box (Santa Anita Handicap), Concrete Rose (Belmont Oaks), Finley'sluckycharm (Madison Stakes), and now Rombauer.

A good-sized horse with scope and good bone, Twirling Candy has sired 26 stakes winners to date and has progeny earnings of more than $34 million from seven crops of racing age.

The stallion also comes from the most classic branch of the Mr. Prospector male line, through the great stallion's son Fappiano. This is not the omnipresent Fappiano branch through Kentucky Derby winner Unbridled, who sired winners of each of the Triple Crown races, and that has added glories to the sport such as Triple Crown winner American Pharoah.

Instead, this is a branch of Fappiano through Cryptoclearance, one of the toughest of racehorses, through his grandson Candy Ride, an elite sire whose son Rock Your World won the G1 Santa Anita Derby and was one of the favored colts in the Kentucky Derby.

Instead of success there, the male line has prospered through the rapidly progressing Rombauer and his rising tide of a female family.

Frank Mitchell is author of Racehorse Breeding Theories, as well as the book Great Breeders and Their Methods: The Hancocks. In addition to writing the column “Sires and Dams” in Daily Racing Form for nearly 15 years, he has contributed articles to Thoroughbred Daily News, Thoroughbred Times, Thoroughbred Record, International Thoroughbred, and other major publications. In addition, Frank is chief of biomechanics for DataTrack International and is a hands-on caretaker of his own broodmares and foals in Central Kentucky. Check out his Bloodstock in the Bluegrass blog.

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Body & Soul: How Quickly the Tide Turns…

Those of us who grew up in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s were not only blessed with some extraordinary major league teams and athletes, as well as more than enough superior racehorses, but were also lucky that so many of the radio and television play-by-play announcers were among the greatest of all time–ranging from Vin Scully in Brooklyn to Mel Allen in the Bronx to Fred Capossela at Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga.

But the voice that sticks in our mind is that of the man who called the Knick games (Knickerbockers to us luddites): Later a legend in Hawaii, his name was Les Keiter and he kept your interest even in runaways until in some games one team would go on a streak into which he would exclaim, “How quickly the tide turns in basketball!”

Well, dear reader, keep that line in mind because when it comes to stallions whose first foals are yearlings, we have a crowd that has come in on a strong tide that has carried a select group of potentially “big fish” for buyers to consider starting with the upcoming yearling sales.

More specifically we refer to the Freshmen stallions whose offspring would be most likely in demand. We have determined that there will be 27 of them, most of whom stand in Kentucky, and of those 20–or 74%–represent only three sire lines: A.P. Indy, Fappiano and Smart Strike. We have checked our data for the past decade and found that only the Freshman crop of 2010 was close to being as concentrated with specific gene pools with A.P. Indy, Distorted Humor and Storm Cat accounting for 40% of 46 in the base group.

For the purposes of this report, we have grouped together stallions which we have analyzed biomechanically as well as a few that are not in our database yet have enough foals and credibility in their regions to indicate they will have followings. In any case there are only a few of the latter and are not likely to tip the scales dramatically when it comes to the attending Phenotype Targets.

Representing the A.P. Indy line are Malibu Moon’s sons Mr. Z, Gormley and Stanford; Pulpit’s sons American Freedom and Lord Nelson; Tapit’s sons Cupid, Divining Rod and Mohaymen; and Greenpointcrusader, by Bernardini.

From the Fappiano line we have Candy Ride (Arg)’s sons Gun Runner, Unified and Mastery; Unbridled’s Song’s sons Arrogate (deceased) and Bird Song; and from the Empire Maker branch Classic Empire and Midnight Storm, both by Pioneerof the Nile.

We chose Smart Strike as a foundation sire because he has come on strongly through his son Curlin, who has Connect, Keen Ice and Union Jackson in this crop; in addition, Smart Strike now has Lookin At Lucky, whose son Madefromlucky is the first one by that suddenly desirable sire to get a chance at stud.

Let us clarify a few things here. First, we are not necessarily wedded to the concept of sire lines that remain viable as definitive expressions of the aptitudes of a line’s namesake over a long period of time. We have seen so many physical variations within lines over the years that we tend to keep an eyebrow arched when it comes to evaluating whether such a progenitor’s descendants fit a given pattern. In our world that pattern is loosely defined by similarity in Phenotype.

A Phenotype is loosely defined as any characteristic (structural, physiological, or behavioral) which has been determined by its genotype (genetic code) and environment (competitive racing).

Three Phenotype charts, which we have utilized before, illustrate how members of a peer group might resemble each other phenotypically. They are color-coded to identify the sire of each horse, and those sires are also in the group. Caveat: Not every one of the 20 stallions we have mentioned above is depicted on the charts but as we indicated the ones which are not there are not going to significantly shift the patterns shown.

When we first looked at this crowd, we were struck by the impression that over the years what might not have been expected from sons of Fappiano, A.P. Indy and Smart Strike was that they would develop phenotypical tribes of their own. This was especially surprising when it came to Fappiano, who was as structurally balanced as one could hope for (he would be a dot in the center of his target) and yet remains influential today thanks to Cryptoclearance and Unbridled. These were two large individuals who may have appeared to be completely different to the naked eye–Cryptoclearance was rangy and somewhat light while Unbridled was solid and muscular. In fact, they were close to being the same phenotypically and relatively close to each other on the Fappiano chart.

Cryptoclearance went on to be a decent sire (Victory Gallop won the GI Belmont S.), but few would have predicted that one of his more modestly accomplished sons, Ride the Rails, would sire Candy Ride (Arg). Although we have no biomechanical data on Ride the Rails, we did inspect him in Argentina in the year Candy Ride was foaled and he seemed a combination of Fappiano and Cryptoclearance whereas Candy Ride favors his broodmare sire Candy Stripes, a son of Blushing Groom (Fr). All that said, this tribe expresses itself on the chart in a way that roughly corresponds to their racing aptitudes–powerful, but not overpowered to be considered one-dimensional speedballs.

Except for one representative of Malibu Moon, the A.P. Indy cluster is much more uniform in biomechanical expression–it’s a clear reflection of the fact that breeders wanted to bring more speed in the broodmares to him and his sons and the result is a virtual uniform phenotypical identity.

Smart Strike’s crowd may appear to be all over the place but in some respects it’s actually reflective of what a Phenotype target would look like for his sire Mr. Prospector and his more accomplished sons–some with almost unbalanced power and others more blended with stride factors. We find this intriguing and if Curlin and Lookin At Lucky can continue to throw out high-class colts, we might be on the verge of a line being solidified.

So, which Freshmen sires do we like? Not so fast, please. We have not been able to inspect a whole lot of this crowd because of the pandemic, and we will need to deploy our troops widely in the upcoming months to hone our algorithmic projections. In addition, there are some very nice prospects with first yearlings whose sires are by Into Mischief (Practical Joke), Ghostzapper (Shaman Ghost), Medaglia d’Oro (Astern {Aus}), Put It Back (Bal a Bali {Brz}), Quality Road (Blofeld, Hootenanny and Klimt) and War Front (War Correspondent).

Like Les Keiter, we’ll be watching for any shifts in the tide.

(Bob Fierro is a partner with Jay Kilgore and Frank Mitchell in DataTrack International, biomechanical consultants and developers of BreezeFigs. He can be reached a bbfq@earthlink.net).

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How Tasso’s Turned-Away Sale Made Breeders’ Cup History

One of the early mileposts for just about any racehorse purchased at a 2-year-olds in training auction is to finish that season with a win in a Breeders' Cup race.

By that standard, Tasso's road from the sale ring to the Breeders' Cup Juvenile winner's circle was an unmitigated success, making him the first 2-year-old sale graduate to win the race in the same year. By the standards of a commercialmarket racing prospect, Tasso was an economic dud whose true value would only be appreciated after his time in the ring.

From the first crop of Grade 1 winner Fappiano, Tasso was bred in Florida by Timothy Sams of Waldemar Farm and his business partner Gerald Robins. The same operation had produced Hall of Famer Foolosh Pleasure a decade earlier. Both men owned five shares in Fappiano, purchased during his racing career, meaning their incentive to get the stallion off to a fast start was high.

The Waldemar Farm consignment had a pair of Fappiano colts on offer for the 1984 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Yearling Sale, with the first selling to $250,000 – the most anyone paid for a foal by the stallion at the marquee auction. Tasso, on the other hand, was brought home after hammering at $50,000, under his reserve.

In the months that followed, Tasso was trained toward the 1985 Fasig-Tipton Florida Selected 2-Year-Olds In Training Sale at Calder Race Course. After being the less-impressive half of the Fappiano tag team among Waldemar's Saratoga consignment a year earlier, the bad luck continued for the colt who was cataloged as Hip 1; a notoriously hard spot for a horse to maximize its value, while buyers are still straggling onto the sales grounds, finding their seats, or saving their bullets for later offerings or sessions.

Sams knew he was going to be up against it in that spot, so called in a favor from prominent owner Bertram Firestone, a Virginia-based horseman who earned the 1980 Eclipse Award for outstanding owner with his wife Diana. That early in the sale's proceedings, Sams knew he'd need someone to prime the pump for him.

“Bert is a good friend of ours, and I saw him in the walking ring before the sale and asked him if he would bid this horse up to $100,000 for us,” Sams said in a 1985 interview with BloodHorse. “He said 'Sure.' Then he came up to me later and asked me if I liked the colt, and I told him that I did. He suggested that we send the horse to Aiken to Marvin Greene and see what Marvin thought about him, and said 'If Marvin likes him maybe we can make a deal.'”

The colt went to South Carolina to begin his formal racetrack training, but an injury kept him on the shelf for much of his time there, Greene decided there wasn't room for him in his barn, and Firestone walked away from the arrangement.

Newspapers reported that Tasso's beleaguered owners spent more time trying to shop the horse out for private sale, but at some point, a juvenile has to prove himself on the racetrack to be worth selling. Tasso was placed in the California barn of Neil Drysdale, and he made his debut in May of his 2-year-old season, three months after his trip through the sale ring at Calder.

Tasso quickly cast aside whatever the buying public failed to see in him, winning five of seven starts during his juvenile year. Showing the ability to win from a deep close or a stalking trip in the preceding starts, Tasso earned his first major win in the G1 Del Mar Futurity. The going was much smoother two starts later when he dusted the G2 Breeders' Futurity at Keeneland by six lengths.

The colt was not nominated to the second-ever Breeders' Cup in 1985, but his purse earnings from his Breeders' Futurity rout were just enough to cover the $120,000 late entry fee, ensuring him a spot in the gate at Aqueduct.

Despite coming into the race off an impressive victory, Tasso left the gate in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile as the field's third choice. Everyone looked up to even-money favorite Mogambo, a homebred for Peter Brant who obliterated the G1 Champagne Stakes by 9 3/4 lengths, and beat several of the field's hopefuls in the process.

The betting public's second choice was Storm Cat, a Grade 1 winner who appeared to have the race in hand after a well-placed stalking trip until the very last jump, when Tasso and jockey Laffit Pincay Jr. completed a wide-running closing move to outkick the future superstar sire by a nose. Mogambo never threatened, and ran sixth.

The Breeders' Cup win later clinched Tasso's case for the Eclipse Award as champion 2-year-old male of 1985.

Tasso wasn't the first graduate of a 2-year-old sale to win a Breeders' Cup race. That honor went to Wild Again, the winner of the inaugural Breeders' Cup Classic, who was an RNA during the 1982 Fasig-Tipton juvenile sale at Calder. However, Tasso's victory was proof of concept that a young horse could go through the ring at a 2-year-olds in training sale and win at the fledgling marquee event just a few months later. The fact that he was essentially unwanted at the sale is just icing on the cake.

Tasso continued to race into his 4-year-old season, but he never won another graded stakes contest after his juvenile season.

He retired to Lane's End in Kentucky for the 1988 breeding season, but he never found significant footing at stud domestically. Tasso finished his stud career in Saudi Arabia at Al Janadriyah Farm, an operation once owned by the late King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz that became a popular stop for visiting U.S. presidents.

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