Epicenter To Stand at Ashford Stud

Winchell Thoroughbreds' Epicenter (Not This Time–Silent Candy, by Candy Ride {Arg}), a leading candidate for champion 3-year-old honors, will enter stud in 2023 at Ashford Stud. He will stand for $45,000.

Bred at Mike, Brent and Kevin Harrises' Westwind Farms in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Epicenter was hammered down to the Winchell team for $260,000 at the 2020 Keeneland September sale and was ultimately turned over to the operation's Hall of Fame trainer Steve Asmussen. A maiden winner at second asking going the one-turn mile at Churchill Downs, the bay romped by 6 1/2 lengths to become a stakes winner for the first time in the Gun Runner S. at the Fair Grounds last December before dropping a narrow decision when making his graded stakes debut in the GIII Lecomte S. An all-the-way winner of the GII Risen Star S. in February, Epicenter showed a new dimension in the GII Louisiana Derby, settling a bit further off the pace before quickening home to score by 2 1/2 lengths.

Epicenter's winter efforts made him the 4.10-1 favorite for the GI Kentucky Derby and he raced better than midfield, surged to the lead at the furlong grounds and was outfinished by Rich Strike (Keen Ice). He was similarly unlucky to not win the GI Preakness S., finishing runner-up to recent Coolmore addition Early Voting (Gun Runner) after a slow start and some upper-stretch traffic, but he atoned for those defeats at Saratoga over the summer with some authority.

Epicenter was a romping winner of the GII Jim Dandy S., besting Grade I winner Zandon (Upstart), and, at even-money, the GI Runhappy Travers S., where dual GISW Cyberknife (Gun Runner) was left some 5 1/4 lengths behind. His Beyer Speed Figure of 112 was the highest of any of his generation on dirt this year. Epicenter, who was pulled up when the second pick to Flightline (Tapit) in the GI Longines Breeders' Cup Classic and is recovering nicely from his injuries, retires with a record of 6-3-0 from 11 starts and earnings of $2,940,639.

“Epicenter was solid all year and the Travers was the breakout performance he needed and deserved, and he did it in an emphatic way,” said trainer Steve Asmussen. “He put everything together on a grand stage.”

“He was a brilliant horse whose best racing days were still in front of him,” said Ron Winchell who raced the colt. “Bred on the reverse of Gun Runner's Candy Ride/Giant's Causeway cross he's a hugely exciting stallion prospect.”

“Epicenter is the best son of Giant's Causeway's best sire son Not This Time and is out of a stakes winner by the sire of Gun Runner,” said Coolmore's Dermot Ryan. “His combination of speed and stamina made him a potent force and he's a very good-looking horse to boot. Breeders are going to love him.”

One of three top-level and one of nine graded winners for his boom stallion, Epicenter is the most accomplished foal from his stakes-winning and Grade III-placed dam, who fetched $625,000 carrying a full-sibling to Epicenter at this year's Keeneland November Sale. Westwind acquired Silent Candy for $130,000 in foal to Scat Daddy at KEENOV in 2014.

 

WATCH: Epicenter storms clear in the 2022 GI Runhappy Travers S.

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Dangerous to Slight Lecomte Breakout

With so much background noise over the tragic Medina Spirit (Protonico), few have given due attention to another poignant context for the potential elevation of Mandaloun (Into Mischief) as official winner of the 2021 GI Kentucky Derby. If the next name on the roll of honor happens to be Call Me Midnight (Midnight Lute), however, then perhaps more of us will renew our gratitude to the late Prince Khalid Abdullah for a legacy well measured by the performance of both horses at Fair Grounds last Saturday.

The founder of Juddmonte Farms died just four days before Mandaloun began his eventful sophomore campaign with third in the GIII Lecomte S. last year. Even as things stand, it is instructive of the standards set by the Juddmonte team that he proceeded to become their third runner-up from just six Derby starters. (The others, also homebred, being Aptitude {A.P. Indy} and Empire Maker {Unbridled} in 2000 and 2003 respectively.)

Those standards are so unstinting that breeders at every level avidly contest the mares culled by Juddmonte, who routinely top the bill at Tattersalls every December. A rare exception, however, was the one who gave us Call Me Midnight–winner of the Lecomte half an hour after Mandaloun, making a rather slicker start to his third campaign than to his second, won the GIII Louisiana S.

Overseen (First Defence) cost Hartwell Farm just $16,000 deep into the Keeneland November Sale of 2013, when offered through Mill Ridge as an unraced juvenile. As we'll see, she represents one of the great Juddmonte dynasties. But her dam had become a disappointing producer, while Overseen herself was so dismally lacking in size–as wittily implied in her naming–that her buyers immediately repented, trying (but failing) to discard her only weeks later at Fasig-Tipton's Mixed February Sale.

Fortunately Robbie and Susie Lyons of Hartwell have the good sense–so uncommon among breeders today, despite the vagaries of this business–to mate mares on the premise that the resulting foal might at least run if, for any reason, it can't sell. So instead of chasing those fleeting vogues that spark and fade around unproven stallions, Overseen was in 2018 sent to Midnight Lute.

Midnight Lute | Sarah Andrew

As it happens, that same spring the Hill 'n' Dale stallion had a sophomore filly on the rise in California, named Midnight Bisou. But there has always been far more to Midnight Lute than his headline act. Over the past two years, indeed, he has mustered his fourth and fifth Grade I winners–Keeper Ofthe Stars (Gamely S.) and Smooth Like Strait (Shoemaker Mile, and only caught late in Breeders' Cup Mile)–while maintaining a fee of just $15,000.

The mating that produced Call Me Midnight most blatantly entwined two lines of Fappiano, through his sons Quiet American and Unbridled: respectively the grandsires of Midnight Lute, via Real Quiet; and damsire First Defence, via Unbridled's Song. But while Fappiano is obviously a potent dirt Classic brand, not least through the endeavors of Empire Maker, Call Me Midnight's candidature for the Triple Crown trail is greatly fortified by Overseen's granddam: the Juddmonte foundation mare, G1 Epsom Oaks runner-up Slightly Dangerous (Roberto).

By the early 1990s this was perhaps the most glamorous broodmare in Europe. Her second foal was the brilliant miler Warning (GB), a son of Prince Khalid's first stallion Known Fact (and a fragile European footprint for Man o' War via Diktat {GB}, Dream Ahead and now Al Wukair {Ire}). And while Juddmonte would experience rare disappointment in the stud career of its charismatic Arc winner Dancing Brave, Slightly Dangerous nonetheless managed to provide him with a Derby winner in Commander in Chief (GB). In addition, she produced three foals to emulate her own status as Classic runners-up: Dushyantor (Sadler's Wells) in the Derby (later multiple champion sire of Chile); Deploy (GB) (Shirley Heights {GB}) in the Irish version; and Yashmak (Danzig) in the Irish Oaks. The latter went on to win the GI Flower Bowl Invitational, securing her dam new distinction locally, as 1997 Kentucky Broodmare of the Year.

After Yashmak, Slightly Dangerous managed two more foals by Danzig. Since the last was an unraced colt, her final bequest was effectively Jibe, second in the G1 Fillies' Mile at Ascot as a juvenile and a stakes winner over 10 furlongs at three. And this is the dam of Overseen.

As already indicated, Jibe had proved an ineffective conduit of her own dam's prowess by the time Overseen was moved on so cheaply. Of her eight foals, in fact, only one managed to win; the others either never made it onto the track, or shouldn't have bothered. But there are embers to this family that can still be stoked: the solitary winner out of Jibe, a filly by Empire Maker, went on to produce 'TDN Rising Star' Taraz (Into Mischief), who looked a special talent a couple of years ago in winning her first three starts for Brad Cox, only to suffer a catastrophic injury one morning at Oaklawn. She was a gigantic specimen, but little Overseen has herself already produced (from four starters to date) a Bayern filly, built on the same modest lines but beaten only a head in a juvenile stakes at Woodbine in 2019.

These recent distinctions had been preceded, in the wider family, by Yashmak's son Full Mast (Mizzen Mast), who won the G1 Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere; while a sister to Deploy produced two Group winners, and also features as second dam of two Group 1-placed colts (notably G2 Hardwicke S. winner Await the Dawn {Giant's Causeway}) and third dam of a G1 South Australian Derby winner. But Call Me Midnight really needs to keep progressing to reinvigorate a family that so aptly represents Prince Khalid's legacy to the breed. His damsire First Defence, remember, is a son of Honest Lady (Seattle Slew)–who shared her dam, the Juddmonte matriarch Toussaud (El Gran Senor), with Empire Maker among others–while Slightly Dangerous herself was acquired way back in 1982, in the same month that the Prince celebrated his first homebred winner.

Toussaud | Horsephotos

Slightly Dangerous had then just won the G3 Fred Darling S., a traditional signpost to the Classics, and was a granddaughter of Evelyn Olin's Noblesse (GB), the outstanding juvenile of 1962 and 10-length winner of the Oaks in a light career. Noblesse was also confined to a relatively limited output in the paddocks, but all five of her foals were stakes performers and included Where You Lead (Raise a Native)–herself runner-up in the Oaks, just as would in due course become the case of her daughter Slightly Dangerous.

It was only a few weeks after acquiring Slightly Dangerous that Prince Khalid doubled down on the family by buying a yearling (at the same auction where he found the dam of Danehill) by Blushing Groom (Fr) out of Slightly Dangerous's Group-winning half-sister I Will Follow (Herbager {Fr}). This would become Rainbow Quest, Arc winner and multiple Classic sire/damsire.

So this is a family saturated with Classic quality. A lot of people are dismissing Call Me Midnight as owing his day in the sun to a pace meltdown. But while his running style won't help in the modern Derby, which lacks the speed pressure of old since the exclusion of sprinters by the points system, we know to respect the Fair Grounds talent pool nowadays. And hindsight lends a coherent shape to his development. Sure, he took five juvenile attempts to break his maiden–but that represents a useful foundation of experience and he improved every time (bar a mad attempt to burn them off in :21.66 in a sprint, hardly his metier as it turns out). He was rubbing shoulders with some good horses along the way, for instance in chasing home subsequent GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile third Giant Game (Giant's Causeway) at Keeneland. Moreover he has won over the Derby track, and probably hadn't soaked up that effort when suffering a messy trip anyway in the GII Kentucky Jockey Club S. a couple of weeks later. All in all he'll have more going for him, entering the gate for the GII Risen Star S., than did Country House (Lookin At Lucky) at the same stage.

Call Me Midnight's Churchill maiden win Nov. 13 | Coady

It would admittedly be startling if he could keep ahead of that particular curve, as a horse who has already been through the ring four times. Hartwell got $25,000 for him as a Keeneland November weanling, from Milton Lopez; and, though a $37,000 RNA in the same ring the following September, he was allowed to go for $17,000 through Beth Bayer to Team Work Horseman Group at OBS the following month. That winter, however, he obviously began to get it together and he proved a very efficient pinhook when realizing $80,000 from Peter Cantrell for Navas Equine back at OBS March.

So there have been winners already, while Mr. Cantrell has 10 Derby points in the bank and Hartwell Farm can now hope to reap its rewards from Overseen's future stock. And there are actually gains to be made by us all, if Midnight Lute could get a Derby winner.

His standout Midnight Bisou emerged from a monster book assembled after his first sophomores caught fire with two Grade I winners, a Classic-placed colt and a colt and filly who both broke track records in respectively winning the Sunland Park Derby and Oaks by an aggregate 13 lengths. But before Midnight Bisou had even made her juvenile bow, her sire had already dwindled from 186 mares to 56–a classic example of the childish brevity of commercial attention. Through all these ups and downs, Midnight Lute has established a lifetime clip of 10% stakes performers and 5% graded stakes performers, to named foals, which stacks up competitively enough against many a more expensive rival.

The first of Midnight Lute's Breeders' Cup Sprints | Sarah Andrew

In the process, he has also established a capacity to draw out the two-turn reserves latent in his pedigree. His own career, as a dual winner of the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint, was famously a case of Bob Baffert managing the horse's wind troubles; no less notorious was his sheer scale, at 17 hands, while his own sire's exceptional caliber as a Classic performer was never matched by his opportunities at stud. One way or another Midnight Lute, elegantly proportioned within all that power, channelled his talent with exceptional flair for an unprecedented sprint Beyer of 124. And he has long proved a flexible match for his mares: while initially making his name with single-turn dashers like Shakin It Up and Midnight Lucky, he has since diversified his impact across many disciplines.

Should all else fail, indeed, connections of Call Me Midnight have the option of turf up their sleeve: we've seen all the European royalty behind the dam, while the sire's last two Grade I scores both came on grass. Midnight Lute's third dam, after all, was by Sea-Bird II (Fr) and the next two both won the Italian Oaks; and he was very adaptable himself, in terms of surface, bursting clear on the slop for his first Breeders' Cup and running 1:07.08 on synthetics for his second, besides setting a stakes record on the storied dirt of the GI Forego.

But the real spur to further achievement for Call Me Midnight, did he but know it, is the momentous vacancy available to any male that can salvage this tenuous branch of the Fappiano line.

You can't put a price on that. Quiet American is a Nerud/Tartan Farms time capsule, with the top-and-bottom duplication of two of the great postwar mares in Aspidistra and Cequillo: a genetic goldmine that measures up even to the way Overseen balances Slightly Dangerous and Toussaud. And their combination will surely have many of us in his corner, as Call Me Midnight continues to explore a shared legacy in the hoofprints of Mandaloun.

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Call Me Midnight ‘Nose’ Way Home in Lecomte

Let go at 28-1 and apparently overmatched on paper, the well-tried Call Me Midnight (Midnight Lute) stormed down the center of the long Fair Grounds stretch to just nose out narrow second choice Epicenter (Not This Time) in Saturday's GIII Lecomte S., the first of three local preps on the Road to the Kentucky Derby.

A maiden winner at fifth asking going Churchill's one-turn mile last Nov. 13, the $80,000 OBS March grad raced well back in the field as Surfer Dude (Curlin) and last-out Gun Runner S. hero Epicenter ding-donged it up front through taxing opening fractions of :23.40 and :47.01. Favored Pappacap (Gun Runner), a latest runner-up to 'TDN Rising Star' Corniche (Quality Road) in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile, sat a good inside trip and was there at the fence to challenge Epicenter in the stretch as Surfer Dude decided to call it a day and hang ten elsewhere. Trafalgar (Lord Nelson) loomed a brief threat inside, but Call Me Midnight, third last to make the straight, motored down the crown of the track and dropped his nose down on the line in the nick of time.

Trainer Keith Desormeaux was the architect of one of the bigger upsets on the NOLA road to Louisville, as he sent out Ive Struck a Nerve (Yankee Gentleman) to a 135-1 upset of the 2013 GII Risen Star S., the horse having finished a distant fourth in the Lecomte one start prior.

Well-beaten in his first two trips to the post over abbreviated trips, Call Me Midnight was an improved fourth, a nose behind future GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile placegetter Giant Game (Giant's Causeway) in a seven-furlong maiden in Louisville Sept. 18. Three lengths behind that rival when runner-up in a two-turn test at Keeneland Oct. 9, he was impressive in graduating over the mile Nov. 13, but could not overcome the widest gate in a field of 11 and checked in seventh in the GII Kentucky Jockey Club S. a couple of weeks later.

Pedigree Notes:

Call Me Midnight is the 37th stakes winner and 14th graded winner and also hails from a Juddmonte female family. The St. Patrick's Day foal's unraced dam is a daughter of SW & G1SP Jibe, whose daughter Silk Route (Empire Maker) is the dak of the aforementioned late MSW 'TDN Rising Star' Taraz (Into Mischief). His third dam is Slightly Dangerous, a Group 3 winner and second home in the 1982 G1 Epsom Oaks before embarking on a prolific career as a broodmare. Her notable produce include multiple champion and MG1SW Warning (GB) (Known Fact); MGSW & MG1SP Dushyantor (Sadler's Wells), third in the 1998 GI Breeders' Cup Turf; Yashmak (Danzig), winner at home of the G2 Ribblesdale S. at Royal Ascot and Group 1 placed at two and three and victorious in the GI Flower Bowl Invitational H. in this country. The latter's five winners include G1 Grand Criterium S. scorer Full Mast (Mizzen Mast).

Overseen missed to Honor Code for 2021 and was most recently covered by Frosted.

Saturday, Fair Grounds
LECOMTE S.-GIII, $200,000, Fair Grounds, 1-22, 3yo, 1 1/16m, 1:44.36, ft.
1–CALL ME MIDNIGHT, 122, c, 3, by Midnight Lute
               1st Dam: Overseen, by First Defence
               2nd Dam: Jibe, by Danzig
               3rd Dam: Slightly Dangerous, by Roberto
1ST BLACK TYPE WIN, 1ST GRADED STAKES WIN. ($25,000
Wlg '19 KEENOV; $37,000 RNA Ylg '20 KEESEP; $17,000 Ylg
'20 OBSOCT; $80,000 2yo '21 OBSMAR). O-Peter L. Cantrell;
B-Hartwell Farm, Inc (KY); T-J. Keith Desormeaux; J-James
Graham. $120,000. Lifetime Record: 7-2-1-0, $221,806.
Werk Nick Rating: A++. Click for the eNicks report &
5-cross pedigree.
2–Epicenter, 122, c, 3, Not This Time–Silent Candy, by Candy
Ride (Arg). 1ST GRADED BLACK TYPE. ($260,000 Ylg '20
KEESEP). O-Winchell Thoroughbreds LLC; B-Westwind Farms
(KY); T-Steven M. Asmussen. $40,000.
3–Pappacap, 122, c, 3, Gun Runner–Pappascat, by Scat
Daddy. O/B-Rustlewood Farm, Inc. (FL); T-Mark E. Casse.
$20,000.
Margins: HD, 3/4, 3HF. Odds: 28.50, 1.60, 1.50.
Also Ran: Trafalgar, Presidential, Cyberknife, Blue Kentucky, Unified Report, Surfer Dude.
Click for the Equibase.com chart, the TJCIS.com PPs, or the free Equineline.com catalogue-style pedigree. VIDEO, sponsored by TVG.

 

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This Side Up: Back to the Future on Lecomte Day

Fastest two minutes in sport? You'll excuse us a bitter laugh here. By the time Mandaloun (Into Mischief) leaves the gate Saturday for the GIII Louisiana S., he'll be 382,968 minutes into a GI Kentucky Derby without end. And, with no sign of anyone putting their attorneys back in the holster, it's plainly going to be a while yet before we know whether Mandaloun will finally be anointed the 147th winner of a race that drives so many millions of dollars of investment in our industry.

(Listen to this column as an audio podcast by clicking the button below.)

As things stand, we're potentially looking at one of the luckiest animals in Turf history: a dual Grade I winner who has yet to pass the post first in a Grade I race. He was last seen, of course, in that dramatic Haskell S., which fell into his lap after Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow) was disqualified for his tangle with Midnight Bourbon (Tiznow). The latter, conversely, has accumulated a dispiriting sequence of near-misses since his last visit to the winner's circle, on this card last year, in the GIII Lecomte S.

Given our ongoing travails, and the resulting perceptions among the wider public, our community owes a great debt to Midnight Bourbon for his balletic recovery from the brink of catastrophe at Monmouth Park. As a potential lifeline for the precarious Man o' War line, moreover, he should in due course offer another valuable service in the replication, at stud, of that extraordinary athleticism.

We're not going to run out of sons of Into Mischief any time soon, after all. One way or another, then, a lot of neutrals will be heading to Midnight Bourbon's corner as the two rivals each attempt a personal reset in what will, on the anniversary of their first, be their sixth showdown.

But you have to feel sympathy for Mandaloun, too. At the best of times, finishing second in the Derby is a bittersweet distinction. It's one that has been shared by some great names, for instance Native Dancer and Nashua within a couple of years of each other, as well as by many that can only make you scratch your head. And nobody, regardless, would want to satisfy a lifetime quest in quite this way, as connections of Country House (Lookin At Lucky) will doubtless attest.

On the day, their horse proved better equipped for the defining challenge of the American Thoroughbred than all bar one of 20,000-odd other foals in his crop. Country House was desperately unlucky to be denied any further opportunity of wresting attention from that ever-distracting horse, Maximum Security (New Year's Day). Set for a relaunch at four, only to be derailed by laminitis in February, he duly finds himself standing on most generous terms (despite being inbred to the matriarch No Class) at Darby Dan. If there's any justice, someday one of his sons will secure him overdue respect in the Derby.

Midnight Bourbon's last visit to the winner's circle was in the 2021 Lecomte | Hodges Photography

If that happens, it won't be through a superior preparation. Country House was a Bill Mott masterpiece. It was only in this equivalent week that he broke his maiden; he then contested the second and third legs of the New Orleans trial series, catching the eye of many a wiseguy handicapper with the promise of better yet in the extreme test awaiting at Churchill.

In the process he contributed to the striking vigor of the Fair Grounds sophomores, in recent times. Last year the GII Louisiana Derby produced four of the first six on the first Saturday in May. True, these included a Californian shipper, but the overall strength of the Crescent City cohort certainly heightens interest in the return of Proxy (Tapit), who went missing after being sandwiched between Midnight Bourbon and Mandaloun in both the Lecomte and the GII Risen Star. Some really heartening breezes this winter allow us to hope that Proxy might yet live up to his name, and plug a gap for the Mystic Guide (Ghostzapper) barn.

But no graduate of the Fair Grounds Classic rehearsals has lately made a greater impact than Gun Runner–for whom the Lecomte, through Pappacap and Cyberknife, now represents the first big test of the theory that his stud debut was especially spectacular because his stock will emulate the way he thrived with maturity himself.

Pappacap prior to his second in the 2021 Breeders' Cup Juvenile | Horsephotos

As his second-ever winner, Pappacap was among the most precocious of the surprisingly precocious gang that secured Gun Runner the freshman title; but the Rustlewood Farm homebred can be expected to consolidate on both sides of his pedigree. His mother achieved her only graded stakes placing at the end of her third campaign; his second and third dams, unusually enough, are both by sons of that doughty influence Roberto; while his fourth is by another in Pleasant Colony. In other words, this is a horse bred to stick around. (He also has the honor of starting out No. 1 on colleague T.D. Thornton's TDN Derby Top 12.)

It's a big day, then, for the Winchell family, who stand Gun Runner with Three Chimneys and will be hoping to see Midnight Bourbon elaborate his own stud credentials. Because they also present the most obvious danger to Gun Runner's Lecomte pair in Epicenter (Not This Time), whose apt emergence in the Gun Runner S. over Christmas showed him to be very comfortable with pouring the speed coals into this hot surface.

Throw into the mix Trafalgar (Lord Nelson), a promising flagship for his classy hometown barn, and this looks another instructive edition of the Lecomte S. I love the cyclical nature of the Classic trail, with all its familiar staging points, coast to coast; and the return to the same card of two of the 2021 protagonists marks another ring through the trunk of the great old Triple Crown tree.

Because it's never really just about those two breathless minutes in Louisville. Those are the tiny apex of a huge pyramid that spreads out through the patient dreams of so many different people, past and present.

With everything that's going on–condensed by the tragedy of the horse that held off Mandaloun in the Derby–we must always conduct ourselves with due respect for the generations of predecessors who made our sport what it is. This race, remember, is named for the only horse ever to beat Lexington. And if we don't prove worthy of our heritage, in the perennial quest for a Derby colt, someday we will suddenly find that it's two minutes to midnight.

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