With the graded stakes victories of Moonlight d'Oro and Risk Taking over the weekend, their sire Medaglia d'Oro now has 76 graded stakes winners worldwide, from 148 stakes winners bred in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Moonlight d'Oro won the Grade 3 Las Virgenes Stakes at Santa Anita on Feb. 8, and shortly thereafter on Saturday, Risk Taking won the G3 Withers at Aqueduct. It was the first stakes victory for each horse.
Their sire is most famous for the champions Rachel Alexandra (Kentucky Oaks, Preakness Stakes, Haskell) and Songbird (Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies and eight other Grade 1 races), but there is no question that Medaglia d'Oro is a gold medal stallion.
But it was not always so. A three-time winner at the G1 level himself, Medaglia d'Oro was a leading racer by his sire El Prado, who in turn was the lone successful representative of the Sadler's Wells line in the States at the time. Scarcity, in this instance, would not be considered a virtue among breeders, who flock to the horses who succeed the most and equally shun those who do not.
So the relative lack of success from the Sadler's Wells branch of Northern Dancer was a serious impediment to Medaglia d'Oro, and being out of a mare by the Damascus stallion Bailjumper, the horse's pedigree wasn't the sort that brought stallion farms racing to stand the horse, no matter how strong his racing career had been.
In the imminently capable hands of trainer Bobby Frankel, Medaglia d'Oro had won $5.7 million with victories in the G1 Travers, Whitney, and Donn, along with prestigious seconds in the Dubai World Cup, Breeders' Cup Classic (twice), and the Belmont Stakes. The race in Dubai was the last one for Medaglia d'Oro, and he was sold to Richard Haisfield in May 2004.
As a 6-year-old, the horse entered stud in 2005 with John G. Sikura at Hill 'n' Dale Farms, then was transferred to Audrey Haisfield's Stonewall Farm in 2006. Now an independent bloodstock consultant, Clark Shepherd was then the seasons and matings manager for Stonewall.
Shepherd recalled that “since the Haisfields already owned the horse, when the stallion barn was finished at Stonewall, he yanked the horses – Medaglia d'Oro, Doneraile Court, and Marquetry, as I recall – and put them all at Stonewall.”
In addition to these, Stonewall also stood champion older horse Lawyer Ron (by Langfuhr) and champion turf horse Leroidesanimaux (Candy Stripes), plus several others.
These were bullish years in racing and breeding, and Shepherd recalled that he didn't have “a lot of trouble getting mares to the horses, especially Medaglia. In part, that was because the farm had started a deal of awarding complimentary matings to mares who were either graded stakes winners or graded stakes producers. That kept the mare volume at a level that second- and third-year stallions don't usually enjoy these days.”
Part of the rationale behind that aggressive approach to bringing mares into the stallions' books was to make the resulting foals as commercially appealing as possible, as well as to get many mares of racing quality into the stallions' books.
The first-crop yearlings by Medaglia d'Oro made him a successful commercial sire at the sales in 2007, and he was well-ranked in fourth among the 2008 freshmen sires, led by Tapit (Pulpit), when Rachel Alexandra was her sire's first-crop leader, and the filly backed up that early promise with classic greatness in the 2009 Kentucky Oaks and Preakness Stakes.
Entrepreneur and sportsman Richard Santulli, along with businessman Barry Weisbord, had purchased a minority interest in Medaglia d'Oro in August 2008, as first the national, then the world, economy tipped into deeper collapse.
As that economic demise precipitated through the end of 2008 and reached its lowest point in the first part of 2009, bloodstock and the commercial equine market felt the sting even worse than the general economy. Then, as the financial side of the Stonewall operation began to unwind, Godolphin came in and bought the rapidly appreciating Medaglia d'Oro for a reported $40 million total valuation in a deal that closed in early June 2009.
The stallion shipped across town to Darley's Jonabell stallion farm, and that has been his base ever since.
One of the more successful shuttle stallions, Medaglia d'Oro sired two of his better colts Down Under with champion Vancouver and Group 1 winner Astern. In the Northern Hemisphere, as well, success for the stallion's progeny has become more equally divided between the colts and fillies, with such as Talismanic (Breeders' Cup Turf), and his sons at stud continue to have a following among breeders. Chief among these stallion sons is Violence, who stands at Hill 'n' Dale at Xalapa, and Medaglia d'Oro's younger sons without foals of racing age include G1 winners Bolt d'Oro (Spendthrift) and Higher Power (Darby Dan).
Currently standing for $150,000 live foal at Darley, Medaglia d'Oro is one of the most popular and influential sires of the day.
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