Tags
afleet alex, buckpasser, classic sires, damascus, dr. fager, keiblog, kelso, native dancer, non-triple crown winners, point given, risen star, sire dominance, sire influence, spectacular bid, sunday silence, thoroughbred breeding in japan, tim tam, Triple Crown, zenya yoshida
There’s been a bit of chat on the interwebs and hinterblogs about who was the best colt not to win the Triple Crown. Most of the consideration has been on Spectacular Bid, Point Given, Afleet Alex, and to a lesser extent (if you can believe it) Sunday Silence.
All were smacking good racehorses, as were Risen Star, Tim Tam, Damascus, Native Dancer, and a few others who never made the Triple like Buckpasser, Dr Fager, and Kelso. Yet we can argue till we faint dead away, and nobody can prove which was the absolute best. But I can, however, tell you which was the best at stud (although Afleet Alex has many chapters left to write): Sunday Silence.
The winner of two-thirds of the Triple Crown, the BC Classic, and Horse of the Year, Sunday Silence was much better than that when put to stud in Japan as the supreme legacy of the great breeder Zenya Yoshida.
Simply put, Sunday Silence was the best stallion in the history of Thoroughbred breeding in Japan, and he became known as one of the best in the world, although few of his offspring left the most lucrative racing and breeding program in the world.
Although lost relatively young, Sunday Silence still rules the breeding world in Japan. As evidence of the stallion’s absolute dominance, Keiblog notes: “every single horse in [tomorrow's Japan Derby] field is related to Sunday Silence. 16 are by stallions whose sire is Sunday Silence. Cresco Grand and Belshazzar have Sunday Silence as their broodmare sire.”
Amazing.
There are several reasons for Sunday Silence’s success in Japan, not least being that his physique and character suited their racing program so well. But don’t let anyone tell you it was because he was playing in a sandlot. The Japanese have world-class racing, and their stock races impressively when taken into other environments.
The old black pest* was simply the best.
*(I was a fan of Easy Goer)
A P Indy only ran in the Belmont but who can argue about his breeding success?
Outstanding racehorse and sire. Very unlucky not to have had a chance to race for the Triple Crown.
I can’t leave Alydar out of the Triple Crown equation. And how does Alydar stand up at stud compared to Sunday Silence? I would guess something like Easy Goer’s Belmont. But the best answer to the question has to be Native Dancer.
Yeah, Alydar is one of those who leaves everyone shaking his head. What might have been? And as a sire, he was the most classic son of Raise a Native, more dominant in that sphere than Mr P and more international than Exclusive Native.
While it is true that the argument cannot be settled conclusively, there could not have been a better racehorse than Spectacular Bid in that category.
Sunday Silence was a heckuva racehorse, but, as Frank highlights, his stud record was sensational.
The Bid’s 4yo season was amazing. It would have been great to have seen him butting heads with Affirmed and Seattle Slew … but other considerations prevailed.
Frank,
SUNDAY SILENCE was very near/dear to this Calfornian’s heart. If not for his bothersome quarter crack, the Belmont would have been a crackin’ event. I can’t say unequivocally the son of HALO would have defeated EASY GOER on that day, on his home track, but there’s no way 8 lengths separates them on any track. Charlie took a shot because the Triple Crown was on the line; he doesn’t run him otherwise. SUNDAY SILENCE came back and defeated EASY GOER in the BC Classic, earning the HOY in a way that made SmithBarney proud.
His descendents, 16 grandsons via Japanese sires DEEP IMPACT, STAY GOLD, NEO UNIVERSE, FUJI KISEKI, HEART’S CRY, AGNES TACHYON, and MANHATTAN CAFE are on display in Japan in an hour or so contesting the G.I Tokyo Yushun (Japanese Derby) at 1 1/2 miles on turf. Oh, and the other two sired by BRIAN’S TIME and KINGMAMBO…the damsire is…you guessed it, SUNDAY SILENCE!!! At least the Japanese breeder Zenya Yoshida recognized how special he was, not only as a racehorse but as a supreme source of stamina in bloodlines.
Seth Hancock couldn’t unload him at auction before he raced, couldn’t wait to unload him to the highest bidder after his stellar racing career was over. Don’t you think he’d like a “do-over” on that one?
Thanks for recalling an all-time great to one of his biggest fans!
There’s an odd part to the story about Sunday Silence being sold to Japan. Yoshida had already bought into the colt and was planning on participating in his stallion career in the US, but only two farms stepped up to buy syndicate shares in SS.
It was 1990, the bloodstock depression was at its depths, and almost nobody wanted to “take a chance” on a colt that Arthur Hancock III had purchased as a yearling for 17k.
So when Arthur couldn’t get enough participation to fully support the horse at Stone Farm in Kentucky, Yoshida raised his hand and bid $10 million for the part didn’t own (90 percent) and made the best buy of his long career as a Thoroughbred breeder and owner.
Yoshida didn’t live to see the Sunday Silence stock race, but the horse’s influence has made his family farms the most successful and internationally powerful in Japan.
Sunday Silence has a unique pedigree.
The obscure stallion WESTY HOGAN, only appears in the pedigree of this top class stallion. no where else.. which must mean something.
Yep. That Westy Hogan doesn’t matter at all.
Halo matters a ton; Wishing Well matters a ton. And especially Sunday Silence, with his exceptional mix of speed and stamina, and versatility and toughness, those qualities are the ones that made him a great sire in Japan.
Come on Frank.. look at Sunday Silence’s female line sires.. Understanding, Montparnass, Free France, Figaro.. apart from Hillary, name another who ever reached the top ten in the sire’s tables.
His dam lost over 20 races, she was just a filler in handicap races, OK, she won the Gamely Handicap (G2) but she got beat in it the following year.
This foal’s female line was rubbish that is why he only made 17 thousand.
For those interested in some remarkable detail on Sunday Silence’s bottom-line, follow this link:
http://www.asianracing.nu/vb/showpost.php?p=2258&postcount=5
Only a few seers with an eerie stock sense like Piet Deweerd and Federico Tesio can make useful comparisons across widely differing year classes and environments, regardless of breed or species; we mortals have to wait for the progeny tests. Had Oak Cliff and Stone Farm shown the degree of systematic faith and intent with their breeding decisions that George Pope did, then Sunday Silence would be hailed as the breeding coup of the late twentieth century. Sunday Silence may have had poor conformation, as did Looking At Lucky, yet events proved it better than their peers. I note that Tesio’s pedigrees were not fashion statements until after he made them.
Mention of Tesio is a good excuse to correct my omission of the G-I Iroquois Steeplechase in my reply to your query on the Thoroughbred industry in Tennessee. The $150,000 mid-May event near Nashville is three miles, twice around the weeds with eighty feet of altitude change, with a three-furlong stretch run up a fifty foot hill.
Tax Ruling, a Phipps bred bay gelding by Dynaformer out of G-I winning Prospector daughter Fantastic Find, defeated Eclipse Award winning Slip Away for the second year in a row on 14 May. This brings to mind Tesio’s remark to Piet DeWeerd to the effect that stallions that can stay and carry weight must be put over fast mares, but not the other way around. Piet notes that Tesio did not say why. Like all who suffer from Triple Crown Disorder, TCD, I simply lack recall until days post race.
The aide-memoire that restarted my brain was a ruling by the long-defunct Clover Bottom Jockey Club stating that all dogs brought to the track would be shot without respect to the owner, a stern decree in the very early eighteen hundreds when Tennesseeans went well heeled if they valued their scalp and given that dogs gave the alarm and often led the counter attacks on the daily Indian raids hereabouts. Dogs chasing race horses, race horses chasing dogs, fox hunt, steeplechase. DUH!!
Like Dynaformer, these mounts seem to be throwbacks to a harsher time when best three out of five, four mile heats, with full size rider and stirrup lengths for stability, won the day. Peversely scorned for their soundness of bone, these chasers are a promise that, sleeping within the breed, is still the beast of bone, blood and bottom. Neither Stuart or Forest would have despised them; yet, even by then, the dilution of war horse with race horse was sufficient for the pragmatic General Crook to prefer a mule for a campaign of rigor.
It’s useful, from time to time , to consider that all this racing and chasing had its origin in mounted mayhem that required perfect horses, the object being to to catch and hew opponents with swords, and failing to capture them for ransom, render them a headless horseman. That I forgot and most would yawn at a race with no wagers and near six minutes for time, highlights how we are corrupted by instant gratification for horse players and owners to whom you could not give the sires of Shackleford or Animal Kingdom if they had to pick out the stall and carry feed and water themselves.
My father being orphaned when small, my connection to the Kentucky Culpeppers is obscure; however, during the secession war, my great grandpa rode with the grim 8th East Tennessee union cavalry, while his twin brother apparently rode with Forest’s 3rd Cav, a parable of itself, how fate toys with even the most consistent line breeding and environment. With antecedents like these, perhaps I could not help but ride a chesnut filly from Knoxville, across the Cumberlands, down into the Nashville Basin, any more than I can help a sneer at the sport when owners and trainers gain prestige through a razor-edged balance beween drug-induced osteoporosis/osteopenia and large bone shattering muscle produced by steroids illegal for every other sport, and jockeys likewise with bones brittle from diuretics and also with immune systems fried from malnutrition, while black type is won and foals gotten by glass house stallions and bone china mares. It seems fitting that the site of the Clover Bottom Jockey Club is now the home of the Tennessee Institute for the Feeble Minded, albeit with a gentler name nowadays.
Regards from the opinionated farmer.
Omigosh! An American writer has actually given Japanese racing its due. I totally agree that they consistently have some of the highest class racing in the world…and without medication…so they have to BREED horses that stay sound, don’t bleed, etc. Sunday Silence would have been a great sire anywhere in the world, in my opinion, but the professionalism of the Japanese helped because he did not start out being the easiest horse to handle. The Americans were always happy to have the money from Japan to purchase our top breeding stock but then have seemed unwilling to recognize that those same wonderful American horses could produce good stock in Japan…not even worthy of reporting earnings in our sales catalogs.
Interesting, don’t ya think?
Claudia –
While I am sympathetic to the thrust of your comment, Japanese racing has, for the most part, been highly restricted to domestic bred horses. Also, their purse structures have been far out of alignment with the rest of the world.
So, in that context, it has been somewhat reasonable for sales catalogues to include only those few stakes races that were open to foreign bred runners.
Claudia,
A member of the SITA committee told me that as the Japanese open more races to international competition, then more will then be given group designations for cataloging purposes.
The carrot approach, from what I’m told.
Frank
Hmmmm… I understand the need for stakes races to be unrestricted as long as that is also the cataloguing standard for the rest of the world. However, what bothers me is that we don’t want to report the race earnings of the Japanese horses in our catalogues because their purse structure is so strong. This is something all of us in racing should aspire to, rather than sweep under the rug, when someone else succeeds in adequately rewarding racing’s participants for their investments and efforts. Let’s try to be more like the Japanese in this respect rather than act like they don’t exist except when they come to buy our horses.
Yes, if we could set up our racing to be as financially productive as the sport in Japan, everyone would be MUCH better off. To do so, the JC or a government bureau would have to run the show, and they would RUN it.
The sport in Japan is nothing close to being as open as in the US or in most of Europe, where most anyone can play so long as they don’t transgress too publicly. But that might not be all bad either.
Hi there!
I just noticed your website: best non-winner of the triple crown « bloodstock in the bluegrass when I was browsing stumbleupon.
com. It looks as though someone loved your blog so much they decided to bookmark it – good job!