arch achieving more

Tags

arch, blame, claiborne farm, love theway youare, stallion management, vanity handicap

The following post first appeared earlier this week at Paulick Report.

Love Theway Youare (by Arch) picked a fine time to win a Grade 1 stakes with her victory on Saturday in the Vanity Handicap. The two and a half-length victory over Include Me Out (Include) also represented more than six lengths’ difference in form from her March 17 second to Include Me Out in the G1 Santa Margarita.

On the evidence of these two races, both Love Theway Youare and Include Me Out are very good fillies, and Love Theway Youare suggested she was even sharper than before with a five-furlong work in :58 3/5, which was the best of 14 at the distance on June 7.

Both fillies are also daughters of Kentucky stallions who might be described as underdogs or “dark horses” in the wildly competitive business of sires who are commercial enough for market breeders to use as mates for their better mares and successful enough to buck the tide of interest in breeding to the new crop of entering stallions each spring.

It’s hard to imagine the sire of two North American champions and a pair of highweight racers overseas as a dark horse of the stallion ranks, but that title describes Claiborne Farm’s Arch both literally and figuratively.

He is, as a son of leading sire Kris S. and the Danzig mare Aurora, a tall and good-looking and quite dark horse that Seth Hancock picked out of the 1996 Keeneland July selected yearling sale as an outstanding individual who looked like the type of horse who could become an important addition to the Claiborne stallion roster.

Following a good racing career in which he won five of seven starts, including the G1 Super Derby, Arch entered stud at Claiborne in 1999 and sired the English highweighted sprinter Les Arcs in his first crop. The stallion’s most recent champion is 2010 Eclipse Award winner Blame, who was champion older horse after defeating Quality Road in the G1 Whitney at Saratoga and then becoming the only horse ever to finish in front of Zenyatta in winning the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Blame set his sire on a roll which has continued with last year’s Arkansas Derby winner Archarcharch, now at stud at Spendthrift in Kentucky, and that swell of success has continued with even greater force this season.

Arch’s major stakes winners this year include Hymn Book (G1 Donn), Newsdad (G2 Pan American), Bauble Queen (G2 Robert Frankel H.), Rothko (G3 Aristides), and now Love Theway Youare.

In addition, from his third crop of foals, Arch sired the winning mare Arch’s Gal Edith, and her son I’ll Have Another won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness this year, putting Arch prominently among the leading broodmare sires.

All these good horses have brought Arch’s popularity to a strong simmer, and he stands for a $30,000 fee to a full book of mares annually. Claiborne also stands Arch’s champion son, and getting a son who carries on for him would be an important box for Arch to mark in the “great stallion sweepstakes” that plays year after year for stallions and the people who manage them.

Among the proven strengths of this line of horses descending from Turn-to and his champion son Hail to Reason through English Derby winner Roberto is versatility. They have speed, and they typically can carry it two turns. Frequently they are better horses with the ability to compete at a higher class in those two-turn races. These are horses who show ability on turf, on dirt, on synthetic.

In the case of Arch, this versatility and quality was grafted onto the speed and fine energy of leading international sire Danzig and champion 2yo filly Althea through their talented daughter Aurora. The latter was a sensational workhorse at New York tracks in 1991-1992, and she showed high speed and a certain amount of mental volatility in the afternoons.

The winner of seven races, but only one stakes, Aurora gave the appearance of an immensely talented filly who somehow had managed not to show her best when it counted most. Still she was very quick, an obvious broodmare prospect of significance, and she proved all that and more, as she has produced four stakes winners to date, including UAE Horse of the Year Festival of Light (A.P. Indy), G1 winner Acoma (Empire Maker), G1 winner Arch, and listed winner Alisios (Kris S.).

Arch’s female family, going back through champion Althea to the wonderful producer Courtly Dee, is one of the mightiest in the stud book, and in the stallion’s most recent G1 winner, we find a correspondingly strong female family.

Love Theway Youare is out of the stakes-winning Tabasco Cat mare Diversa, with mighty Sabin as her third dam. This is the family of Ole Liz that has rewarded the cultivation of breeders for decades.

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kentucky derby winner shows it’s ‘all in the family’

Tags

arch, arch's gal edith, claiborne farm, classic winner, distorted humor, economics of breeding, flower alley, harvey clarke, i'll have another, Kentucky Derby, Rob Whiteley, steve shahinian, three chimneys farm

The following post first appeared earlier this week at Paulick Report.

Winning a classic puts the shine on any pedigree, but the luster from I’ll Have Another’s success in Saturday’s Grade 1 Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs could not have come at a more opportune time for the colt’s sire, the young stallion Flower Alley, whose second crop are now 3-year-olds.

From the third crop by leading sire Distorted Humor, Flower Alley followed his sire’s classic winner, champion Funny Cide, and second-crop star, multiple G1-winner Commentator, but was the first top-class son of Distorted Humor who was a colt and could go to stud. Now, Flower Alley is the first son of Distorted Humor to sire a classic winner.

The chestnut son of Distorted Humor hit his greatest stroke on the racetrack with victory in the G1 Travers Stakes, and on the basis of that and other good form, he went to stud at Three Chimneys Farm for an initial stud fee of $25,000 live foal.

I’ll Have Another was one of 73 live foals bred on that stud fee from covers of 2008 (in the midst of the world economic crash) that were born in 2009, and the economic nail through Flower Alley’s coffin came the following year at the 2010 yearling sales when 39 yearlings – more than half his second crop – sold for an average of $15,674 and a median price of $11,000.

In one of the ironies of sales statistics and racing lore, I’ll Have Another was the median Flower Alley yearling at the sales. On the track, he has proven something entirely different.

So, for many breeders and observers, it’s a puzzle why Flower Alley’s stock was not better received at the sales.

Rob Whiteley of Liberation Farm bred a number of mares to the stallion from the beginning of his stud career and confesses to being puzzled also. He said, “The sales market is a mysterious thing and is often disconnected from the racetrack and from racing performance. The sales market is driven by word of mouth and hearsay from opinion-makers who often have their own agendas, and rather than cherishing a commitment to facts, seem to look through lenses that do not reflect reality. The one fact about the market that I’ve observed over 40 years is that it’s usually wrong. And breeders and buyers that didn’t line up for Flower Alley sure missed the boat. He earned my full respect when he defeated Grade 1 racehorses like Bellamy Road and Roman Ruler in the Travers, then ran second to Saint Liam in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Now he looks ready to take off with G1 winner Lilacs and Lace in his first crop and with the Kentucky Derby winner in his second crop.”

In contrast to the later reception of his yearlings at auction, the tall and scopy stallion found interest from breeders in his initial books, and among the promising young mares attracted to Flower Alley’s second season at stud was the dam of I’ll Have Another, Arch’s Gal Edith, a reference to the wife of television character Archie Bunker.

Steve Shahinian, adviser to breeder Harvey Clarke, said that “Freddie Seitz from Brookdale Farm suggested the mating of Flower Alley for Arch’s Gal Edith that produced I’ll Have Another. If you couldn’t breed to Distorted Humor, you could breed to Flower Alley, and he’s a horse who could go a classic distance, which we wanted.”

The dam of I’ll Have Another was always a well-intended young prospect. By the good sire Arch, whose most famous offspring is champion Blame, Arch’s Gal Edith made only one start, winning a maiden special at Belmont by three-quarters of a length in 1:11.58 for six furlongs.

Said Shahinian: “We thought a lot of this filly. I believed she was stakes caliber, and she trained like it.”

She had been lightly raced by chance, but not precisely from unsoundness. The filly showed enough ability at the sales of 2-year-olds in training to sell for $80,000 but, once sent to the trainer, fractured a hock from kicking the wall of her stall. Then after winning her maiden, she developed a small chip in an ankle, and the surgery to clean it out did not resolve smoothly, necessitating retirement.

Although the oddities of chance intervened in what promised to be a good racing career, Arch’s Gal Edith has produced three good winners from her first three foals, and the Kentucky Derby winner is her first black-type horse.

Breeder Clarke still has the mare and has a 2-year-old Tapit filly out of the mare named Gloria S, a reference to the daughter of Archie and Edith Bunker. Arch’s Gal Edith was given the following year off after foaling the Tapit, and earlier this year had a Midnight Lute foal that did not survive a difficult delivery. The mare was bred back to champion Gio Ponti about a week ago.

The sire of Arch’s Gal Edith is the Claiborne Farm stallion Arch, and stepping back a generation on the bottom and two generations on the top, this is a very Claiborne pedigree, as both champion juvenile Forty Niner (sire of Distorted Humor), second in the 1988 Kentucky Derby, and major winner Arch raced for the Hancock family’s Bourbon County operation.

Whereas Forty Niner was a homebred who became a champion and leading sire, Arch was purchased by Seth Hancock at the Keeneland July select yearling sale as a racing and stallion prospect who could offer some bloodlines and aptitude that would suit Claiborne well if the robust colt proved himself the real thing on the racetrack.

Arch was more than capable as a racer, winning the G1 Super Derby at 10 furlongs, and he has been increasingly successful as a sire. From the rather stout male line of Hail to Reason, English Derby winner Roberto, and his son leading sire Kris S., Arch tends to get stock that mature well and show their best form going a mile or more. In amongst ’em, however, Arch will get some speedier animals, such as the European G1 sprint winner Les Arcs, as well as the more typical Alabama winner Pine Island, Donn Handicap winner Hymn Book, Pan American winner Newsdad, and Arkansas Derby winner Archarcharch.

This mating, in general terms, is a matching of speed with stamina, sturdiness with brilliance, and natural athleticism with perseverance. As I’ll Have Another showed through the stretch of the Derby on Saturday, he came to play with the right stuff.

hymn book becomes eighth g1 winner for arch in donn

Tags

arch, claiborne farm, hymn book, shug mcgaughey, sire success, stuart janney iii, types of racehorses

The following post appeared earlier this week at Paulick Report.

The winner of Saturday’s Grade 1 Donn Handicap at Gulfstream was Hymn Book, who scored by a nose over Mission Impazible (by Unbridled’s Song). The homebred son of Arch, bred and raced by Stuart Janney III, has progressed so much over the past 18 months that he was able to defeat two classic winners (Shackleford and Ruler on Ice) in the Donn, as well as one of the very best older horses from last year, Flat Out (Flatter).

In fact, Hymn Book signaled the direction his form was taking with a solid second to Flat Out in last summer’s G2 Suburban Handicap at Belmont Park. Although beaten by 6 1/2 lengths in the Suburban, Hymn Book was in the mix with the better horses last season, and as the year progressed, so did his form.

In October, Hymn Book won the Firethorn at Belmont, and the following month, he ran a salty second behind To Honour and Serve in the G1 Cigar Mile at Aqueduct. Clearly, the dark brown gelding out of Vespers (Known Fact) was taking steps in the right direction, and the Donn was his seasonal debut as a 6-year-old.

Improvement with age tends to be one of the qualities associated with the progeny of Hymn Book’s sire, the Kris S. stallion Arch, who stands at Claiborne Farm, and among Arch’s other upwardly mobile sons and daughters we find champions Arravale, Pine Island, and Blame.

Blame and Hymn Book are contemporaries; both are now 6. But whereas Blame showed himself a racer of high ability through the latter half of his 3-year-old season and progressed to championship level as a 4-year-old, at that time Hymn Book was still getting his act together.

An important change in moving Hymn Book forward as a racehorse was gelding him. In comments following the Donn, trainer Shug McGaughey said that Hymn Book wouldn’t have become a really good horse without being gelded, and now Hymn Book has made all the steps from maiden special winner to G1 winner.

Hymn Book is the eighth G1 winner by his sire, and the progeny of Arch generally show a preference for going two turns, as well as improving with maturity. In the extent of his improvement with age, Hymn Book is most like Les Arcs, another Arch gelding who became one of the early stars for his sire.

Racing primarily in Europe, Les Arcs progressed to win a pair of G1s at 6: the July Cup and Golden Jubilee Stakes in 2006. The same year, he was the highweight older horse in England from five to seven furlongs.

That Les Arcs was a sprinter also points out the range of talents that Arch can impart to his offspring. They are not dead-head plodders who only get into the game once the field has gone 10 or 12 furlongs. They can have some pace, can finish with power, and tend to act on turf or on dirt.

Prior to last fall, when Hymn Book won the Firethorn and ran so well in the Cigar, most of the gelding’s success had come racing on turf. One of the reasons that he would seem a natural for that surface is his broodmare sire Known Fact, who inherited victory in the 1980 2,000 Guineas on the disqualification of Nureyev. A good sire of 54 stakes winners, Known Fact got numerous horses with versatility who showed form on turf, including stakes winner Vespers, the dam of Hymn Book.

A winner in six of her 33 starts, Vespers won two restricted stakes and ran third in three more for earnings of $261,494. She is one of two stakes winners out of the Deputy Minister mare Sunset Service. The other is a full sister named Database.

Hymn Book is the first foal of his dam, and she had two blank years after, not bred and barren. Vespers has a 3-year-old colt by Eddington named Temako, a juvenile colt by the leading young sire War Front named Surging, and a yearling filly by Malibu Moon named Lunar Evening.

archarcharch evidence of vinery’s new growth

Tags

arch, archarcharch, arkansas derby, broodmare sires, congrats, frances relihan, grapestock, kodiak kowboy, more than ready, Oaklawn Park, racehorse breeding, tom ludt, tom simon, vinery, woodman, woodman's dancer

The post below was published earlier this week at PaulickReport.

Although best-known as a stallion station standing such sires as international star More Than Ready, 2010 leading freshman sire Congrats, and champion sprinter Kodiak Kowboy, Vinery also breeds horses, and Archarcharch became the farm’s most important winner with his victory on Saturday in the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park.

Farm president Tom Ludt said “a Grade 1 win for a million-dollar purse would be the fanciest win for our breeding program, although we did sell the dam.”

The progressive colt was bred by Grapestock, which Ludt said is the “name of the entity that holds all of [Vinery owner] Tom Simon’s equine assets. It functions as a client of Vinery, like any other on the farm.”

Grapestock and Vinery work to strike a balance between the businesses of breeding and racing for Simon, who races a stable under the Vinery name and breeds yearlings for the commercial market. “We have bred most of our mares commercially for years,” Ludt said, “and although we race a stable, we mostly buy those at sales as yearlings by our own stallions.”

With those considerations as a stallion farm and racing stable, it is a bit surprising that Archarcharch is not by a farm stallion.

Instead, the colt is by Claiborne stallion Arch, also the sire of 2010 champion older horse Blame, and on the surface, the mating would not appear an obvious choice for a mare from Vinery. But Vinery’s assistant general manager Frances Relihan said the mating was a very good physical match.

Woodman’s Dancer, the dam of Archarcharch, Relihan said, “is a typical Woodman: very strong body, stands about 15.3 hands, and correct. We felt she needed more leg and substance; so we sent her to Arch, were pleased with the result, and bred her back to him the next year.”

In fact, the folks at Vinery were so pleased with Archarcharch as a young horse that they brought back his dam from the 2008 Keeneland November sale to get the second foal by Arch, then sold the mare in foal to farm stallion Silver Train at the 2009 November sale.

When Archarcharch arrived, Relihan noted that he was a “pretty good-sized foal whose only problem was a contracted left hind leg. But the veterinarians at Rood & Riddle put a splint on it, and he progressed nicely. He had good balance and a good hip and body type.”

In sum, Archarcharch was a well-proportioned and athletic young horse who looked the part he has come to play. The mating with Arch gave the colt greater leg length and resulting scope, and Archarcharch has shown increasing ability as he matures and races over longer distances.

A dark horse in color, as well as in general prospects for the classics, Archarcharch held on to win his most important race to date by a neck over the Mineshaft colt Nehro at Oaklawn. One of 28 stakes winners by his sire Arch, Archarcharch is the second stakes winner from Woodman’s Dancer.

The dark bay daughter of Woodman also produced Run Sully Run (by Cherokee Run) from her first five foals to race. A much better-than-average stakes-placed runner, Woodman’s Dancer earned $298,486 and placed in five stakes, including the G2 A Gleam Handicap and G3 Las Flores.

Woodman’s Dancer sold for $35,000 at the 2009 Keeneland November breeding stock sale in foal to Silver Train. The buyer was the Stallion Company, and the mare produced a chestnut colt in 2010. The mare was resold privately to a partnership, and she was bred back to US Ranger (by Danzig) in May last year.

The mare’s dam is the G1 winner Pattern Step (by Nureyev), one of the last G1 winners bred by Nelson Bunker Hunt before his bloodstock empire was dispersed.

woodman’s dancer: dam of arkansas derby winner archarcharch

Tags

arch, archarcharch, nelson bunker hunt

The female family of Archarcharch is the product of large operations that primarily bred to race, with perhaps the best being G1 Hollywood Oaks winner Pattern Step (by Nureyev), who was bred by Nelson Bunker Hunt. The details follow:

1st Dam: Woodman’s Dancer, dkbbr, 1994. Bred by Evergreen Thoroughbreds, Inc. (KY). Raced 4 yrs in NA, 19 sts, 5 wins, $298,486 (ssi = 8.56). 2nd Desert Stormer Handicap, Soviet Problem Handicap, Morgaise Handicap (R); 3rd A Gleam Handicap (gr. 2), Las Flores Handicap (gr. 3). ($35,000, 2009, keenov, brdmr)

2003:	Fever, dkbbr g, by Dixieland Band. Raced 4 yrs in NA, 17 sts, 3 wins, $37,404 (ssi = 0.94). ($120,000, 2004, ftsaug, yrlg; $52,000, 2006, besjan, rac age)
2004:	Weekend Fling, dkbbr f, by Forest Wildcat. Raced 2 yrs in Eng, 6 sts, 1 win, $11,588. ($120,000, 2005, keesep, yrlg; $121,663, 2007, tatjul, rac age)
2005:	RUN SULLY RUN, dkbbr c, by Cherokee Run. Raced 4 yrs in NA, 20 sts, 4 wins, $167,069 (ssi = 2.46). Won Gilded Time S.; 2nd Inaugural S.; 3rd Continental Mile S., Lamplighter S., Tyro S. ($65,000, 2006, keesep, yrlg; $130,000, 2007, ftmmay, 2yo)
2006:	Black Salix, dkbbr f, by More Than Ready. Raced 2 yrs in Eng, 7 sts, 0 wins, $754. ($75,000, 2007, keesep, yrlg)
2007:	No record.
2008:	ARCHARCHARCH. ($60,000, 2009, keesep, yrlg)
	At 2: Won Sugar Bowl S.
	At 3: Won Southwest S. (gr. 3), Arkansas Derby (gr. 1); 3rd Rebel S. (gr. 2).
2009:	Androeah, b f, by Arch. Unraced in NA, Eng, and Fr. ($30,000, 2010, keesep, yrlg)
2010:	Unnamed foal, ch c, by Silver Train.

Broodmare sire: WOODMAN, ch, 1983-2007. Sire of 588 dams of 2611 foals, 2039 rnrs (78%), 1292 wnrs (49%), 395 2yo wnrs (15%), 171 sw (7%).

2nd Dam: PATTERN STEP, b, 1985. Bred by Hunt Nelson Bunker (KY). Raced 2 yrs in NA, 12 sts, 5 wins, $273,225 (ssi = 20.79). Won Hollywood Oaks (gr. 1), Providencia S. (R); 2nd Honeymoon Handicap (gr. 3), Santa Ysabel S. (R), Senorita S.; 4th Santa Anita Oaks (gr. 1). Dam of SEATTLE PATTERN (c, Seattle Slew. $206,993, Won Awesome Again S.), TOTAL BULL (c, Fusaichi Pegasus. $128,800, Won Fifth Season S.).

Hunt bred Pattern Step from Tipping Time, probably the best daughter of the imported stallion Commanding. This reliance on quality in the family and frequent use of unusual imported lines was a hallmark of the Hunt breeding patterns that gained him success for decades.

blame: new ky stallions for 2011

Tags

arch, bc classic, blame, broadway, buckpasser, champion older horse, complimentary mating, courtly dee, female families, haynesfield, new stallions for 2011, physique in racehorses, quality in racehorses, rough shod, seeking the gold, thong, zenyatta

Blame (2006 b by Arch x Liable, by Seeking the Gold)

Claiborne $35,000

With his first two mares covered confirmed in foal this week, Blame is continuing his new career with the quiet and untroubled success he demonstrated during his seasons on the track.

Neither a star at 2 nor a Triple Crown colt at 3, Blame did not catch the headlines of many in his age group until his continued victories propelled him to be one of the contenders in the division among older horses last year. Then victory in the Whitney over Quality Road put the bay son of Arch at the top of the tree.

Blame stubbed his toe in the Jockey Club Gold Cup, when Haynesfield got awful brave on the lead, and Blame didn’t manage to run down the chestnut son of Distorted Humor Speightstown.

That set the stage for Blame to be almost overlooked in the buildup to the BC Classic, when all eyes and news outlets were focused on Zenyatta. So Blame earned more fame in the last two minutes of his racing career than he found in the preceding two years. No fault of his; that’s just how it worked out.

A really handsome horse, Blame is the type to be of great interest to breeders. The son of Arch stands over a lot of ground, has plenty of bone with well-defined tendons, is neither coarse nor gross in body type, and has the scope that made him a natural 10-furlong horse.

In physical type, he shows much more the influence of Buckpasser through his broodmare sire Seeking the Gold, a son of Mr Prospector out of Buckpasser mare Con Game.

I was expecting more evidence of Kris S and Hail to Reason in the horse’s physique, judging from the power Blame showed on the racetrack, but he is much more finesse and finely tuned precision in the flesh. He has a very good head with a game, bold eye, and the quality from Seeking the Gold and Buckpasser shines through.

Also, Blame has a great pedigree. On top, the family is the great Helen Alexander/King Ranch female line from Courtly Dee (by Never Bend) through her champion daughter Althea (by Alydar). Seeking the Gold comes from one of the several great Phipps families, this through Broadway, dam also of champion Queen of the Stage and her very high-class brother Reviewer (both by Bold Ruler). And the bottom line is Claiborne’s own Rough Shod through Thong, Special, Bound, and Liable.

Nice.

Since standing Thong’s full brother Ridan in the mid-1960s, Claiborne has stood only one stallion from this family: the Northern Dancer horse Topsider from the branch of Rough Shod through her daughter Gambetta.

In selecting mares for Blame, he will move up mares needing quality. He would be assisted by mares with more speed, which never goes out of fashion, and lines complimentary to the families above (say Forty Niner, Northern Dancer, Caro) could add some spark to the resulting offspring.

blame has a special family

Tags

arch, blame, claiborne farm, fairy bridge, gamely corp., liable, moccasin, nureyev, ridan, rough shod, sadler's wells, seth hancock, special, thong

The following post appeared earlier this week at Paulick Report.

With his game victory in the Grade 1 Whitney Stakes, Blame widened and deepened the breeder base that will support him when the colt goes to stud at Claiborne Farm, which is the co-owner and co-breeder of the 4-year-old with Adele Dilschneider.

By the Claiborne stallion Arch, Blame (click here for his pedigree) is from the famous female family of Rough Shod, renowned for producing stallions, including such stars as Nureyev and Sadler’s Wells.

One peculiarity of this family’s fame is that Claiborne bred several major stars from the family, including European champions Thatch and Apalachee, as well as Nureyev and the dam of Sadler’s Wells, but the historic Kentucky farm has stood only one high-end stallion from this family.

That horse was the grand-looking bay Ridan, the second of Rough Shod’s four stakes winners. The others were Ridan’s younger full siblings Lt. Stevens and champion Moccasin, as well as their half-sister Gambetta (the dam of champion Gamely for whom William Haggin Perry’s Gamely Corp. was named).

Ridan was bred by Thomas Girdler, president of Republic Steel and a longtime Claiborne client who sold the colt to Moody Jolley and then sold Ridan’s dam and half-sister Gambetta to Claiborne in early 1961.

Racing for Jolley and partners Ernest Woods and John Greer, Ridan was unbeaten at 2, won the Florida Derby and Blue Grass at 3, and started favorite in the Kentucky Derby (finishing third) and the Preakness (second).

The combination of Ridan’s dominating personality and outstanding speed made the big bay a favorite with racing fans, and when retired to stud, Ridan enjoyed some success at Claiborne, with 31 stakes winners (9%), and his best American-raced offspring might have been Favorecidian (John B. Campbell Handicap) before the stallion’s export to stand in Europe.

The recommendation in Bull Hancock’s will that returned Claiborne-bred yearlings to the sales ring after 20 years as a home-breeding operation put some of the best stock from this family up for auction as yearlings, including Apalachee and Gamely’s son Cellini, both Group 1 winners in England.

And the big-race successes from horses from this family helped fuel European demand for American-bred stock to a fever pitch.

In addition to the foals out of Moccasin, interest was very high for those of her full sister Thong, who did not win a stakes race but did run second in the Alcibiades at Keeneland.

A year younger than her champion sister, Thong produced an even better series of performers than Moccasin. Thong’s second foal was Thatch (by Forli), winner of the July Cup, Sussex Stakes, and St James’s Palace; her third was Lisadell (Forli), winner of the Coronation Stakes; fourth was King Pellinore (Round Table), second in the Irish Derby and the St Leger at Doncaster, winner of the Champions Invitational and Oak Tree Invitational in the States; and fifth was the very aggressive Maryinsky (Northern Dancer), who finished first in record time for the July Cup but was disqualified to second for trying to eat the competition and then banned permanently from racing in England.

Thong’s first foal was a filly with much better manners. Named Special, she was by Forli and a full sister to Thatch and Lisadell. Special raced once, bled, was retired and bred.

Seth Hancock once told me that he might have sold Special as a first foal who didn’t accomplish anything on the track, except for the fact that people at the track told him “she can really run.”

Retained for the Claiborne broodmare band as part of its partnership with the Gamely Corp., Special produced foals initially for the commercial market, and among those was her second foal, the Bold Reason mare Fairy Bridge (later dam of Sadler’s Wells and Fairy King) and her third foal, a small but beautifully balanced and dynamic little bay who sold for $1 million at the Keeneland July sale.

Later named Nureyev, he never finished behind another horse but was disqualified from first in the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket for interference.

By the time that Special produced her fifth and seventh foals, Claiborne had returned to breeding and racing its own stock and kept the mare’s two other graded stakes winners, Number and Bound, both by English Triple Crown winner Nijinsky.

Bound, a smaller and typier mare than her full sister, produced beautiful yearlings, and when she sold at the Gamely Corp. dispersal in January 1998, Bound topped the sale at $2.2 million, going to Coolmore. For the Irish organization this family has helped so much, Bound foaled her best runner, international star Archipenko (by Kingmambo), when she was 20.

One of her earlier good performers was the Seeking the Gold mare Liable, who had enough talent to finish second and third in listed company.

As a broodmare, however, Liable has done better and has produced two stakes winners from four foals. Blame is notably the best so far. The mare has a 2-year-old full sister to the Whitney winner named Might and has a filly of 2010 by Tiznow.

(For an additional perspective on the pedigree and influences of Blame, see Sid Fernando’s piece.)

blame is star for sire arch

Tags

adele dilschneider and claiborne farm, arch, aurora, blame, championship contenders, claiborne farm, danzig, les arcs, quality road, rachel alexandra, seeking the gold, seth hancock, top older horses 2010, zenyatta

This story was published earlier this week at Paulick Report.

More than the weather is heating things up. Rachel Alexandra and Zenyatta both showed their form in victory over the weekend, Quality Road reinforced the evidence that he is the best older colt in America with his Metropolitan Handicap a fortnight ago, and now Blame has won his seventh race from 10 starts with a game effort in the Grade I Stephen Foster at Churchill Downs on Saturday.

This is a spectacular older division, loaded with talent and drama of the sort that most sports would kill to have for their headlines.

Blame is the late-comer to this party, but the 4-year-old son of Arch and the Seeking the Gold mare Liable indicated that he might rise to heights like this with his development through the second half of 2009.  (Click here for Blame’s pedigree.)

Bred and raced by Adele Dilschneider and Claiborne Farm, Blame is the partners’ biggest single success from a project that Claiborne entered into nearly 15 years ago.

At the Keeneland July select yearling sale in 1996, Claiborne president Seth Hancock set himself a serious task: to find a yearling colt with the physical qualities and pedigree that could make a good stallion … after he succeeded on the racetrack.

As Hancock himself admitted at the time, it was a tall order, but the program at Claiborne was built around breeding, buying, and standing stallions. So Hancock went out and got the best prospect he could find, and other yearling selectors wish they had done so well.

For $710,000, Hancock bought the first foal out of the very fast Danzig mare Aurora, herself the third foal out of champion juvenile filly Althea (by Alydar), who was one of eight stakes winners from the great broodmare Courtly Dee (by Never Bend).

For depth of family, Arch was outstanding, and this is a family Helen Alexander has cultivated at Middlebrook Farm and that has proven a gold mine of talented and highly marketable individuals.

When Aurora proved more limited for stamina than her top-class dam, winning only a single listed stakes, Alexander sent the young mare to the very promising Roberto horse Kris S., who had been moved to Kentucky to stand at what was then called Prestonwood Farm (now WinStar), following the successes of the stallion’s early crops in Florida.

Kris S. was impressing breeders with the size and scope of his stock, as well as the blessed combination of speed and stamina that the best of them possessed. Among his early offspring, Prized (Turf) and Hollywood Wildcat (Distaff) won Breeders’ Cup events, and among the later offspring, Kris S. got leading turf mare Soaring Softly, Santa Anita Handicap winner Rock Hard Ten, and English Derby winner Kris Kin.

So the mating added stamina and turf potential to a very fast young mare who raced successfully on dirt and probably needed a bit more physical hardiness.

Both at the yearling sale and during his racing career, Arch appeared to get the best from both of his parents, having enough speed to win his debut at 2, then winning four of his subsequent six starts at 3, including the G1 Super Derby at 10 furlongs.

Sent to stud at Claiborne, Arch has withstood the slings and arrows of commercial fortune and has emerged as one of the sires breeders can depend upon for strength and scope and bone.

Overall, Arch has managed to overcome preconceptions about the aptitudes for his offspring and become a respected sire who produces a solid percentage of high-class racers.

One of the first to reach the top was, of all things, an English-trained sprinter named Les Arcs. A winner twice at the Group 1 level, Les Arcs showed his best form in winning the July Cup. He was a top turf sprinter with an excellent turn of foot.

Les Arcs was unusual for Arch’s stock because the stallion does not get many sprinters. Instead, most of his offspring show plenty of improvement with age and distance.

Arravale and Pine Island – both foals of 2003 – proved that Arch could sire top-tier performers in America, too. Arravale won the Grade 1 E.P. Taylor and Del Mar Oaks, and Pine Island won the Grade 1 Alabama and Gazelle.

As a sire, Arch has proven more versatile than many breeders would have expected. Instead of channeling the turf talents and late maturity so common among this line of sires from Hail to Reason and Roberto to Kris S., Arch has responded well when mated with lines that have speed and class, such as Liable, a daughter of the Mr. Prospector stallion Seeking the Gold from the great Claiborne family descending from Rough Shod.

Arch has built upon this rich genetic legacy, and with nine crops of racing age, the stallion has sired 26 stakes winners and 27 stakes-placed racers, a hair more than 10 percent of his offspring. Those are the statistics of a useful sire, but he is a really good sire when mated to the right lines and types of mares.