shackleford continues the classic legacy of unbridled

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belvedere farm, bentley smith, bill cubbedge, birdstone, breeding for the classics, classic bloodlines, empire maker, fappiano, forestry, gana facil, grindstone, horse of the year, intuitive horsemanship, Kentucky Derby, lady joanne, leonard reggio, lincoln collins, marty takacs, michael hernon, mike lauffer, my meadowview farm, oatsee, preakness stakes, red bullet, shackleford, tartan dispersal, unbridled

The following post was published earlier this week at Paulick Report.

Shackleford’s victory in the Preakness Stakes affirmed that Storm Cat’s son Forestry could sire a classic horse, and once more showed us the important classic influence of Kentucky Derby winner and Horse of the Year Unbridled.

The latter sired winners of each Triple Crown race. His son Grindstone won the Kentucky Derby; Red Bullet won the Preakness; and Empire Maker won the Belmont Stakes. More recently, Grindstone’s son Birdstone won the Belmont Stakes and has sired Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird and Belmont winner Summer Bird.

The massive bay son of Fappiano, however, was lost to complications of colic surgery far too young, but his sons and daughters are continuing to produce successful racehorses. Unbridled’s daughter Oatsee is the dam of Shackleford and two other important stakes winners, Lady Joanne and Baghdaria.

And to a great degree, the story of Shackleford is also the story of Bentley Smith’s involvement in breeding and racing Thoroughbreds. Gainesway Farm’s Michael Hernon said, “Bentley Smith made a great move years ago to buy Unbridled as a foal out of the Tartan dispersal.”

Smith purchased Unbridled for the stable of his mother-in-law Frances Genter, who raced the classic winner and champion. He purchased both the weanling and his dam, the Le Fabuleux mare Gana Facil, at the dispersal for the Genter Stable.

Those actions had monumental importance for the stable, as well as for Smith himself. Unbridled became a classic winner and champion, his dam produced Wood Memorial winner Cahill Road the following year, and Smith became ever more deeply involved in breeding.

Hernon recalled that Smith “was a great intuitive breeder and worked hard on his matings. He was a real good horseman who was very low key about it but bred and developed successful families. He wasn’t led by the market but rather by his knowledge of the horses and the gene pools. He bred to stallions who weren’t always the most commercial, and they realized considerable rewards over the years. He gravitated toward soundness in his selections and racing class.

“As he was developing families, he took great pleasure at looking at his foals and was always willing to give a horse a chance, and I did feel he wasn’t too perturbed if a horse wasn’t an ideal specimen early in life. He would often say, ‘Oh, he’ll come right in time,’ and in many cases he was right.’

He was a breeder who put himself in the way of good luck by having good, athletic racehorses. And when Smith sold off his bloodstock, the buyers put themselves in the same position, especially those who purchased Smith’s Unbridled mare Oatsee.

In the early phase of dispersing his Thoroughbred holdings, Smith sold Shackleford’s dam Oatsee at the 2006 Keeneland January sale for $135,000 to Belvedere Farm, agent for Mike Lauffer and Bill Cubbedge. The big, rangy stakes-placed mare was well-bought at that price, and when her then-2-year-old daughter Lady Joanne (by Orientate) became a Grade 1 winner, Oatsee became a precious commodity indeed.

Marty Takacs, owner of Belvedere Farm, said that he and the purchasing partners “got real lucky, bought her on Tuesday, and on Saturday Baghdaria (the mare’s stakes winner by Royal Academy) won the Silverbulletday. When Lady Joanne came along, it got serious. She’s really a good mare, but she’s not a mare who throws what they want at the sales. Shackleford was the best foal we had out of her,” and he RNAed for $275,000 at the 2009 Keeneland September yearling sale.

Shackleford was born in 2008, and after Lady Joanne proved her G1 mettle at the races, Lauffer and Cubbedge resold Oatsee at the Keeneland November sale in 2008 for $1,550,000 in foal to A.P. Indy to Leonard Reggio’s My Meadowview Farm.

Lincoln Collins oversees Reggio’s bloodstock and said that the practical decision at the November sales had been whether to purchase Lady Joanne or her dam. He said, “Our choice was between buying the product (Lady Joanne) or the factory (Oatsee); so we bought the factory.”

They were immediately rewarded with a good A.P. Indy colt in 2009 and another colt by Johannesburg in 2010. Oatsee is one of 15 premium mares that Reggio has spread over different Bluegrass boarding farms. Collins said, “Oatsee is at Darby Dan.

Unfortunately, she was barren to Dixie Union for this year but is in foal on an early April cover to Indian Charlie,” best known as the sire of last year’s champion juvenile colt Uncle Mo.

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zazu proving the merits of her sire and dam

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art princess, ben glass, birdstone, broodmare selection, corinthian, fasig-tipton february sale, Gainesway Farm, important producers, Las Virgenes, michael hernon, Mr. Greeley, officer, Pulpit, rhumb line, Santa Anita, stallion success, summerhill equine, Tapit, turbulent descent, young sires, zazu

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

Zazu, winner of Saturday’s Las Virgenes Stakes at Santa Anita, is the sixth Grade 1 winner for her sire Tapit, and the 10-year-old Wood Memorial winner by Pulpit out of the Unbridled mare Tap Your Heels has a crop of 3-year-olds bursting with promising stock, such as Dancinginherdreams and Tell a Kelly.

This Saturday, the stallion’s exciting 3-year-old colt Tapizar will contest the G2 Bob Lewis Stakes at Santa Anita. The bright bay colt began his march along the Triple Crown trail with victory in the Sham Stakes on Jan. 15.

Beginning his stud career as leading freshman sire and sire of champion Stardom Bound, Tapit is drawing the attention of breeders across the globe and is a major factor in the revitalization of the Gainesway Farm stallion program. Statistically, the handsome gray stallion moves up his mares significantly and has an extraordinary 2011 book of G1 winners and producers, champions and Breeders’ Cup winners.

Zazu became her sire’s 27th stakes winner with victory in the Las Virgenes, and she is the first stakes winner out of Rhumb Line, a daughter of Mr. Greeley that produced the very fast Officer mare Art Princess, who was second as a 2-year-old in the G2 Cherry Hinton in England.

The 5-year-old Art Princess is her dam’s first foal, and Zazu is the mare’s third foal. Zazu was bred by Summerhill Equine LLC and Michael Hernon (of Gainesway Farm), and all Rhumb Line’s matings have been directed by Hernon. With the mare’s success, the 2011 mating for Rhumb Line is likely to be selected from the Gainesway stallion lineup.

In an interview following the 2011 Fasig-Tipton February sale, Hernon described the qualities that recommended Rhumb Line to him. He said, “I found her as a broodmare prospect at the 2005 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky February mixed sale. She was a maiden, Mill Ridge consigned her, and she was an immediate ‘yes’ on physique and character. She has great balance and size and has a strong personality.”

Hernon was also aware that Rhumb Line “was a mare with quite a lot of ability of her own. She won her first three lifetime starts in open company in New York, showed great speed, was considered good enough to take her chance in the Mother Goose, and in my mind had stakes-winning ability. She figured to be a mare who would become a potential stakes producer, and she showed that with her first foal, Art Princess.”

Art Princess is a robust chestnut who made $60,000 as a 2006 Keeneland November weanling, then more than doubled that price when resold in 2007 at the Tattersalls October yearling auction. The money was well-spent because Art Princess won early at 2, then was beaten a neck in the G2 Cherry Hinton Stakes, after she had made all the running. Art Princess was bred to Tapit in 2010 and is close to foaling.

Rhumb Line’s first foal is also notable in selling for six figures, something that each of the mare’s subsequent foals have done at some point at auction.

Part of the reason for the mare’s sales appeal, Hernon believes, is that “she strongly resembles her sire, Mr. Greeley, and is a big, strong, striking mare that puts a very good foal on the ground.” The Tapit yearling colt out of Rhumb Line (and thus a full brother to Zazu) sold to Ben Glass, agent for Gary and Mary West, for $260,000 as a weanling in the 2010 Keeneland November sale.

Rhumb Line is currently pregnant to Birdstone, yet another important young Gainesway stallion. She was one of an excellent book of mares that Birdstone bred in 2010 following his extraordinary first-crop success with 2009 classic winners Mine That Bird in the Kentucky Derby and Summer Bird in the Belmont Stakes.

Rhumb Line’s current 2-year-old colt is by the Pulpit stallion Corinthian, thus making the juvenile closely related to Zazu, and the colt, named Corinthian’s Jewel, sold for $130,000 in September to George Weaver on behalf of Randy Hill.

Hernon recalled, “I sent George Weaver a text to recommend this colt, who was selling later in the sale. He looked the part, vetted good, and George had noted horseman Eddie Woods review the horse for him and do the bidding. The colt is in training with J.J. Pletcher in Ocala and is pleasing Pletcher very much with his initial training.”

breeding pendulum a-swingin’

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a.p. indy, birdstone, bob fierro, changes in breeding aptitudes, native dancer, power type, shift toward power, shift toward stride

Part of the reason for my discourse on Dark Star and Native Dancer has been that my thinking has turned to the direction that the tides of breeding are taking. As John Sparkman remarked and I elaborated on somewhat, Dark Star represented the classic nobility of the past, and Native Dancer represented the powerful classic weightlifter that has come to dominate much of racing.

In the words of bloodstock writer and commentator Bob Fierro, Native Dancer is the “type of the biomechanical shift toward power: horses with greater height, greater mass, longer hind cannons,” and so forth. The increasing shift toward power has grown in volume since the 1950s and has dominated racing and breeding from the 1980s to the present.

My thinking has been that something significant is changing within the breed, however. Part of my inclination to believe this is so lies in the ongoing collapse of some of the dominant power lines, but it also includes the type of young stallions who are beginning to succeed.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and when one develops, something will come along to fill the space.

In terms of breeding, consider, for instance, the success of the dandy young stallion Birdstone, who is an example of a “power horse line” (Native Dancer, Raise a Native, Mr. Prospector, Fappiano, Unbridled, Grindstone) who has shape-shifted into a racer and sire whose primary assets are excellent stride characteristics.

And the primary line poised to take advantage of the changing needs of the breed is Nasrullah – Bold Ruler, especially through AP Indy, Pulpit, and his sons.

bunk and debunking

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birdstone, birth date, calvin borel, dosage, Kentucky Derby, mine that bird, size

One of the many points of interest coming out of Mine That Bird’s victory in the Kentucky Derby is a welcome debunking of many myths and associated foolishness about bloodlines and breeding.

Once again, the old canard dosage received its due. Mine That Bird has a dosage index of 5.40 and surely was suffering from the inadequacies of stamina as he sliced past the competition to win the Kentucky classic. Already exposed as rare foolishness masquerading as a handicapping scheme by such earlier Kentucky Derby results as Strike the Gold and the dosage-busting exacta of Charismatic and Menifee, dosage is lovely exercise for those wanting to refresh their math skills.

Among the less arcane myths exploded by this year’s Kentucky Derby winner was the bias against May foals. Not yet chronologically 3-year-olds, they are supposed to be at a disadvantage against the older members of their crop. Well, if so, then don’t tell Mine That Bird. He was foaled on May 10.

Another “disadvantage” of May foals is that they are supposed to be smaller, and Mine That Bird is definitely a smallish to medium-sized horse, like his sire Birdstone, and paternal grandsire Grindstone. Size, however, did not prevent them from earning success in the classics, and it certainly did not prevent Mine That Bird from flying home over his competition. So perhaps we should conclude from these examples that being tall has nothing to do with anything other than being tall and that being fast is what it’s all about.

So far from being a disadvantage, Mine That Bird’s size was part of the reason he won the classic (along with tremendous stamina and gameness). When a reporter asked rider Calvin Borel how he got through a hole in the stretch that allowed the colt to maintain his momentum and surge on to victory, Borel said it was a small hole but that Mine That Bird was a small horse and shot right through.

Well done to them both.

Size, birth date, ear carriage, and other senseless things have little or nothing to do with what a horse becomes as an athlete. How the horse is managed and how it responds to the opportunities it is given make all that difference, and that boils down to character and guts.

The glory goes to those who have ’em.