to honor and serve finally is fulfilling his potential at 3

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ap indy as a sire of stallions, bernardini, champion racehorses, champions as sires, classic prospects, darby dan farm, deputy minister, golden trail, important female families, java moon, late-maturing juveniles, live oak plantation, live oak stable, pennsylvania derby, producing class, racing class, sales yearlings, sires of broodmares, stallion success, success at stud, to honor and serve, zenyatta

The following article appeared earlier this week at Paulick Report.

As a late-maturing 2-year-old who won the Grade 2 duo of the Nashua and Remsen Stakes, To Honor and Serve was on many short lists of colts to watch for the 2011 classics. This spring, To Honor and Serve faltered a step in Florida, finishing third in the Fountain of Youth and Florida Derby. But that was the result of a growthy colt needing more time, and owner Live Oak Plantation and trainer Bill Mott brought To Honor and Serve along with patience.

When the rangy bay signaled readiness with a strong allowance victory, they stepped him up to the G2 Pennsylvania Derby last weekend. That race went without a hitch for the son of Bernardini and the Deputy Minister mare Pilfer, and he won by two and a quarter lengths from Belmont Stakes winner Ruler On Ice, with the improving Tapit colt Rattlesnake Bridge in third.

Victory in his last two races puts To Honor and Serve’s overall record at five wins from nine starts, with earnings of $996,340. The colt’s continuing reaffirmation of his juvenile form also puts To Honor and Serve on a collision course with Travers and Jim Dandy winner Stay Thirsty.

Both colts are by the A.P. Indy stallion Bernardini, who was champion 3-year-old colt in 2006. In his only season of racing, Bernardini won six of eight starts – including the G1 Travers, Jockey Club Gold Cup, Preakness, G2 Jim Dandy, G3 Withers – and finished second to Horse of the Year Invasor in the BC Classic.

The successes of this pair of colts, aided by a sizable cast of supporting racers, has put Bernardini on top of the second-crop sire list, as well as placing him prominently among all stallions on the general sire list.

This level of success was just what was expected of Bernardini when he went to stud. As a champion, a classic winner, and a beautifully shaped son of champion and classic winner A.P. Indy, Bernardini was expected to become a leading sire. Yet most horses for whom such expectations are held do not deliver. Most fail or sire elite performers so erratically that they cannot hold high rank among the premium stallions of the breed.

In fairness to his contemporaries, no stallion of this group received a better book of mares, but Bernardini, in contrast to most premium stallions of the past 10 years or so, has sired winners of such quality to suggest that they were well and truly matched. His books will get even better from this point, and among his mates in 2011 was champion Zenyatta.

Yet some of the very promising young broodmares with whom Bernardini was initially mated have made a significant contribution to his success, and that should not be minimized.

One in particular, the dam of To Honor and Serve, is Pilfer, a young stakes-winning daughter of leading sire and leading broodmare sire Deputy Minister. Now 10, Pilfer produced the Pennsylvania Derby winner as her second foal, and he is her first winner and stakes winner.

The mare has a 2-year-old colt by Hard Spun named Common Bond and an unnamed yearling colt by Street Sense who sold at the Keeneland September yearling sale for $500,000.

To Honor and Serve likewise went through the sales ring at Keeneland in September two years ago, and as part of the first crop by Bernardini, the colt fetched $575,000 from Live Oak. That was money well spent, as To Honor and Serve has now earned nearly $1 million and is worth quite a bit more as a stallion prospect whenever he retires to stud.

One of the reasons for the value of To Honor and Serve is the fine Darby Dan family from which he descends.

His dam is one of three stakes winners from the Miswaki mare Misty Hour. The latter also produced a pair of stakes-winning mares by Hennessy named India and Sing Softly. Misty Hour is one of three stakes winners from her dam, the Nijinsky mare Our Tina Marie. The others were Merit Wings and Too Cool to Fool. Misty Hour was the last foal of her dam, born when Our Tina Marie was 17.

The dam of Our Tina Marie was the Graustark producer Java Moon, a lovely mare who won the G3 Comely and is a daughter of the outstanding Darby Dan foundation mare Golden Trail. This is also the family of major 2011 stakes winner Winter Memories, who likewise descends from a daughter of Java Moon, the Little Current mare All My Memories.

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frankel joins elite band of classic stars

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2000 guineas, comparative form, danehill, english classics, frankel, galileo, great classic winners, henry cecil, juddmonte farms, khalid abdullah, kind, phil bull, racing class, tudor minstrel, uncle mo

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

The paths of the two most exciting juvenile colts of last year (Uncle Mo and Frankel) have not followed the same trajectory. Although Uncle Mo only lost his unbeaten status in the Wood Memorial last month, questions and innuendos have followed his every step this year. And coming into the Kentucky Derby this weekend, this son of the fine sire Indian Charlie appears to have a steep mountain to climb if he is to claim a classic and regain much of the prestige he earned with his juvenile successes.

In stunning contrast is the current status of the English star Frankel.

A son of Galileo, who is the best European stallion (and probably the best active stallion in the world), Frankel won his classic, the English 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket, with such authority and verve that the dashing bay colt is already being compared to the greats of racing.

At a luncheon conference in Lexington on Monday at Roly Poly’s sandwich shop, the consensus was that Frankel deserves to be spoken of in the company of such stars as Nijinsky, Mill Reef, El Gran Senor, and even Brigadier Gerard.

Of all the great English and Irish classic winners and premium milers, perhaps the one most similar to Frankel is 2,000 Guineas winner Tudor Minstrel, who claimed the classic in 1947 by an even larger margin than Frankel’s six lengths.

Tudor Minstrel shot away from his competitors at the start, and by the half-mile, he had the field at full stretch just trying to keep up with him. It was to no avail, and the colt strode home by eight to 10 lengths, depending on who was counting. Timeform founder Phil Bull wrote in his commentary about the race: “The memory of Tudor Minstrel’s strolling home the length of a street in front of everything else will remain with me for the rest of my life.”

Watching Frankel rip away from his competition in the Guineas on Saturday was similar. Frankel put all his competition under pressure from the start, built a lead that the announcer called 15 lengths at the half, and came home with less than half that to spare, as the colt appeared to idle as he came up the gradient to the wire at Newmarket.

And of course, the most impressive quality about Frankel’s handling of the race and his contemporaries was that it did not seem an extreme exertion. From the fluency of his action and smoothness of his stride, Frankel seemed comfortable racing so fast his opponents couldn’t keep up.

With Frankel, as with Tudor Minstrel 64 years ago, the buzz about them coming toward the Derby at Epsom was and will be intense. In 1947, Tudor Minstrel pulled hard, ran himself silly, and was beaten as one of the hottest favorites in Derby history.

Frankel, on the other hand, well may not even start in the race. Trainer Henry Cecil has trained generations of this family for owner-breeder Khalid Abdullah, and Cecil has never been sanguine about this colt’s prospects for racing 12 furlongs.

Given the colt’s enthusiastic approach to racing, the trainer is probably on solid ground, as no horse can race as boldly as Frankel likes to go, for a mile and a half over the undulations and turns of the course at Epsom.

Furthermore, in his comments about Frankel last season, Cecil was quite candid about his doubts that Frankel would stay even a mile because of the aptitude and racing character of his talented dam, the Danehill mare Kind. A listed stakes winner, Kind was very talented, according to her trainer, not so kind in rationing her speed.

Her massively talented son seems to have inherited not only speed but also a considerable lust for chasing down the wind.

And that is not the attitude of a horse well-suited to racing a dozen furlongs in classic company. So Frankel is most likely to go to the St James’s Palace Stakes, then perhaps the Eclipse and Breeders’ Cup Mile.

One of the nice things about that schedule is a trip across the Atlantic for the Breeders’ Cup would mean that American racing fans could get to see Frankel too, and that is a prospect to whet the appetites of all who love racing.

great mares in a different field

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broodmare success, christmas past, lady's secret, producing class, production research, racing class, winning colors

Was doing a spot of research and had a question to pose. Who would be the best mares never to produce a stakes winner?

There’s no question that being a top-flight racehorse is not the same as being a top-flight broodmare, but overall, the best racemares outproduce everything else.

That said, some of the really grand ones just don’t get it done.

I came up with a trio who all won championships and would be called “great” or “real damned good,” depending on who you asked. They are all grays too, for whatever that’s worth.

Horse of the Year Lady’s Secret, Kentucky Derby winner Winning Colors, and champion filly Christmas Past did not produce a stakes winner. Winning Colors did produce two runners who were stakes-placed (Golden Colors and Ocean Colors), and I believe one of the early foals out of Lady’s Secret won a stakes in Japan that doesn’t qualify for international black type.

Any thoughts about why such a trio of top racemares would have less-than-expected success as broodmares?

why some do and some don’t

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dark star, elements of the thoroughbred, Kentucky Derby, native dancer, pedigree in matings, racing class

Aside from the question of racing class, which is obvious and self-explanatory, why does one stallion have greater success than another?

Like most of those who have approached this question from the side of pedigree, I long ago saw that there are some lines that breed on and others that don’t. Most explanations for this are couched in terms of one theory or another, and there is enough truth in these approaches to keep people researching and working to find the “key” to bloodlines and breeding.

But after 20 years of treading that path with considerable industry, in the early 1990s, I came to a conclusion that seemed inescapable to me (and that has seemed so to other diligent researchers, as well). Partly, the limitation is that most pedigree theory is historical, taking its shape from things that have already occurred, but even more it is that pedigree — even at its most subtle and prescient — only represents a part of the magical sum that is the Thoroughbred.

It is similar to the relationship of the theory of diamond cutting to the radiant beauty of the diamond itself.

While an essential part of the whole process, pedigree is only one of many elements that contribute to a horse’s success. Others include the animal’s conformation, character, constitution, and response to training.

As an exercise in thinking through this great puzzle we call breeding the Thoroughbred, I have taken the time to study the race records and stud results of the first two finishers in the 1953 Kentucky Derby, one of the better results in terms of racing class and stallion success.

In the 1953 Derby, Dark Star led the entire race, won by a head, then was injured in the Preakness. He was at the peak of his racing class with the Derby victory, and Dark Star had to be a very good colt to defeat the champion of his crop, even under perfect circumstances.

Dark Star’s Derby was the only career loss for Native Dancer, who was a great racehorse capable of immense efforts to gain a victory.

The comparison of racing class between these two holds up well in an examination of their stud careers. Native Dancer was a great sire (304 foals, 44 stakes winners, 14 percent with an AEI of 3.15), and Dark Star was a pretty darned good one (301 foals, 25 stakes winners, 8 percent with an AEI of 1.65).

I believe that we can learn quite a bit by looking at this high-class pair, and I will be elaborating on that in tomorrow’s post.