Breeding Digest: Equity Grows On Foundations Of Stone

Having last week celebrated a first GI Kentucky Derby winner carrying the venerable black-and-cherry silks of the Phipps family, today we remind ourselves that the man who postponed that moment for 37 years has since built an iconic legacy of his own.

In thwarting Easy Goer with Sunday Silence, in 1989, Arthur B. Hancock III secured parallel boons for the modern breed. One, of course, required the agency of those far-sighted Japanese breeders who made Sunday Silence one of its most vital influences. But the other is Hancock's own farm, then brought back from the very brink. It has meanwhile remained a byword for the difference that can be made to young Thoroughbreds by the very best in horsemanship and land. As a result, Hancock last summer entered the Hall of Fame as Pillar of the Turf–a distinction to be uniquely matched, this year, by his induction into the equivalent institution for Kentucky music.

With standards seamlessly maintained by Hancock's daughter Lynn, now front-of-house for day-to-day operations, Stone Farm has produced its latest emerging star in Growth Equity (Nyquist), winner of the GIII Peter Pan Stakes.

Now as it happens I was sitting with Hancock when he bought this colt's dam My Dear Venezuela (Wildcat Heir) at the 2018 Keeneland November Sale, for $440,000. She had shown plenty of speed, winning three of 14 round a single turn and second on her only start in graded stakes company (GIII Old Hat Stakes), and was carrying a first foal by Arrogate. Hancock loved the mare's physique and, as we'll see, the aristocratic roots of her family lay off the page.

The following summer, visiting Stone Farm, I was introduced to the mare's Arrogate colt grazing one of those huge fields. Hancock called him “Bones”: he had plenty of timber, for one thing, but he also loved dozing in the sun: a real Lazybones. I was charmed, but nobody met the reserve (admittedly in the Covid market) at the 2020 September Sale. Hancock named him Bad to the Bones, but the horse never quite lived up to what he kept showing his trainers in the mornings, despite a maiden win, and was eventually claimed. (That timber has held up well, mind: he's still plugging away at seven, out in California.)

The mare has meanwhile being paying her way nicely at the sales. Her next two yearlings, both by Quality Road, respectively realized $375,000 and $550,000, albeit have so far managed only a maiden claimer between them. Then came a Nyquist colt, sold to Klaravich Stable for $425,000. His purchasers could be confident in his grounding, having campaigned a $200,000 graduate of the Stone Farm consignment at the equivalent sale in Horse of the Year Bricks and Mortar (Giant's Causeway). Sure enough, their colt is the slow-burning talent we saw last weekend beating Modernist's flagbearers, Talk to Me Jimmy and Trendsetter, for a free berth in the GI Belmont Stakes.

As intimated above, Growth Equity can draw on some special blood. My Dear Venezuela's catalogue page extended only to her third dam, and suggested its principal interest to be close up, in her close sibling Selva (by her grandsire Forest Wildcat), who won four of her first six, including black-type wins on three different surfaces, and was narrowly beaten in the GII Beaumont Stakes. Two of Selva's sons have been graded stakes-placed, while her grandson Borracho has spread 22 wins between the ages of two and 10! (The latest of those, this spring, was admittedly under a $7,500 tag at Parx but in his youth he ran third in the GI Woody Stephens.)

There were one or two other spots of black type on the page but it's only when you reach My Dear Venezuela's fourth dam that a bulb really comes on. For she is none other than Monade (Fr) (Klairon {Fr}), the 1962 Epsom Oaks winner, imported by Robert Kleberg Jr. of King Ranch to found a dynasty that has produced elite winners on three continents.

It took a while to develop: all 11 of Monade's named foals were winners, but only a couple showed stakes competence. The blessing was that nine were fillies, and it was these who put the family on the map. Three of Monade's daughters produced Grade I winners–most notably Remedia (Dr. Fager), whose daughter Too Chic (Blushing Groom {Fr}) in turn had two daughters by Mr. Prospector, champion Queena and matriarch Chic Shirine, who emulated her as both Grade I winners and producers.

My Dear Venezuela's catalogue page described her third dam Aesculapian (Dr. Fager) only as a half-sister to black-type performers Pressing Date (Never Bend) and Mariella (Roberto). It needed a seasoned eye to see those names and immediately think Monade, and everything that entailed. Plenty of people today view the edge of a catalogue page much as the Flat Earthers did the ocean horizon. Fortunately Stone Farm has an admiral who has sailed the seven seas of life, and he has equipped his captain and her crew with a navigational sense available to few others.

Looking For Heroes

I must say that was a marvelous advertisement for Charlatan over the weekend: “From Zero to Hero.” First page, a list of sires with no 2-year-old stakes winners in their first crop, starting with names as big as Curlin and Kingmambo–with Charlatan appended to the list, with a big fat zero of his own. Second page, a series of indices that show Charlatan top of his class with his maturing sophomores, with Cadenza on Saturday putting him first by stakes, graded stakes and overall winners.

We all know that the only thing more ludicrous than the stampede for unproven new sires is how promptly they are then abandoned. So I loudly applaud the point being made on behalf of a stallion whose parents, as noted here a couple of weeks ago, were both extremely late-maturing wines.

Charaltan | Louise Reinagel

Albeit in a light career, Charlatan showed exceptional class in pairing up Grade I wins round two turns and one and duly started at $50,000. But his fee was halved this spring, after his first juveniles proved little more precocious than he had been himself, and with his second crop of yearlings yielding a tepid $88,757 (88 sold of 114 offered)–down from $254,774 for 102 sold of 125 from his debut crop.

Actually that “zero” appears to refer only to Listed winners or better; if we accept all black type, as does TDN in its data, Charlatan did actually have a couple of stakes winners last year. Admittedly he hasn't been short of numbers and, at the fee, will have matched quantity with mare quality. Moreover we've repeatedly noted the historic underachievement of this intake, so far. It wouldn't often be possible to boast of being the only sire with a second graded stakes winners at this stage. Hopefully, however, that is only one of the ways in which Charlatan can maintain his renewed momentum.

Some Genetic Spice

For those of us who start with the bottom line, rather than constantly jump on the sire train, the standout pedigree of the weekend was GIII Senorita Stakes winner Marjoram (Quality Road).

Families are what have qualified Juddmonte as a transformative force in the modern breed, but remember that their foundation mares were themselves typically recruited from others who had themselves put in long and patient work. That's why the purchase, at the 2005 Keeneland September Sale, of a $550,000 Touch Gold filly out of a Group-placed daughter of A.P. Indy and Machiavellian's champion sister Coup De Genie (Mr. Prospector) was so characteristic–despite being, at that stage, relatively unusual.

It was a way to tap into one of few programs still matching their own exemplary priorities. With her precious Niarchos blood, it won't have troubled the late Prince Khalid that the filly, named Soothing Touch, never managed to break her maiden. Sure enough, her own foals include four-time Grade I winner Emollient (Empire Maker) and her sister, now dam of G1 Dubai World Cup winner Laurel River (Into Mischief). Marjoram's dam Cardamon is in turn closely related to that pair, being by Empire Maker's son Pioneerof the Nile.

As we were able to note with the Derby winner, the great families are built by breeding runners–not flashy sales horses. In a way, that's another version of the same battle now being lost to the trainers who are hollowing out the Triple Crown. At the moment, they're doing that by emptying the Preakness; but the upshot, when they get their way, will be to deprive the whole series of its current meaning. If we truly want to act “in the interests of the horse,” we would be seeking to identify future stallions that can stand up to the demands made of their predecessors. But we will never know which those are, once the industry is coerced into change.