By Chris McGrath
After a weekend that flashed one talent after another, like a many-sided jewel rotating in the sun, it's hard to single out a dominant facet. But having previously explored the backgrounds of Golden Tempo (Curlin) and Nysos (Nyquist), let's start with the breakout performance of Englishman (Maxfield), author of a 115 Beyer in the GI Woody Stephens Stakes.
And actually this horse shares an important glint of brilliance with the other pair. Because Golden Tempo, the second consecutive Derby/Belmont winner out of a daughter of Bernardini, shares his damsire not only with Nysos but also with the young stallion for whom Englishman is proving a priceless flagship.
Not that Maxfield's dam should be described merely as “a Bernardini mare.” Admittedly she only showed a glimpse of talent herself, in a brief career in Britain, but she is a conduit of the famous La Mesa (Round Table) branch of the dynasty (Fr) descending through Buckpasser's dam Busanda (War Admiral). Godolphin paid $3.1 million to get into this line through the acquisition, at the 2000 Keeneland November Sale, of Maxfield's granddam Caress (Storm Cat). And that was before the Pulpit colt she had delivered that January became GI Hopeful Stakes winner Sky Mesa!
Maxfield always had a stallion's page behind him, then, and his development into a top-class racehorse, as a homebred son of Street Sense, must have been especially gratifying for the Godolphin team. And while his buddy Essential Quality has endured a fairly chastening decline in fee, from an opening $75,000 to $25,000, Maxfield has consolidated from $35,000 in his bubble year to $50,000 this spring.
That sooner reflects the relative sales performance of their second crop of yearlings than any disparity in their output to date. With his stock tending to flourish with maturity, Essential Quality actually has six stakes winners (including The Puma) from 84 starters against four from 82 for Maxfield. But the latter has fielded as many as 15 black-type performers overall, and we must acknowledge that in Englishman he has conjured a lightning talent from a mare of fairly finite credentials.
So finite, in fact, that Englishman's breeders discarded her at the same 2023 November Sale where he was sold as a weanling for $240,000. In It for the Gold (Speightstown), winner of a turf sprint maiden, was by then a 9-year-old who had been given every chance with her first covers without immediately repaying the investment, albeit her first foals (by Nyquist and Into Mischief) had both won. She was allowed to go for $75,000 to Country Life Farm.
Her Gun Runner yearling was retained, and as Thought Control last month won for the second time in four starts (like his dam, in a turf sprint). Meanwhile In It for the Gold had delivered the Authentic foal she was carrying at auction, who was sold for just $25,000. By the time this filly reached OBS this April, however, Englishman had won his first two starts by an aggregate 15 lengths. His owners, with a shrewd sense of what they had, duly acquired his half-sister for $425,000; and while Englishman succumbed to Crude Velocity (Beau Liam) in the GII Pat Day Mile, that form was comprehensively reversed in their rematch last weekend.
In It for the Gold has duly proved well named for her purchasers, who now find themselves with the dam of a Grade I winner on their hands. She's actually out of a highly accomplished runner, albeit one with few obvious genes to explain her talent. All Due Respect was remarkably consistent, on the podium in 17 of 22 starts, including 10 times in graded stake, notably when beaten a neck in the GI Santa Anita Oaks (on synthetic). While she had to settle for a single stakes win, against Florida-bred females, that still qualified her as an exceptional achiever for her sire, a son of Unbridled's Song named Value Plus whose marginal claims for a stud career rested on a narrow defeat in the 2004 GI Florida Derby and a $1.1 million yearling tag. He ended up being sold for $13,000 to continue his stud career in British Columbia.
In fairness, All Due Respect was one of just two foals out of her dam, an unraced Devil His Due half-sister to Ten Cents a Shine, a Grade II-placed juvenile who ran midfield in Funny Cide's Derby. And the next dam was at least hardy, as a 10-for-66 Ohio-bred. But you need to retreat another four generations to reach the dam of Clem, who set consecutive track records when beating Round Table twice in two weeks in 1958.
Overall this feels like pretty patchy soil to be producing a horse as brilliant as Englishman. Maxfield is additionally the sire of Danon Bourbon, the Japanese raider who burst clear in the Derby before fading into fifth, and his own template-as a Grade I winner at two and four-suggests that his stock should keep thriving.
A Few Distaff Brands
Any of you who have persevered with these ramblings for any length of time will know them to be reliably pegged down by that elusive but compelling phenomenon, the broodmare sire. After an impossible weekend to condense, then, let me just round up one or two of the usual suspects.
Bernardini rounded off another stunning weekend in this role with Explora, who followed up her GI Kentucky Oaks fourth by winning the Leslie's Lady Stakes. As a daughter of Blame, himself threatening to become a new Bernardini, Explora looks a priceless breeding prospect. (Her dam is yet another example of a mare cheaply discarded just as she was about to strike gold, in this case to Korea for just $24,000 at the 2024 Keeneland November Sale. What a maddening game this is!)
The latest daughter of Blame to put his name in lights is Paradise Bay, dam of GI Jaipur Stakes winner Reef Runner (The Big Beast). Not even Blame can claim all the credit here, however, this mare being a half-sister to millionaire Paradise Woods (Union Rags). Their dam, the unraced Wild Forest (Forest Wildcat), is out of a half-sister to Mr. Greeley, so the Long Legend (Reviewer) dynasty (which has also given us Street Sense and Vekoma) grows ever “Longer”.
Englishman's damsire Speightstown meanwhile continues to elaborate his own posthumous legacy in this sphere, with Deterministic (Liam's Map) retaining the GI Manhattan Stakes; likewise Scat Daddy, damsire of GI Just a Game Stakes winner Classic Q (Classic Empire) and also GIII Pennine Ridge scorer West End Kid (Twirling Candy).
As a sire of sires, meanwhile, Speightstown will be looking down with growing pride on Charlatan. Like Essential Quality, his fee this spring was slashed to $25,000 (from $50,000). But the GII Wonder Again Stakes success of Fitz Right makes Charlatan, already the only member of this intake with two graded stakes winners, also the first to have a third.
Leslie's Lady Stakes winner Explora, a granddaughter of Bernardini | Coady Media
Red Alert for Roberto
Purely in terms of a pedigree's shape, the real doozy of the weekend is the maternal background of GII Intercontinental Stakes winner Roja (Karakontie {Jpn}).
Her dam Redmeansgo (Red Ransom) changed hands in a few claimers before scraping some Fairplex Park black type on her final start, back in 2006: she was fourth of five, but the third home was disqualified. Yet Roja, bred by the late Chuck Kidder, is the third of her dozen foals (11 starters, nine winners) to get some rather more meaningful stakes action onto the page.
The first, graded stakes-placed Pappascat, became an early contributor to Scat Daddy's success as a broodmare sire. She produced GII Best Pal Stakes winner Pappacap (Gun Runner), now standing at Walmac, and also GIII With Anticipation Stakes winner Boppy O (Bolt d'Oro); besides meanwhile becoming second dam of one of the top juveniles of 2025 in Brant (Gun Runner).
And all this traces to the boldest of mirror images contrived by the breeders of Redmeansgo: for she is by one son of Roberto, Red Ransom, out of a mare by another in Dynaformer. (Moreover Dynaformer's damsire His Majesty also gave us Pleasant Colony, who sired Redmeansgo's granddam.) The people who put this audacious genetic package together will certainly ring a few bells: Redmeansgo was bred by Dr. and Mrs. R. Smiser West and Mr. and Mrs. Mackenzie Miller.
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