Breeding Digest: Candy As Sweet As Ever

I daresay that plenty of people who invest in bloodstock also like to play “emerging” markets. Both, after all, are notoriously volatile environments, where assets seem to spend at least as much time “submerging.” As such we must applaud Klaravich Stables for the naming of the GII Louisiana Derby winner.

Strictly they have taken an opportunity overlooked in Wild Empress, the dam of Emerging Market (Candy Ride {Arg}): she was by Empire Maker out of a Seeking the Gold mare named Trappings. And, being at one remove, I guess their wit will have been generally unnoticed.

Far more people will have had their eyes immediately drawn to the most conspicuous feature of Emerging Market's pedigree: the fact that sire and damsire each extend a different branch of Fappiano. Candy Ride, of course, has explosively revived the one that took the neglected route through Cryptoclearance; while Empire Maker represents the main Fappiano highway as a son of Unbridled.

It's probably no coincidence that one of Candy Ride's best dividends from an Empire Maker mare is Separationofpowers, who also raced for Klaravich Stables.

By now, however, you may be familiar with my distrust of anything that smacks of “formula” breeding. Nor do I particularly buy into the self-fulfilling prejudice against ageing stallions; or didn't, at any rate, before this era of monster books and shuttling. Certainly the breeders of Hit Show, who's about to defend his G1 Dubai World Cup, must be heartily glad that they ignored the ageists in sending Candy Ride a mare when already 20.

Certainly we must credit both his management and his own physiology for the fact that Candy Ride remains so sprightly at 27. Last year, he covered matched the same book as in 2024, when 73 mares produced 57 live foals: 77 percent, a figure to bring a blush to many younger stallions. He still packs a punch at the sales, too, averaging $239,787 for 32 yearlings sold (37 offered) in 2025.

That said, his footprint is naturally diminishing and he depended on the desert plunder of his only graded stakes winner in 2025 to scrape into the top 10 of the general sires' list. Four other black-type winners represented a slender ratio even of 193 starters, a number obviously far exceeded by the young guns above him in the table. (Into Mischief fielded 452!)

The real gratification in such a prominent showing, in the evening of his career, was the company Candy Ride was able to keep: two sons in the top four, in Gun Runner and Twirling Candy; and another, Vekoma, hurtling up the ranks so fast he finished 13th with only a second crop in play.

His latest flagship, Emerging Market, confirmed himself a natural racehorse in handling a stretch battle on just his second start. That kind of athleticism is perhaps as close as we can get to a trademark uniting Candy Ride's 20 Grade I winners, whose overall profile reflects the versatility he managed to show himself, mixing surfaces and environments, even in a relatively short career.

Candy Ride has put Wild Empress on the Classic trail with her very first foal, making her quite a coup for Stoneriggs, who found her for just $85,000 in a Fasig-Tipton digital sale in March 2022. They sent her straight to Lane's End for her maiden cover, and banked $185,000 for the resulting colt as a Keeneland September yearling. Still only eight, the mare obviously has time on her side to profit from whatever her son can do from here.

Wild Empress had shown practically nothing in a very light career, and her dam Trappings only a little more in failing to break her maiden in eight attempts. Yet somehow Trappings redeemed their mutual mediocrity–which was shared by her other foals, and also by her siblings–when producing She Be Wild (Offlee Wild) to win the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies in 2009.

Hitherto that has remained the solitary evidence of real class in this family until you reach the fourth dam, Lilya's for Real (In Reality), a consistent black-type producer. She came up with two stakes winners on turf, including the dam of Trappings by Affirmed; as well as the Grade II-placed dam of another smart runner on that surface in Canada, Portcullis (Smart Strike). But her most significant daughter is the dam of that lightning filly Carson Hollow (Carson City), who crowned a six-for-10 career in the GI Prioress Stakes.

But while there are duly one or two nuggets to be panned in the depths of this river, Emerging Market certainly looks like a polite reminder from Candy Ride of his undiminished vigor.

His ever-expanding legacy is perhaps principally rooted in the way he offers the gene pool something different. His granddam's parents were both native-born Argentinian, the sire being out of a mare whose family had been in the Pampas since 1884. While South America has never advanced beyond the status of emerging market, to most Kentucky breeders, it may well be that much of Gun Runner's gold ore traces to precisely these seams.

Born to Be a Star

Candy Ride's legacy is being further enriched on a regional level, by the likes of Californian stalwart Clubhouse Ride and Valiant Minister in Florida. Nowadays he also has Unified in Louisiana, but that horse has a long way to go to match the local legend Star Guitar, whose $15,000 son Touchuponastar broke the $2 million barrier when retaining the GII New Orleans Classic on the same card.

At seven, Touchuponastar was contributing to a real veterans' day, with his contemporary Skippylongstocking (Exaggerator) and their senior Gold Phoenix (Ire) (Belardo {Ire}) adding graded stakes at Oaklawn and Santa Anita, respectively. Gold Phoenix actually belongs to the same crop as Emerging Market's dam! Collectively these horses rebuke us that we even send horses to stud when barely adolescent.

How the breed could do with a stallion with the profile of Touchuponastar, albeit perhaps his fulfilment may itself have been contingent on castration. Quite apart from his 21-for-28 hardiness, he not only extends yet another branch of Fappiano–the one leading through Star Guitar's sire Quiet American–but also belongs to an aristocratic family.

True, his dam Touch Magic (Lion Heart) is the only stakes winner out of his granddam, a disappointing outcome from the intervention of a distaff legend like Deputy Minister in a clan like this. But the next dam, as a daughter (by Farma Way) of La Affirmed (Affirmed), is a sibling to names too numerous and too familiar to reprise here: from Sky Mesa's multiple graded stakes-winning dam Caress (Storm Cat) to her brother Bernstein, sire of Tepin.

Nor is Star Guitar himself just another Fappiano brand, albeit his family naturally tapers a long way before reaching the Victorian matriarch Lily Agnes (GB). This branch of her dynasty was exported to Kentucky in 1925 in the shape of Star Guitar's ninth dam, Zefa (GB), who was out of a full-sister to Lily Agnes's great son Ormonde. And Zefa's sire was a son of… Ormonde!

I think there's more chance of people today turning the next Flightline into Kelso than daring that level of inbreeding.

A Quiet Legacy

With Touchuponastar lacking the requisite equipment for a stud career, his maternal family nonetheless has a young stallion expanding its legacy in Maxfield, whose dam is by Bernardini out of the mare we just mentioned, Caress.

As noted a couple of weeks ago, the second-crop sires are belatedly getting their act together after a solitary graded stakes winner from their first juveniles. Maxfield has yet to find one himself, with just a couple of black-type scorers from his first 71 starters, but will not have long to wait judging from Englishman's first two starts.

Not to Worry looks another exciting sophomore from the same barn: he's bred on the same lines as Maxfield, by Street Sense out of the inevitable mare by Bernardini–whose dam looks like proving the most lasting gift of Quiet American.

Quiet American famously has a mirror image between his own dam and that of Fappiano, both being by Dr. Fager out of a daughter of Cequillo. Who knows, perhaps the real powderkeg behind Fappiano was the blending of two great mares, in Cequillo and Dr. Fager's dam Aspidistra. Not quite Zefa territory, but a reminder that there's more to all these Fappiano lines than yet another branch of Mr. Prospector.