Kentucky Value Sires

After surveying the four intakes since, each still safely immune from judgement on the track itself, today we finally reach the first group of stallions who have actually tested their ability to replicate the talent that first earned them--however marginally, in some cases--a place at stud. Their first juveniles, last year, at least permitted some initial response to any erosion of their reputations, through the notoriously jittery and impressionable consensus of the yearling market. Yet there are few more instructive indices of the odds against them than the contrast between...

Through the first three installments of this series, we've repeatedly complained about ever-more manic investment in unproven stallions and the resulting potential for chronic deterioration in the gene pool. So we won't reprise the theme today, other than to remark that this situation creates a rather more immediate and specific challenge for the next group under review. Because while second- and third-season stallions can still offer breeders the possibility of riding an early vogue, this lot have just been exposed to the judgment of the yearling market--which history reveals to...