Three Chimneys

  Although it will look quite different this year, the start of the yearling sales season is finally around the corner and 2017 Horse of the Year Gun Runner would appear to be poised at the head of his class if stud fee and weanling average are anything to be. The son of Candy Ride (Arg) led all sires of first weanlings with an average of $275,923 with 13 of 14 sold, including a filly out of two-time Grade I winner Love and Pride (A.P Indy) who was the highest-priced...

Really, nobody can demand respect. It has to be commanded. This business has plenty of people who shout their achievements from the rooftops of social media. They have done their own reckoning, and that doesn't necessarily incline the rest of us to reinforce their self-esteem. How much more impressive, surely, is the understated, week-by-week accretion of laurels by a man like Doug Cauthen. He is always reluctant to "claim" credit for a particular horse, knowing that the fulfilment of its potential is always divided between so many different hands. Even...

So now we come to a group who will typically, at this stage of their careers, find themselves clinging by their fingertips to the commercial precipice--even as the agents and pinhookers press down ruthlessly with their boots. Yes, any breeder using these stallions this spring will at least have some valid evidence with which to evaluate what tends, in many cases, to be a dwindling fee: a first group of sophomores in 2019, backed up by the most precocious juveniles of their second crop. These, nonetheless, should by any sensible...

Grade I winner Funtastic (More Than Ready--Quiet Dance, by Quiet American) was represented by his first foal, a filly, Monday. Born at Nuckols Farm in Midway, KY, the filly is out of the Elusive Quality mare Tenshi, who is a half to GSW Something Ventured (Cobra King). "We are extremely excited about the arrival of Funtastic's first foal crop," said Tom Hamm, Director of Stallion Seasons at Three Chimneys Farm. "Funtastic himself is very good looking, and was a highly talented athlete by dominant sire More Than Ready. That, coupled...

● Sharp Azteca (Freud), winner of the 2017 GI Cigar Mile, was represented by his first foal when Special City (City Zip) produced a filly Jan. 5 at Wind-n-Wood Farm. ● The filly was bred by Chesapeake Farm and Crown Chase Farm and is the first foal out of Special City, whose dam is a half-sister to Grade I winner Haynesfield (Speightstown). ● Sharp Azteca stands at Three Chimneys. His 2020 fee is $10,000 LFS&N.