Tapit Time

By Bill Oppenheim
Gainesway Farm’s Tapit, who retired for a $15,000 fee in 2005, was the Leading North American freshman sire of 2008, when Stardom Bound won three Grade I races, including the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, and Laragh added the GI Hollywood Starlet. He stood for $35,000 in 2009 (foals of 2010), in which year it became clearer what a strong sire crop it was: though he added a third Grade I-winning filly in Alabama S. winner Careless Jewel, Tapit dropped to third on the 2009 second-crop sire list, behind Medaglia d’Oro, whose Rachel Alexandra won the 
GI Preakness S. and was Horse of the Year; and another Gainesway sire, Birdstone, who had two Classic winners in his first crop in 2009, Mine That Bird and Summer Bird. Speightstown was fourth on the 2009 second-crop sire list, Candy Ride fifth. 
Tapit went up to $50,000 for 2010, and there are 114 named foals of 2011 in that crop, which are 3-year-olds this year. Tapit is already Leading Sire on the TDN Year-to-Date General Sire List with 41 winners so far in 2014 (through Sunday) and the earners of nearly $2.4-million; he’s also the leading sire in North America so far this year in four black-type categories: number of Black-Type Winners (BTW, 6); number of Black-Type Horses (BTH, 11, tied with Malibu Moon); number of Graded Stakes Winners (GSW, 5); and number of Graded Stakes Horses (GSH, 9). His current 3-year-old crop are significant contributors to these totals; it’s entirely possible 2014 will be Tapit’s breakthrough year in terms of the General Sire List. 
Not yet a quarter of the way through their 3-year-old year, according to EquineLine figures 77 of Tapit’s 114 named 3-year-olds (68%) have run. In the first 2 1/2 months of 2014 alone, he’s had 52 runners from this crop, of which 15 are winners this year. Seven of them have won nine races at Gulfstream Park this winter–it seemed like it was one a day there for a while–and he’s had three GSW 3-year-olds (one colt, one gelding, and one filly) away from Gulfstream. Two of those are Winchell Thoroughbred homebreds–Ron Winchell, son of the legendary ‘Donut King’ Verne Winchell, bought Tapit for $625,000 as a yearling in 2002 and raced him with trainer Steve Asmussen. Tapiture, a colt who won the GII Kentucky Jockey Club S. at Churchill Downs last fall, won the GIII Southwest S. at Oaklawn, and last weekend finished a troubled second in the GII Rebel S. in a four-horse blanket finish; and the filly Untapable, who won the GII Pocahontas S. at Churchill, then was stopped in her tracks when 9-2 for the GI Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies when Secret Compass broke down. Having then run third in the GI Hollywood Starlet S., she came back to win a competitive-looking GIII Rachel Alexandra S. at Fair Grounds by 9 1/2 lengths in February. The third GSW so far from Tapit’s 3-year-old crop is Ring Weekend, a gelding trained by Graham Motion for West Point Thoroughbreds and St. Elias Stable who broke his maiden at Gulfstream, then sprung an upset in the GII Tampa Bay Derby on March 8. 
But it’s not simply what these three have done yet and may go on to do; it’s also what a few more of these Gulfstream Park winners might go on to do. Constitution, a $400,000 Saratoga yearling trained by Todd Pletcher for Twin Creek and WinStar, won what looked like a key February 22 Gulfstream 8 1/2-furlong allowance race over another Gulfstream maiden winner by Tapit, Tonalist (homebred of R.S. Evans, trained by Christophe Clement), with Mexikoma, a Birdstone colt owned by Team Valor an eye-catching third. Constitution is due to get his class test in the Mar. 29 GI Florida Derby against Cairo Prince (Pioneerof the Nile), et.al. Anchor Down, another dual Gulfstream winner also trained by Pletcher, won a seven-furlong allowance race impressively at 2-5 and is surely also headed to stakes company next. He was a $250,000 Keeneland September yearling and is owned by Alto Racing. 
And that’s not all. Besides the three 3-year-olds GSW already (Ring Diamond, Tapiture, Untapable) and the three stakes candidates mentioned in the last paragraph (Constitution, Tonalist, Anchor Down), we could also catalogue: Ontology, third in the GIII Sham S. before being sidelined by an injury in transit shipping east; Harpoon, another Pletcher trainee, who was third in the GIII Sam F, Davis at Tampa and a respectable fifth in the GIII Gotham on March 1; and at least seven more lightly raced maiden winners at Gulfstream, Oaklawn, and Fair Grounds. What’s looking almost scarily impressive is something we might call ‘quality in quantity’–it’s almost Galileo-like, only transferred to America and from fewer foals. It could just be that this year, with this crop, it’s Tapit time. 

In Development: Thid-Crop Sires… 
Lane’s End’s Curlin (Smart Strike), the all-time leading North American-trained money-earner, was already having a very good start to 2014 by the end of February, and even though his 3-year-old Derby hope Top Billing was sidelined by injury, Curlin has extended his lead among 2014 third-crop sires with a black-type double Mar. 8 and three more graded stakes placings since 
Mar. 1. Last year’s 
GI Belmont S. winner Palace Malice, trained by, uh, Todd Pletcher for Dogwood Stable, came back to snatch a game Grade II win over Golden Ticket (Speightstown) in the GII Gulfstream Park H., followed later the same day by another impressive come-from-behind win by Glen Hill Farm’s 3-year-old filly Diversy Harbor in the China Doll S. at a mile on the turf at Santa Anita. The 3-year-old colt Ride On Curlin is among the graded placegetters after a close third in last weekend’s four-horse GII Rebel S. blanket finish. At the end of 2013, the jury was out on Curlin. Now the jury is in: thumbs up. Hill ‘n’ Dale’s Midnight Lute (Real Quiet) is currently second on the third-crop sire list, followed by the Spendthrift duo of Tiz Wonderful (Tiznow) and Into Mischief (Harlan’s Holiday). Like Curlin, the jury was out on Tiz Wonderful at the end of 2013, but he’s had four black-type horses this year (equal second in that category, with Midnight Lute, behind Curlin’s nine), with a fair number of live runners in good black-type company, so he’s liable to be looking pretty tempting to undecided breeders right now, at $7,500. That might turn out to be a very shrewd buy this year. 

Second-Crop Sires… 
The only two second-crop sires with over $250,000 in 2014 progeny earnings so far this year are both Fappiano-line sires through Unbridled. Zayat Stable’s Pioneerof the Nile, by Empire Maker, won four straight Grade I or Grade II races in California in 2008-2009 
(GI CashCall Futurity, GII Robert B. Lewis S., GII San Felipe S., GI Santa Anita Derby S.)–ironically, all on synthetic tracks–before running second to Mine That Bird on a sloppy track at Churchill, and was retired–first to Vinery, now at WinStar–after being virtually eased behind Rachel Alexandra in the GI Preakness S. It’s ironic because it looks like he’s sired at least two serious colts in his first crop, both on dirt. The first is Cairo Prince, now due to run in the Godolphin colors for trainer Kiaran McLaughlin. He won the GII Holy Bull S. and is the favorite for the GI Florida Derby and, at the moment, the GI Kentucky Derby. The other is Social Inclusion, who crushed Honor Code by 10 lengths in a Gulfstream allowance last Wednesday in a blockbuster Beyer 111, and is about to be sold for a ton of money, probably the most to be paid for a non-black type horse since Curlin himself changed hands after his devastating maiden win at Gulfstream Park in 2007. Second on the 2014 second-crop sire list so far is Taylor Made’s Old Fashioned, bidding, along with First Defence and Dunkirk, to reverse the perception of Unbridled’s Song as a better broodmare sire than sire of sires. Old Fashioned has two GSW 3-year-old fillies so far this year, GI Las Virgenes S. winner Fashion Plate, and GIII Old Hat S. winner Sweet Whiskey. He looks promising. 
Bill Oppenheim may be contacted at bopp@erb.com (please cc TDN management at suefinley@thoroughbreddailynews.com). Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/billoppenheim.