Stallions

There were four Kentucky-bred winners at Royal Ascot – Lady Aurelia (King’s Stand Stakes), Con Te Partiro (Sandringham Stakes), Caravaggio (Commonwealth Cup), and Sioux Nation (Norfolk Stakes). All showed speed and class. Two of them, Lady Aurelia and Caravaggio, are among the most widely praised and highly touted speed horses of last year and this. […]

On Sunday at Chantilly, the high-quality 3-year-old filly Senga (by Blame) became her sire’s first Group 1 winner with victory in the Prix de Diane over 2100 meters. This male line has a grand tradition of classic quality, and Blame has done his job to add another classic success with this filly who stayed on […]

Only the great Hall of Fame trainer Woody Stephens had a more impressive string of success (five in a row) at the Belmont Stakes than America’s leading sire Tapit. After the most recent renewal of America’s longest classic, Tapit has sired three of the last four Belmont Stakes winners, and only 2015 Horse of the […]

Curlin didn’t get to be Horse of the Year without delivering the goods. In the Preakness, the Jockey Club Gold Cup, Dubai World Cup, and the Breeders’ Cup Classic, the handsome chestnut son of Smart Strike took the laurels of victory, and for these and other outstanding performances, he was elected Horse of the Year […]

One of the signal facets of the contemporary commercial market is a fascination with first-crop sires. One prominent consignor even went so far as to declare that if sellers weren’t offering stock by first-crop sires or by proven sires, then potential buyers just walked on by. As perplexing as this situation is for breeders, not […]

The Irish-bred mare Zhukova turned the Grade 1 Man o’ War Stakes at Belmont Park into a procession with her six-length victory on Saturday (May 13). Rating in front over the soft course, Zhukova kicked for home with an impressive turn of foot and won the day. The 5-year-old mare’s sire, Australian champion Fastnet Rock, […]

When Always Dreaming pulled away from his opponents to win the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on Saturday, two of the people cheering loudest for the elegant bay were Irishmen from different counties of the Emerald Isle. Those two were Mike Ryan and Gerry Dilger. Operating under the name of Santa Rosa Partners, […]

This Kentucky Derby week column won’t feature a Derby horse because there are no remaining preps to the Run for the Roses. So the question for an avid writer is how many references to the Kentucky classic can we come up with, anyway? Naturally, it’s a filly who allows me to get into the spirit […]

Collected is snorting fire in his desire to become the leading son of sire City Zip (by Carson City). Collected would be within sniffing distance of the earnings leadership for sons of City Zip, except for a quintet of millionaires, and the glamorously good-looking Collected moved his earnings to $600,500 with victory in the Grade […]

It’s not every day you see a major winner with a Buckpasser third dam. A foal of 1963, Buckpasser died all too young at age 15 in 1978, making his last-crop fillies born in 1979, 38 years ago. That’s fourth-generation territory because pedigrees average out to about 10 years per generation. So, typically, we would […]