Breeding Digest: Can He Keep Piling On The Coal?

[Wandering Eyes]

The only rule is that there are no rules. Some of our most expensive freshmen are entering precisely the end game that drove their purchase: Arabian Knight (Uncle Mo) and Muth (Good Magic) cost $2.3 million and $2 million respectively, as juveniles; Prince of Monaco (Speightstown) was a $950,000 yearling. Yet the GI Kentucky Derby remains as likely to be won by a $30,000 claim like Rich Strike (Keen Ice) or, most recently, a son of the $10,000 cover Goldencents.

Last week, we saluted the advent of a $2,500 yearling by Preservationist on the Derby trail and now we find a colt topping the leaderboard by a stallion available at $2,000.

Like Preservationist, the sire of Coal Battle had launched only a second crop of juveniles when packing his bags for a fresh start outside of Kentucky this spring. Coal Front was the overlooked fifth prong of Spendthrift's 2020 assault on the stallion market, the other four duly dominating the 2023 freshman title with much larger books: Mitole with 148 named foals, Maximus Mischief 128, Vino Rosso 162, and Omaha Beach 121. Coal Front had just 44, conceived at $5,000–yet his two stakes winners that year were a match for all his neighbors bar Maximus Mischief, with three.

The cream has since risen to the top, Omaha Beach justifying his status as priciest of the five by heading the cumulative table on nearly all indices. Yet Coal Front's five black-type winners (62 starters) represent a higher percentage of named foals than any stallion in the intake.

In fairness, he's hardly typical of the ridiculous predicament in which so many young stallions find themselves today, having never benefitted even from the customary stampede from one new stallion to the next. His slide from a debut book of 89 to 51 mares last spring is nothing like as steep as that experienced by another from the same intake (on a different farm), from 221 to 34! But those who brought Coal Front to Louisiana deserve congratulations for recognizing that if you truly believe in a stallion, the time to double down is when everyone else is nervously moving on.

The question now is whether Coal Battle is equipped for more searching tests ahead. For his success in the GII Rebel Stakes, over a barely extended mile, hardly diminished the sense that he's primarily a dasher.

Coal Front himself won the GIII Razorback Handicap over a similar distance on the equivalent card in 2019, before adding the GI Godolphin Mile, but his previous graded wins had come over 6f/7f. Aside from this colt, he has produced Haulin Ice to romp the one-turn Azalea Stakes at Gulfstream, and dual 6f stakes winner Xtreme Diva.

The oddity is that Coal Front's pedigree is loaded with Classic influences, notably Seattle Slew–whose son A.P. Indy accounts for both grandsire Bernardini and damsire Mineshaft, and who also sired Coal Front's third dam.

Coal Front's sire Stay Thirsty now has an even more blatant sprint type at stud in Mind Control. It would be edifying, if a little unexpected, if this speed-oriented pair could extend a Bernardini male line to complement his remarkable legacy as a broodmare sire.

Coal Battle may not get much assistance, in terms of stamina, from his maternal family–even though his dam Wolfblade (Midshipman) introduces three additional strains of Seattle Slew! (Her sire is out of a mare by his son Avenue of Flags, while the sires of her first two dams are out of mares respectively by Seattle Slew and his son Capote.) While Midshipman channels some sturdy Classic brands, and has had good stayers in Chile, his principal footprint as a broodmare sire is Golden Pal (Uncle Mo)–and the fact is that Wolfblade herself won eight times over 4.5f at Charles Town.

Admittedly she operated under tags as low as $4,000, obtaining her solitary black-type amongst West Virginian state-breds. She's out of another sprinter, Venice Queen (Latent Heat), a half-sister to graded stakes winner Easy Time (Not This Time) with a couple of minor stakes placings to her name; while the next dam is an unraced Cape Town half-sister to GIII Iowa Oaks winner He Loves Me (Not For Love).

Eventually the line tapers to the important mare Enchanted Eve, via her champion daughter Tempted. Overall, however, physique probably contributed more than page when Coal Battle realized $70,000 as a yearling, a top 10 price at the 2023 Texas Thoroughbred Association Sale.

Bravo to Coal Battle's breeders Hume Wornall and Jay Adcock for raising a Derby colt, at the first attempt, from a mare anyone could have claimed for even less than her chosen partner's fee. (Adcock, incidentally, heads the partnership that brought Coal Front to his Red River Farm.) The placed horses Sunday cost $650,000 and $1.2 million respectively. So while nobody knows where Coal Battle may reach his ceiling, in distance or class–well, that's the whole point.

Maximum Security | Sarah Andrew

Maximum Misfortunes Secure Sympathy

Except, of course, there are actually a whole bunch of rules. Just ask Maximum Security. There were the ones his rider was deemed to break in the 2019 GI Kentucky Derby; and then there were those flagrantly breached by his trainer, Jason Servis, who was jailed in 2023.

Five years ago, Maximum Security was the inaugural winner of the G1 Saudi Cup, but his contentious disqualification (despite zero test abnormalities) was only confirmed last summer. In the meantime, the poor horse has been trying to shake free of this welter of misfortune and launch a stud career.

When Coolmore bought into the horse, they knew that a son of New Year's Day might not work for everybody. But the functionality of his genes appeared evident: he was about to be anointed crop champion, a single horse having finished in front of him in nine starts; and would later win the GI Pacific Classic for his new trainer. Through no fault of horse or owners, however, Maximum Security would suddenly become a hard sell.

He did muster 135 mares for his debut, at $20,000, but last year was down to 54 at $7,500. Of 51 first-crop starters last year, 17 winners were highlighted by just one stakes-placed horse and this spring Maximum Security was trimmed again to $5,000.

How timely, then, was the succor he found last weekend, showing what he might yet do given a chance.

Presumably he can't have received many more accomplished mares than GI Ruffian Handicap/GI Lady's Secret Stakes winner Tough Tiz's Sis (Tiznow). True, she appeared to have peaked as a producer with her first foal, GII Bayakoa Stakes winner Tiz Midnight, albeit the latter has since produced triple graded stakes scorer Midnight Memories (Mastery), while her Tapit half-sister came up with GIII Holy Bull winner Rocket Can (Into Mischief). But Tough Tiz's Sis is booked straight back to Maximum Security after the 'TDN Rising Star' debut of their son Tiz Secure, homebred by Karl Watson and Paul Weitman, at Santa Anita.

With Maximum Promise third in the John Battaglia Stakes on the same day, perhaps Maximum Security is starting to turn things round. On the face of it, his dam introduces no more glamor than his exiled sire, as a $2,200 yearling by Anasheed. But she was a half-sister to triple Group 1 winner Flat Out (Flatter), while Anasheed's overall failure doesn't alter the fact that he filters some of the best blood in the book.

Who knows, perhaps Tiz Secure will prove the straw in the wind that allows Maximum Security to prove himself a victim, and not a beneficiary, of human vice.

Honor A.P. | Sarah Andrew

Not Just Vekoma Deserving Honor

The stallion in Maximum Security's intake who's kicking on unmissably is Vekoma, whose promoters couldn't dream of a G3 Saudi Derby winner named more obligingly than Golden Vekoma.

After shading a desperate race for the freshman title, Vekoma's sophomores are consolidating fast. He produced five stakes winners among his first juveniles, a tally matched by Tiz the Law and Complexity; but already has four in 2025, while Complexity remains his only peer with even two.

Golden Vekoma is a half-brother to Midshipman's Dance (Midshipman), who won the Mockingbird Stakes last year. Their dam, Remington Park Oaks winner Sticks Wondergirl (Stevie Wonderboy), was the sole daughter of a Quiet American half-sister to a splendid producer in Choreograph (Dynaformer). The latter's serial stakes performers and/or producers for the exemplary Ramona Bass program include Goliad (War Front), who won a couple of graded stakes at seven last year.

But don't overlook the sire of Heart Of Honor (GB), who had chased home Golden Vekoma on their previous start and again flew late when failing by just a head in his local prep for the UAE Derby last Friday.

Sold as a weanling after his dam was exported to Britain, Heart Of Honor made €160,000 at the Arqana Breeze-Up and is hinting that Honor A.P. does not deserve to be swamped by the big numbers fielded by Vekoma and his pals at the top of the table.

I remain convinced that Honor A.P. was the most talented of his crop and, while his slow-burning profile hardly promised a ton of precocious sprinters, he nonetheless included a couple of single-turn stakes winners among his first juveniles. The progress of his overseas flagship now confirms this beautiful horse ($850,000 yearling) as exactly the type to be supported by any breeders inclined to quell the witless trends currently putting the whole stallion scene in crisis.

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