Breeding Digest: Mindframe A Fitting Memorial To His Breeder

[Wandering Eyes]

As noted last week, trainers can only amplify–not magnify–a horse's genetic legacy. D. Wayne Lukas was able to draw our attention to assets we might gladly replicate, but not even he could actually alter the genes available. In suggesting that he met his brief even more usefully with future broodmares than with sire prospects, this attorney admittedly left a star witness in the street in Serena's Song (Rahy)–whose 18-for-38 record, inside 30 months, advertised the toughness underpinning her class even more lavishly than Terlingua and others.

But the point duly stands. In today addressing a very different legacy, then, we remind ourselves not just of the far more substantial legacy available to breeders, through their choice of matings, but also of the responsibilities we embrace as a result. For while the loss of R. Larry Johnson in February was a grievous one for the Mid-Atlantic Turf, his final bequest has quickly earned the chance to prove a lasting one.

Famously his whole program towered on the precarious foundation of a filly he bought for just $2,400 at Timonium in 1978. She was by a son of Bold Ruler, The Big Boss. (A name that meant nothing to me, he presumably owed his opportunity at stud to full brother Tyrant, who won the Carter Handicap.) Ran's Chick, as Johnson called this filly, appears to have been one of three recorded foals by The Big Boss in 1976, and never made the starting gate. But she bred 11 winners, and before his death Johnson reckoned the stakes scorers proliferating beneath her to have exceeded 40.

These included Special Kell (Parfaitement), a turf sprinter whose black-type success–by a nose at Laurel Park–is succinctly but expressively recorded in the form comment: “Hard used, driving.”

Special Kell's first foal, Magical Meadow (Meadowlake), was unraced but injected due speed into her son Street Magician (Street Cry {Ire}) to win the GIII Hirsch Jacobs Stakes; while her daughter by distaff legend Bernardini became the dam of Future Is Now (Great Notion), who has matured into a smart turf sprinter for the Johnson program with three graded stakes over the past year.

But Special Kell had a still more productive daughter in Star Kell (Star de Naskra), albeit her four wins came at such a moderate level that she might have been claimed for $12,500 when gaining one of them over 4.5f at Charles Town. Star Kell's daughter Strike the Moon (Malibu Moon) achieved multiple placings in graded stakes company, included a head defeat in the GII Delaware Oaks, and also won a couple of stakes over seven at Charles Town. One of those was also won by Star Kell's final foal, Walk of Stars (Street Sense), who that showed the family's trademark speed before holding out by a neck.

With the Ran's Chick dynasty flourishing against all odds, Johnson sought to seed it with some extra stretch. Hence the paternity of Walk of Stars herself, while her own second cover was Animal Kingdom. Admittedly the resulting filly has turned out to be another sprinter, albeit in the steadily progressive turf mold of Future Is Now. Now six, Hollywood Walk is persevering in her quest for a first stakes win: her many near-misses (recently placed at that level for a seventh time!) include a head defeat at Laurel last summer.

Then, in 2020, Johnson joined the many breeders struck by Constitution's first juveniles the previous year, and sent him Walk of Stars. Their son, one of 187 live foals by Constitution in that bumper crop, was sold through Betz Thoroughbreds for $600,000 to Repole Stable & St Elias Stables at the 2022 Keeneland September Sale.

His name is, of course, Mindframe–and last weekend he won his second consecutive Grade I prize in a vintage edition of the GI Stephen Foster Stakes. It's obviously huge that he should have confirmed his elite status round a second turn after being top sprinters last time. High fives all round for the team at Claiborne, recently announced as his future home.

If Mindframe has struck that elusive equilibrium between running fast and running long, that's a tribute to Johnson's work in first developing sprint speed under his foundation mare; and then in introducing a complementary Classic flavor through the likes of Street Sense and Constitution.

However poignant the timing, Mindframe's fulfilment aptly expresses the continuity bequeathed by the best breeders. Because if they do it patiently enough, eventually they bring us to the point where the future really is now.

Honor A.P. | Sarah Andrew

Clinging To Honor

It was a big weekend for Maryland. On the same day that Mindframe did his thing, back in their native state Post Time (Frosted), a set-your-clock nugget wherever he goes, took his Laurel record to nine-for-nine in the Deputed Testamony Stakes. And the next day the baton was passed to state “compatriot” Romeo (Honor A.P.), who broke the stakes record in the Bashford Manor Stakes.

Presumably quite a few people are now revisiting the notes that must have been entered against this colt when he failed to make his reserve at Timonium as a yearling, stalling at just $14,000. Because his was one of the more aristocratic pages in that catalogue, at least once you get past a dam, Fancy Love (Not For Love), who managed a single visit to the starting gate (actually running fourth in a state-bred stakes race) and whose production record had been largely discouraging. She did have a Super Saver colt who won the first three of just five starts, but only this year her owners were ready to move her on for just $10,000 at the Keeneland January Sale–despite the considerable bonus of an Oscar Performance foal aboard.

Romeo's emergence since is a twist of fortune hardly untypical of this business, and maddening for the vendors. But the fact is that his dam has seriously blue blood, notably as the daughter of a Touch Gold half-sister (herself confined to one start, similarly showing above-average ability) to Midshipman and therefore also to Fast Cookie, the Grade II-winning dam of Frosted. Fancy Love's half-sister by Unbridled's Song, moreover, has produced two smart runners in Gouverneur Morris (Constitution), twice Grade I-placed in a brief career; and multiple graded stakes performer Final Jeopardy (Street Sense).

If Honor A.P. has stoked up these genes more effectively than a couple of much more expensive mates, that wouldn't surprise me. I have always been in his corner: in terms of raw ability, he was arguably the most talented of his crop, while that physique promised an overdue fulfilment in his second career.

In the feckless environment of commercial breeding today, Honor A.P. suffered the inevitable neglect of so many stallions on that nervous bubble before their stock is tested on the track. Yet his first crop contains the late A.P. Kid, six-length winner of the off-the-turf Pennine Ridge Stakes; GII Black-Eyed Susan Stakes winner Margie's Intention; and Heart Of Honor (GB), denied the G2 UAE Derby by just a nose.

Only Vekoma (12), Complexity (seven) and Tiz the Law (six) can beat his five stakes winners to date, and he's working from around half the volume of some of his ostensibly “commercial” rivals. And Romeo is a startling marker for a horse of this profile, standing at $10,000, to lay down so early among his second crop.

Horses like this are given a grotesquely brief opportunity, but it looks as though this one may be seizing it.

Upstart | Sarah Andrew

Upstart On An Upswing

The sister race to the Bashford Manor, in contrast, showcased a stallion who has already fought his way through the other side. Percy's Bar, who followed up her spectacular debut with a five-length rout in the Debutante Stakes, represents the first crop conceived by Upstart following his breakout in 2022.

That was the work of two second-crop sophomores: Zandon won the GI Blue Grass en route to third in the GI Kentucky Derby, while Kathleen O. similarly found herself among the Oaks favorites after winning Grade II rehearsals at Gulfstream.

That same spring, Upstart had been down to 49 live foals. These nonetheless include impressive GIII Delaware Oaks winner Fondly, whose only defeat remains her disappointing Classic run at Churchill. But Upstart was fully subscribed (by the standards of a farm that scrupulously protects clients from catalogue inundation) at around 150 mares in both the next two years. In other words, he is now beginning to ride a wave that looks worth catching, with a much broader footprint guaranteed across the coming years. The extra quantity, remember, will be matched by quality after the trebling of his fee in 2023 to $30,000.

It feels auspicious that a filly bred this way should be showing such precocious flair. Her unraced dam is by Super Saver out of a Silver Charm mare, and Upstart himself was as good as ever at four. But that's saying plenty: he had started out as a Saratoga debut winner (also won a stakes at the Spa), before beginning his annual sequence of multiple Grade I placings at two, three and four.

Percy's Bar, a $52,000 find by Hat Creek Racing deep in the September Sale, has a seam of gold in her granddam's half-sister, who produced Off The Tracks (Curlin) to win the GI Mother Goose plus dual graded stakes winner Concord Point (Tapit). The only puzzle is that her owners seem to have found a bar they prefer to the Dry Bean Saloon…

The post Breeding Digest: Mindframe A Fitting Memorial To His Breeder appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

View the full article