Breeding Digest: No Substitute for Deputy

[Wandering Eyes]

The two headline acts last weekend hardly required us to hold the front page to reveal Bernardini as a pretty good broodmare sire. Obviously their late damsire is not the only reason why Sovereignty (Into Mischief) and Nysos (Nyquist) have achieved elite caliber, but we've previously explored the antecedents of both. And besides, both having won Grade IIs, top billing should strictly be reserved for a prize contested the same day at a higher tier.

Actually the GI Bing Crosby Stakes had the potential to enrich Bernardini's legacy more directly, with Hejazi representing one of his last remaining chances to reinforce a male succession that for now appears to depend on a couple of grandsons in regional programs.

Mind Control and Coal Front, both speed-oriented sons of Stay Thirsty, have done their best to catch imaginations. One is about to send his first yearlings to market from a debut book of 190 mares, a New York record. The other, though, quickly moved from Kentucky to Louisiana, includes fairytale Derby runner Coal Battle among half-dozen stakes winners produced at a better clip than any of his third-crop peers.

Hejazi ran well enough at Del Mar to keep alive aspirations of retrieving at stud the $3.55 million he cost at a 2-year-old sale. If just short of the best sprinters around, he certainly had them in trouble when opening up, only to be run down late by a 7-year-old gelding at 18-1.

But let's show due respect to that gelding, as the first elite scorer by the stallion who has denied none other than Stay Thirsty a fifth Californian sires' championship in each of the past two years.

If Grazen is now approaching the evening of his career, at 19, then we have all the more reason to prize the access he salvages, as a grandson of Alydar, to a male line that has largely faded away. (Actually Grazen's sire Benchmark channels equally precious blood from his mother, a Danzig half-sister to Tranquility Lake {Rahy}).

Like War Front, Grazen is out of a Rubiano mare. They met, incidentally, on the same farm–albeit meanwhile renamed–where Grazen is nowadays standing himself.

Grazen is sire of 28 black-type winners at a very wholesome 7% of named foals. He has certainly come a long way since being launched virtually as a private stallion by owner-breeder Nick Alexander, his track career having been abbreviated by injury.

Alexander actually bred Lovesick Blues, selling him privately not so long ago, but showing sporting delight last weekend for his purchasers. And this breakout, switching to dirt, shines a light on the fascinating pedigree that Alexander had put together.

As we see with Bernardini, the phenomenon of a broodmare sire is always easier to observe than explain. But the fact is that the dam of Lovesick Blues, Queenofhercastle, is inbred 2×3 to a real legend in this sphere. She's by one son of Deputy Minister, Ministers Wild Cat, out of a mare by another in Touch Gold.

While that formula didn't yield anything too exciting on the track–Queenofhercastle's three career wins came under diminishing tags–the intention was presumably to emulate an earlier impact on this family by Deputy Minister. For fourth dam Mme. Mitterand (Mr. Prospector) is an unraced half-sister to Deputy Minister's son French Deputy.

True to his sire's brand, French Deputy (who died in Japan only this year, at a venerable 33) was himself a strong distaff influence, his daughters having produced elite winners all around the world. I've often noted how sons of Deputy Minister have mirrored his own success as a broodmare sire, and how those that do produce male heirs tend to impart a corresponding forte–as, for instance, Awesome Again's son Ghostzapper.

Daughters of Touch Gold could hardly fail to be useful producers, his own dam additionally being by a distaff influence as potent as Buckpasser. Sure enough, his mating with Mme. Mitterand's daughter by Rahy produced the dam of two unusual achievers.

One is Queen Bee To You (Old Topper), whose GIII La Canada Stakes success–besides emulating that of Mme. Mitterand's own dam, 35 years previously–helped to qualify her as her sire's premier earner ($658,770). The other is Queenofhercastle, who's quietly proving a similar overachiever. Her first foal is Lovesick Blues. Her second, also by Grazen, has been no more than a workaday operator, though the elevation of her page was artfully anticipated by those who last claimed her, for $30,000, only in May. And her third, by Grazen's son Tough Sunday, resumes in black-type company at Del Mar on Friday after ending his first campaign winning the Golden State Juvenile Stakes.

Grazen's first elite scorer has arrived in a race once won by one of his sire's own stars. Tragically, Points Offthebench (Benchmark) subsequently suffered a fatal breakdown preparing for the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint. Obviously Lovesick Blues will not be able to continue the line himself, as a gelding, but his striking course-and-distance rehearsal permits the hope that he might yet decorate it with a prize that slipped so cruelly out of reach in 2013.

Pride After a Falls

As mentioned, we've previously examined the Bernardini mare who produced Nysos, a granddaughter of GI Breeders' Cup Distaff winner Unbridled Elaine (Unbridled's Song).

Though Unbridled Elaine did produce some classy runners and/or producers, the two mares dividing her from Nysos have otherwise offered little to the page he will take to stud. That requires us to go back to a mare whose background–as a daughter of an In Reality sprinter named Taylor's Falls–remind us how variegated are the sources of that famous “hybrid vigor.”

From this distance, the eligibility of Taylor's Falls for a stud career seems fairly obscure, even if he did win 14 of 30 races, crowned by the Beef State Handicap at Ak-Sar-Ben. In fairness, he did come up with Dazzling Falls to set a Nebraska-bred earnings record of $904,621, also the first to represent his state in the GI Kentucky Derby. But the Alabama-bred Carols Folly, one of 11 named foals in his 1987 crop, more typically appeared to represent a further reversion to mediocrity in a maternal line that had mysteriously produced her fifth dam, Swoon (Sweep Like), to become the 1956 Broodmare on the Year through the Hall of Fame exploits of Swoon's Son.

Nysos | Benoit

Though Carols Folly actually proved quite a competent runner, winning five of a dozen starts, including a stakes at Birmingham, she made no more than $22,000 when sold carrying a first foal by Seattle Dancer. The resulting filly made $4,000 as a weanling and, named Gwenjinsky, proved unable to break her maiden even when dropped to claimers. Yet she would later produce a series of black-type performers, headed by Lead Story (Editor's Note), a triple Grade II winner at Churchill Downs.

The next foal out of Carols Folly, a Glitterman filly, was another four-figure yearling yet, as Glitter Woman, won four graded stakes–including the GI Ashland–by an aggregate 32 1/2 lengths. Unfortunately she bombed as hot favorite for the GI Kentucky Oaks before missing the rest of the year and, though consistent in good company, thereafter won only a Grade III.

At Keeneland that November her weanling half-sister, from the first crop of Unbridled's Song, brought $230,000. But Unbridled's Elaine proceeded to bank $1.77 million on the track before being cashed out to Sheikh Mohammed for $4.4 million, carrying a Forestry colt that became multiple graded stakes winner Etched.

The emergence of Unbridled Elaine, meanwhile, prompted Glitter Woman's owner to send her to Unbridled's Song, a mating that produced GI Suburban Handicap winner Political Force. Unfortunately Glitter Woman died soon afterwards, but this hot cluster is surely where Nyquist has stoked the embers to produce Nysos.

So if you think you can explain Carols Folly–whether through Taylor's Falls, or the Bob's Dusty mare who produced her–then please don't tell anyone. For the rest of us, it is mysteries like these that make the game what it is.

Fappiano Running Every Which Way

Etched was one of the first signs that Unbridled's Song would himself become a notable broodmare sire and his daughters have since produced stars as varied as Contrail (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn}) and the glistening young Claiborne stallion Annapolis (War Front). And last weekend another one produced Running Away (Gun Runner) to win the GIII Monmouth Oaks, her fourth win in her last five.

The first of those, a Churchill maiden, was the only one in the book when her dam Allez Marie (Unbridled's Song) was sold to Gainesway for $750,000 through a Fasig-Tipton digital sale last December. But Allez Marie, herself group-placed in Brazil, had already produced four stakes performers–making her much the best conduit of the blood that had helped her own dam Summerly (Summer Squall) win the GI Kentucky Oaks.

 

Running Away | Julia Sebastianelli/EQUI-PHOTO

Running Away combines two lines of Fappiano, the grandsire of Unbridled's Song, as well as the founder of the more circuitous route, via Cryptoclearance, that has produced Gun Runner. But of course the latter also owes his celebrated granddam Quiet Dance to a third branch of Fappiano in Quiet American.

What an incredible legacy, for a stallion who died at just 13, only weeks after Unbridled won the 1990 Derby. And, having started off with a couple of imperilled male lines, let's remind ourselves that Dr. Fager–who notoriously failed to find an adequate heir–can instead claim a lasting legacy through his daughter Killaloe, the dam of Fappiano.

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