Breeding Digest: Joel Legacy The Key Element In Nitrogen

[Wandering Eyes]

Nothing ages us like old silk–certainly, at any rate, those of us who began on the Turf long before there was an internet. Finding footage today of the races that got us hooked will invariably restore from oblivion the colors of tycoons and aristocrats, once part of our daily lives, that have largely or even totally vanished since.

Sic transit gloria mundi. (So passes the glory of the world…) Our memories, moreover, position us in place as well as time. In my own youth, for instance, black jacket and scarlet cap did not spell Phipps. They meant H. J. Joel.

By that stage, true, Jim Joel was primarily associated with popular steeplechasers like Maori Venture (GB) and Door Latch (GB). In 1986, as a nonagenarian with fading sight, he had reluctantly dispersed his breeding stock at Tattersalls–though, as we'll see, there would be one final flourish on the Flat.

As is typical of young people, I then had little sense of the extraordinary dynastic saga underpinning his Turf investment. But while Joel's longevity permitted him unusual gratification, from the pedigrees he cultivated, it remains our privilege still to benefit from his legacy. GI Alabama Stakes winner Nitrogen (Medaglia d'Oro) is a case in point, tracing as she does to a mare whose 1964 transfer to Kentucky broke six consecutive generations of Joel family breeding.

D.J. Stable bred Nitrogen from Tiffany Case (Uncle Mo), a $320,000 purchase at the 2019 Keeneland November Sale, in foal to Violence, after she'd won five of 13 starts. (Never quite bridged the gap in stakes company, owing her black type to a distant third of four.) The foal she was carrying proved to be Love to Shop, who recovered $200,000 as a yearling before setting to work for the page round Woodbine, as a stakes winner placed four times at graded level.

So here's a young mare who has produced a Grade I winner and Grade II runner-up from two foals. Moreover her debut cover was obviously based on the emergence of her half-sister by Violence, Talk Veuve to Me, winner the previous year of the GIII Indiana Oaks and runner-up in the GI Acorn Stakes.

A $20,000 yearling who eventually joined the Stonestreet broodmare band for $1.3 million, Talk Veuve to Me was too late to revive the value of her dam Biblical Point (Point Given), a sister to triple Grade II runner-up Winning Point. Biblical Point had needed 10 attempts to break her maiden before measuring how dismally we turn these wonderful creatures into commodities, making five in-foal visits to the November Sale between 2008 and 2015, her value ultimately declining to $1,500 when finally exported to Korea.

What a contrast to the way mares were developed by the great breed-to-race programs! And the commercial nadir of her granddam does not alter the fact that Nitrogen is only the latest bloom on the remarkable family tree rooted in Absurdity (GB), a 1904 yearling purchase who became foundation mare for Joel's father Jack at Childwickbury Stud.

Absurdity's daughter Jest (GB) won two Classics in 1913 before herself producing the 1921 Derby winner Humorist (GB). After that sensational start, the line stagnated somewhat until Joel inherited the stud in 1940. At that point, Absurdity's randdaughter Amuse (Ire) was carrying a foal by Donatello (Fr). The resulting filly, Picture Play (GB), won the 1944 1,000 Guineas and her own daughter Queen of Light (GB) (Borealis {GB}) has since tied together the pedigrees of many elite performers.

For Joel himself, for instance, she became granddam of both the 2,000 Guineas/Derby winner Royal Palace (GB) and the brilliant miler Welsh Pageant (Fr); and also third dam of 1,000 Guineas winner Fairy Footsteps (GB). But it was the emigration of Queen of Light's daughter Chandelier (GB) to Kentucky, after her first foal became champion British juvenile Crocket (GB), that served to proliferate her impact–albeit often through the repatriation of her blood to Europe.

Her key daughter, Lighted Lamp (Sir Gaylord), had no fewer than 18 named foals. On the racetrack, they tended not to do things too quickly and three of her stakes performers operated at 14, 15 and even 22 (!) furlongs. But her daughters recur in all manner of pedigrees. Just as a sample, they include the granddams of animals as diverse as Greinton (GB), who broke two track records on dirt at Hollywood Park; and Paris House (GB), second as a juvenile in the G1 Nunthorpe Stakes 34 years ago this week.

Lighted Lamp's foals were by 16 different sires, but she started with the best in Northern Dancer. The result was Star in the North, Group-placed in Europe before producing two smart turf runners: Mountain Kingdom (Exceller) tapped into that staying seam in the G2 Yorkshire Cup, while Cool (Bold Bidder) won the GI Manhattan Handicap. And though her daughter by Blushing Groom (Fr) never made the track, it would ultimately be her that produced Biblical Point, granddam of Nitrogen.

And so the Joel legacy lives on. As always, it does so via highways and byways, valued and interpreted in different ways. One of the top mares at the dispersal, at 600,000gns, rewarded Sheikh Mohammed as granddam of those early Godolphin stars, the Sadler's Wells siblings Moonshell (Ire) and Doyen (Ire).

At just 5,200gns, much the cheapest lot was Regal Beauty (Princely Native)–whose left-field acquisition as a yearling, at Keeneland four years previously, had shown her veteran purchaser still looking forward. And, in fact, her weanling colt by Shirley Heights (GB) was retained to race after the dispersal. Under the name High Estate (GB), he gave Joel that last hurrah as 1988 champion juvenile.

For her purchaser, Regal Beauty then came up with King's Theatre (Ire), whose juvenile emergence prompted Sheikh Mohammed to catch up with what he'd missed. Fortunately for him, King's Theatre trained on at three–unlike High Estate, winter favorite for the Derby but overtaken at Warren Place the following spring by another glorious son of Sadler's Wells, Old Vic (GB). Oh dear, I'm sorry. It's not just pedigrees that proliferate, but memories.

Not This Time | Jon Siegel

New Horizons For Big Guns

Before proceeding, we must additionally acknowledge the Alabama Stakes as another chapter in the incredible Indian summer of Medaglia d'Oro, sire of both the winner and runner-up. Having only recently celebrated the 26-year-old, here we'll just note that he has joined Into Mischief and Twirling Candy on three Grade I winners for the year, from 152 starters compared with 383 and 258 respectively for the other pair.

Moreover, Nitrogen's switch of surface reiterates her sire's long service as a crossover influence, much of his career having coincided with a period of benighted prescription of given influences as inflexibly either turf or dirt.

We should also bookmark Nitrogen's contribution to the growing distaff impact of a sire who, sadly, was not blessed with similar longevity. With Thorpedo Anna (Fast Anna) and Journalism (Curlin) among those also advertising Uncle Mo's prowess as a broodmare sire, there may be particular interest in fillies among his penultimate yearlings. Prolific as he was, no fewer than 49 of those are catalogued in the September Sale.

Among the big guns, incidentally, Not This Time has yet to come up with a real headliner this year but things are unmistakably astir for a stallion whose latest juveniles were still conceived at only $45,000. His next crop, including three seven-figure sales at Saratoga, resulted from a trebled fee and it will be quite a ride if his upgraded mares can move up even his outstanding performance with lesser materials. Not This Time is the year's most prolific juvenile sire, with 14 winners already, and has had six 'TDN Rising Stars' inside six weeks including the 18-length blowout It's Our Time on the Alabama card.

Priceless Twists Of Fate

His sire's progress as a distaff influence is not the only reason why Chiefswood Stables might have preferred GIII Bold Venture Stakes winner Simcoe (Uncle Mo) to have been born a filly. For one thing, he has been gelded anyway. But he's also out of a mare with an incorrigible record, with one of the great maternal lines in play, of producing males.

For this is a sequel to a tale told last week, when we traced the pedigree of Fort Washington (War Front) via his fifth dam, the great Allez France (Sea-Bird {Fr}), to her mother Priceless Gem (Hail to Reason). Simcoe foreshortens the line to Priceless Gem, his third dam being another of her daughters, Lady Winborne (Secretariat).

Herself dam of two Grade I winners, Al Mamoon (Believe It) and La Gueriere (Lord At War {Arg}), the stakes production spreading beneath Lady Winborne makes your head swim, with Munnings and Circus Maximus (Ire) among the names quickest into focus.

La Gueriere's example saw Lady Winborne returned to Lord At War for her last five foals. First of these was Lady Lochinvar, who only won a maiden in a light career but did at least do so by seven lengths at Saratoga.

Little wonder, then, that Chiefswood were forced to $800,000 for her daughter Aurora Lights (Pulpit) at the 2007 September Sale–especially when the ongoing functionality of her genes had been reiterated, earlier that year, by three consecutive graded stakes for her half-brother Master Command (A.P. Indy).

Unfortunately Aurora Lights, besides missing out on five years through various misfortunes, has delivered nine boys out of nine. The sixth was Simcoe. Let's hope that everybody managed a nice, welcoming smile for the American Pharoah colt who slithered into the straw this spring!

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