Breeding Digest: Mariah’s Giant Legacy

Wandering Eyes · 2025-09-16T15:34:21Z

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How timely, that the first starting points for the 2026 Classics should be offered at Churchill even as the big spenders were driving each other to record heights up the road at Keeneland in their quest for a horse for 2027.

Admittedly Saturday's initial rehearsals offered alternatives to those who cannot spend millions at the September Sale. One winner was out of a homebred Cowboy Cal mare, admittedly using a stallion who banked 12 seven-figure sales at Keeneland; while the other was a $20,000 discovery, inevitably by Kenny McPeek, at Fasig-Tipton last October.

And both also showed that if all else fails, you just double down on Giant's Causeway.

There was, in fact, remarkable symmetry between the crosses that produced the GIII Iroquois and GIII Pocahontas Stakes winners. For both Spice Runner (Gun Runner) and Taken by the Wind (Rock Your World) are by sons of Candy Ride (Arg) out of mares by a son of Giant's Causeway (Cowboy Cal/First Samurai). Moreover Giant's Causeway also lurks just behind the respective sires, Gun Runner's dam and Rock Your World's granddam both being daughters.

But events over the Atlantic, the same day, invite us to view even this double duplication of Giant's Causeway as primarily extending the legacy of his dam, Mariah's Storm (Rahy), who also surfaced as granddam of Classic winner Scandinavia (Justify).

We'll have more to say about that horse below. But let's first renew our admiration for a mare who duly formed the mutual bedrock between two emerging American juveniles and the winner of one of the English Turf's most venerable prizes.

The first thing that always tickles me about Mariah's Storm is that her family is entwined with that of another great producer in Hasili (Ire) (Kahyasi {Ire}) by Itsabet (Heliopolis {GB}), as fourth and fifth dam respectively. Itsabet was the first stakes winner to carry the silks of Harry Isaacs, whose Brookfield Farm initially cultivated both these branches. It was when they had respectively entered other hands, however, that both happened to be seeded by the same redoubtable influence: Mariah's Storm herself and Hasili's dam are both out of Roberto mares.

Roberto's sire Hail to Reason, incidentally, is also behind the sire of Mariah's Storm, Rahy, who was out of a mare by his son Halo. Her other strong flavor is Nasrullah (GB), three of whose sons funnel into the page: the Red God line is extended through his grandson Rahy; Nashua is damsire of Roberto; while Bold Ruler's son Chieftain gave us the granddam.

It was yet another Nasrullah line, through Nasram, that led to Olympio–whose owner-breeder Verne Winchell supported him, at stud, with the $27,000 purchase of a weanling filly he named Classic Olympio. She went on a roll at Santa Anita as a juvenile (won her maiden by seven, then two stakes) before twice placing at Grade II level, and later produced a couple of stakes winners for the program including Simplify (Pulpit) in a dirt sprint at Saratoga. It was also round one turn at the Spa, but on grass, that Simplify's daughter by Cowboy Cal, Simple Surprise, won the Bolton Landing Stakes on her second start.

That earned Simple Surprise a place in the debut book of the Winchells' magnificent Gun Runner. The result was Gunite, who helped to put his sire on the map over three Saratoga summers: GI Hopeful/GII Amsterdam/GI Forego.

If that was instructive of Gun Runner's prowess, then let's acknowledge that Gunite's first three dams were all stakes winners. And the functionality of a match, one way or another, has now been corroborated by his brother Spice Runner.

Apparently this colt is rather bigger than Gunite, and he's certainly already shown greater hunger for distance. But don't forget that Cowboy Cal spent almost his entire career on turf and synthetics; nor that Simple Surprise also operated on grass. Whatever his younger brother can still achieve, with Giant's Causeway top and bottom, Europeans prospectors should not just move on from Gunite as a trademark dirt sprinter. But that takes me into familiar territory…

Spice Runner | Coady Media

Staying Power Not 'Just' Stamina
And that's because we need to ask where exactly G1 St Leger winner Scandinavia gets his relentless running power.

With a dam by Galileo (Ire), not to mention a third dam by Roberto, it would seem pretty obvious.

Scandinavia's mother, Fabulous (Ire), is one of four fillies out of Mariah's Storm by her “second husband.” On the retirement of Storm Cat, who had given her seven foals including Giant's Causeway and the famous producer You'resothrilling, she had a brief fling with Sadler's Wells before moving in with his son Galileo.

But when You'resothrilling was similarly married to Galileo, his famously sturdy influence could not suppress the speed and precocity of Storm Cat, which she had herself deployed winning two Group sprints. Their three Group 1 winners were either Classic milers, or top juveniles, or both. That, of course, may be largely down to Storm Cat. But meanwhile the principal distinction to date for a full-sister to Fabulous, Butterflies (Ire), is as granddam of reputedly the fastest of the current juvenile crop at Ballydoyle, Albert Einstein (Ire) (Wottoon Bassett {GB}).

Remember that Mariah's Storm was by Rahy, whose brand is primarily about dashers such as Serena's Song or Noverre. This is not the kind of dour terrain where Galileo has found his real sloggers–and we should not, therefore, overlook the staying power potentially contributed to Scandinavia, already a winner against his seniors in the G1 Goodwood Cup over two miles, by his sire.

Fabulous has already had one elite winner by a Triple Crown winner in Above The Curve (American Pharoah), who largely operated at 10 furlongs. But her son by Justify has shown an absolutely bottomless capacity to maintain a gallop, prominent throughout before stemming all challenges both at Goodwood and again over 14.5 furlongs last Saturday.

Now clearly it was sufficiently startling that a son of Scat Daddy (and grandson of Johannesburg) could complete his historic assignment in the GI Belmont Stakes. Nor would any conventional reading find much help in Justify's damsire Ghostzapper, who memorably had to stretch his own speed at the Breeders' Cup.

But that's the whole point. Just as breeders (especially in Europe) culpably conflate precocity with speed, so they tend to confuse “run” with mere stamina. Class is an elusive concept but one of the most coherent signposts is the ability to carry speed; to set off fast, and keep going.

I'm convinced that the gene pool in Europe, having been invigorated by all that Northern Dancer blood, suffered from the wilful neglect of dirt lines for a generation before Justify was given his opportunity by the reliably far-sighted John Magnier. Justify has responded virtually overnight, providing English Classic winners across the distance spectrum, via Ruling Court, City Of Troy and now Scandanavia; not to mention flyers like Ramatuelle, collared on the line in a Group 1 juvenile sprint and runaway winner of the G1 Prix de la Foret over 7f.

During all those years when Magnier's program was dominating Epsom through Galileo and Montjeu (Ire), hardly anyone–including rivals similarly engaged either side of the water–applied the lessons of the dynasty represented by both those horses. None of the most potent American sires of recent times, whether Into Mischief or Tapit or Curlin, has been meaningfully tried in Europe.

Not that Europeans are alone in their myopia. Remarkably, not one among all those million-dollar babies at Keeneland was by Justify, albeit a $975,000 filly fell only one bid short. If his local market perseveres in this neglect, maybe Justify should someday court the respect he deserves with a stint in Tipperary.

Taken by the Wind | Coady Media

Numbers Help Catch The Wind
Pocahontas winner Taken by the Wind represents a stakes breakthrough for a stallion launched with the usual commercial stampede in 2022.

Rock Your World could trade on the efforts of Gun Runner and Twirling Candy in promoting Gun Runner as sire of sires. After all, he's out of a mare by Empire Maker, half-brother to Twirling Candy's damsire Chester House; and, as noted earlier, his granddam is by Gun Runner's damsire Giant's Causeway. And actually his third dam is by Olympio, securing a second such mention this week after filling the same slot for Spice Runner.

All those first three dams having been smart runners, Rock Your World started with no fewer than 219 mares at $10,000. Nearly as predictably, by last year he had slipped to 53 and was duly cut to $5,000 this spring.

Taken by the Wind is out of a First Samurai mare who won under a $7,500 tag and has hitherto done little more than might be expected from cheap covers, with the exception of Running Memories (Bahamian Squall), an eight-time winner narrowly beaten in a sprint stakes on turf. There's no black type at all under the second dam, but she's a Saint Ballado sibling to four graded stakes winners out of a Mr. Prospector mare. One of those, moreover, subsequently became dam of triple Grade I winner Society Selection (Coronado's Quest).

Taken by the Wind is among nine winners from 35 starters for Rock Your World, but as always we'll need to monitor ratios–rather than mere aggregates–as he proceeds from here. The early pace in the freshman table is set by Spendthrift neighbor Yaupon, whose debut book of 242 mares was exceeded that year only by Gun Runner. His 15 winners from 45 starters include two at black-type level, something hitherto matched only by Beau Liam.