Breeding Digest: Authentic Hope Highlights Spendthrift Spree

[Wandering Eyes]

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According to Oscar Wilde, the one thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about at all. Nothing to worry the Spendthrift team there!

This is one of the two farms that have done the most to drive up stallion books, duly able to pitch fees accessibly to smaller breeders but embracing major responsibility in their footprint on the gene pool. But if some people remain uncomfortable with the business model, everyone can acknowledge the caliber of the horsemen making it function. And certainly those charged with taking forward the legacy of B. Wayne Hughes have just had a weekend of extraordinary achievement.

One of them, of course, is mischievously celebrated in the naming of Ted Noffey (Into Mischief), who headlined Spendthrift's spree. But the farm's self-effacing general manager would sooner emphasize the teamwork that additionally secured a Keeneland Grade I for Tommy Jo (Into Mischief); graded stakes for Tamara (Bolt d'Oro) and Brave Deb (Authentic); a 'TDN Rising Star, presented by Hagyard' debut for Local Knowledge (by the farm's trailblazing freshman Yaupon); and a Keeneland maiden for Get Back Loretta (Bolt d'Oro).

All carry the Spendthrift silks. But it will have been nearly as gratifying to see their own success shared by others who had supported their young stallions: from Intrepido, a second Grade I winner this year for the $15,000 cover Maximus Mischief, to another pair of graded winners for the flourishing Vekoma.

But perhaps the cherry on the cake, especially with the aforementioned Brave Deb following through at Santa Anita the next day, was a Grade I breakout for Authentic through Iron Orchard in the Frizette Stakes.

For these two fillies to emerge consecutively from his second crop, on either coast, represents a huge tonic for a stallion on the brink.

Now, we know what may happen to he who lives by the sword. Stallions launched with enormous books must seize their moment, because the kind of breeders who get involved generally move right on to the next off the carousel.

On one end of the spectrum, you can land on a horse like Vekoma, making his volume count pretty sensationally, with 97 individual winners from 160 starters this year. But his neighbor Authentic, at $75,000 much the most expensive start-up of their intake, notoriously found the early going so tough that this spring he was trading at just $15,000.

The 2020 Horse of the Year opened with 229 mares and his first yearlings duly dominated the rookie averages at $286,076. Yet a class-high 94 starters last year yielded a single black-type success, at Albuquerque, among 24 winners overall. His subsequent crops have paid a heavy price, his third currently trying to rally a $32,000 median against a $60,000 conception fee. But one or two straws could still be clutched. Authentic was himself a late developer, and the same could easily prove true of his stock. Sure enough, this spring Rodriguez–a May foal, like his sire–put himself in the Classic picture winning the GII Wood Memorial.

With wretched luck, however, the relieving general disappeared the moment he had appeared on the horizon. Scratched from the Derby with a foot bruise, Rodriguez had to settle for fourth in the GI Belmont Stakes and has not been seen since.

But now Authentic has shown himself no one-trick pony. While no second-crop sire can lay a glove on Vekoma, now up to seven, three graded winners this year can otherwise be matched only by Complexity and McKinzie. (And if Authentic had numbers on his side, so did Vekoma and McKinzie; the one punching above weight is Complexity.)

The GIII Surfer Girl success of Brave Deb has proved a silver lining to Authentic's loss of vogue, having been retained by the farm ($70,000 RNA) at Keeneland last year. But Iron Orchard is an even better measure of the way their sire could yet turn things round. She made $140,000 as a weanling in 2023, slipstreaming those popular yearlings, and then failed to meet her reserve at the New York-bred Sale in Saratoga before being moved on for $78,000 at Fasig-Tipton last October. But her second pinhook cycle, through Grassroots Training and Sales, proved a great success ($500,000 at OBS) and now she's only the second graded stakes winner out of a Brethren mare.

Gin Gin | Coady Media

That mare, moreover, ended her career as a $25,000 claim. In fairness, she offered Authentic some interesting genes. For a start, she's half-sister to Wonderlandbynight (Sky Mesa), who won her first four including the GIII Arlington-Washington Lassie Stakes; and also to the dam of GI Shoemaker Mile winner Exaulted (Twirling Candy). The next dam is a Gulch half-sister to the productive Lovington (Afleet), responsible for two graded stakes winners plus the granddam of Aloha West. And they're out of a half-sister to Ogygian, himself an interesting distaff influence, as well as to the dam of Honour and Glory.

These names sit comfortably with the next dam, a half-sister to none other than Killaloe (Dr. Fager), mother of breed-shaping Fappiano. In other words, this is the family shortly pegged down by Cequillo (Princequillo). As sixth dam, the Tartan Farms foundation mare may play only a tenuous role in the emergence of Iron Orchard. But Authentic will be grateful for all the help he can get and, who knows, may yet redeem himself as a bargain route to Into Mischief.

Double Gin Packs Flavor

By this stage, perhaps, you'll be familiar with this column's weakness for a matriarch like Cequillo, no matter how far recessed. Many a talented runner, of course, discloses a background of relentless anonymity, but this time round we were spoiled for choice.

Admittedly you have to spool back a long way behind GI Spinster winner Gin Gin (Hightail) before reaching the great Claiborne mare Bourtai. But it's still fun to note that the same granddaughter, Golden Sari (Ambiorix {Fr}), combines this maternal line with that of one of the Spendthrift flyers, Get Back Loretta (respectively as sixth and seventh dam).

Gin Gin's family has certainly been well seeded in the meantime, with first four dams by Hard Spun, Seeking the Gold, Seattle Slew and El Gran Senor. This is Hightail's second elite winner from just 77 career starters and the other, Mongolian Groom, had equally resonant seeding: Dynaformer, Mr Prospector, Danzig, Buckpasser, Native Dancer. In a difficult world, that kind of thing will always comfort me.

But the most obviously striking feature of Gin Gin's page is that Seattle Slew, sire of her third dam, is replicated twice in the same generation behind Hightail himself: as sire both of his granddam, dual Grade I winner Fleet Renee, and his grandsire A.P. Indy.

Other aristocrats dusted off last weekend, meanwhile, included Classy 'n Smart (leading to No Class/Classy Quillo) as fifth dam of GII Pilgrim Stakes winner Bottas (Vekoma); Chris Evert's daughter and Juddmonte linchpin Nijinsky Star, as fourth dam of GII Jessamine Stakes winner Imaginationthelady (Not This Time); and Seattle Slew's dam My Charmer as fifth dam of GIII Waya Stakes winner Village Voice (GB) (Zarak {Fr}).

Napoleon Solo | Sarah Andrew

A Bloom Worth The Wait

The latter was imported from Tattersalls for 1.3 million guineas, already a proven runner, but to get to this point a series of astute breeders have tapped into these great families at much lesser cost.

Relatively speaking, of course, they will often have made a matching commitment. One of the best farms of its size in Kentucky, for instance, dug out $280,000 for the 6-year-old Romanticism (War Front) at the height of the Covid market, in the 2020 November Sale at Keeneland. She was unraced, but out of Nijinsky Star's seven-time Grade I-winning granddaughter Sightseek (Distant View). Ashview has since raised and sold three yearlings out of this mare: a $450,000 Constitution colt; a $300,000 Not This Time filly; and, most recently, a $325,000 son of Liam's Map. The middle one of those is Imaginationthelady, and for the mare it is all gravy from here.

Of course, sometimes the dividends can take a little longer–even for perhaps the most extraordinary family farm of them all. Glennwood, like Ashview for Romanticism's latest yearling, chose Liam's Map as the 2022 cover for its homebred stakes winner Atomic Bloom (Scat Daddy). The resulting colt was sold for no more than $40,000 at the September Sale last year, yet we now know him as the runaway GI Champagne Stakes winner Napoleon Solo.

Good to see Liam's Map standing up for himself, even as half-brother Not This Time soars ever higher. This was the older sibling's third Grade I winner of the year, albeit Not This Time's upgraded mares are really cycling through now: he had another four graded stakes winners over the weekend and, most instructively of all, filled out the frame in the Jessamine. One way or another, what a legacy their dam Miss Macy Sue (Trippi) has left us!

While it was Chad Summers who found himself a bargain in Imaginationthelady, the Gunther family can now look forward to the trickledown for Atomic Bloom, bred from a Danehill Dancer (Ire) mare picked up for just $22,000 in 2011. Atomic Bloom was this year covered by Glennwood's own stallion, Stage Raider, but her weanling colt is by none other than Authentic. And with a program like this in his corner, nobody will be giving up just yet.

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