Breeding Digest: Not Yet His Most Dazzling Time

[Wandering Eyes]

After packing in so many rehearsals the previous week, as close to the Breeders' Cup as modern trainers might dare run a horse, the stakes schedule slackened off steeply last weekend. But that didn't mean the stallion of the moment had to do the same.

Not This Time duly came up with a 1-2 in the GII Franklin Stakes at Keeneland, maintaining his momentum after five stakes winners the previous weekend were crowned by a 1-2-3 in the GIII Jessamine Stakes. It was not just because of this hot streak, however, that Time to Dazzle felt so aptly named when pouncing from the rear to run down In Our Time, who had conversely used their paternal genes to pour it on up front.

Because it tells you everything that this 4-year-old was conceived at only $12,500. That was in 2020, when Not This Time's first crop was just approaching the starting gate. Their flying start would elevate him to $40,000 the following year, but it is only his latest yearlings whose pages reflect the caliber of mares welcomed to Taylor Made in 2023, when he was hiked from $45,000 to $135,000. In other words, given his further increases since, his true “time to dazzle” is still around the corner.

Not This Time has been in corresponding demand at the yearling sales, his current median of $612,500 behind only Gun Runner, his big rival as the stallion best placed eventually to end Into Mischief's monopoly of the sires' championship.

Some sires, admittedly, turn out to be as effective with their cheap early mares as with the bluebloods. The one guarantee is that Not This Time, now that he can charge elite fees, can hardly hope to produce stock 12 times better than Epicenter, Up to the Mark and Cogburn! All resulted from $15,000 covers.

It would be hard to put a price on what Epicenter did for the cause. As a dirt champion from his second crop, he highlighted Not This Time's eligibility to emulate his own sire Giant's Causeway as a crossover influence. This recent spree has very much been oriented to turf, on which surface Not This Time is the leading stallion of 2025. In fact, he has had 14 stakes winners on grass (from 160 starters) against six on dirt (from 177); and seven of those (against three) at graded level, including both his Grade I scorers. You suspect that plenty more dirt action will doubtless result from the mares he has been sent at higher fees; while fourth in the GI Kentucky Derby was no mean outcome for experimenting on dirt with Final Gambit. The really bewildering thing is that Not This Time has so far had just five foals trained in Britain, even though one of them won at Royal Ascot!

Regardless, in the case of Time to Dazzle, he should perhaps be sharing some credit with a dam whose chlorophyll-flavored family can itself, despite an obviously smaller footprint, boast of high achievement for a second consecutive weekend.

Staria (Unbridled's Song) brought just $11,000 as a 14-year-old at the 2017 Keeneland November Sale, despite having produced a hard-knocking multiple stakes winner in Louisiana. Though herself only placed a couple of times in a light turf career, she had made $350,000 as a yearling. That was because her unraced dam Starboard Tack (Seattle Slew) belonged to a quite excellent Sam-Son family.

In fact, she was a granddaughter of Canadian Broodmare of the Year Hangin Round (Stage Door Johnny), whose talented stock included Rainbow Connection (Halo), a dual Canadian champion who would emulate her dam as Canadian Broodmare of the Year. The latter's output included triple Canadian champion Rainbows for Life (Lyphard); G2 Prix de l'Opera winner Colour Chart (Mr. Prospector) and, among other smart producers, the dam of U.S. champion juvenile filly Tempera (A.P. Indy).

Starboard Tack is out of Hangin Round's daughter by Vice Regent, Hangin On a Star, herself winner of the 1987 Breeders' Stakes, turf leg of the Canadian Triple Crown. Hangin On a Star's other foals include Comet Shine (Fappiano), leading domestic juvenile of his crop; and Misty Mission (Miswaki), who won the equivalent leg of the Triple Tiara off her maiden success. Though sadly unraced thereafter, Misty Mission compensated by delivering a series of smart performers and producers. These included triple graded stakes winner/Canadian grass champion Irish Mission (Giant's Causeway) and Smart Mission (Smart Strike), who won her only two starts. And it was Smart Mission whose $32,000 daughter Mission of Joy (Kitten's Joy) won her third graded stakes in the GII Rodeo Drive, just a week before Time to Dazzle added fresh distinction to their mutual third dam.

Not even a sire as versatile as Not This Time, however, is going to give this family the variety it once enjoyed. Hangin Round's granddam had a couple of half-sisters who suggested its trademark to be speed, winning two of Europe's most frantic sprints in the Queen Mary Stakes and the Nunthorpe. But then along came another sibling to win the Cesarewitch Handicap, over two miles and quarter.

Inaugurated in 1839, the latest Cesarewitch was won at Newmarket last Saturday by Beylerbeyi (GB) (Invincible Spirirt {Ire}). He's by a sprinting grandson of Danzig; and his granddam was by Woodman, whose dam was full-sister to Beylerbeyi's fifth dam Numbered Account (Buckpasser). Whatever that cocktail was supposed to produce, it was hardly this.

It was the Cesarewitch that Josephine Abercrombie of Pin Oak flew over to see when Hasten To Add (Cozzene) lined up as favorite in 1993. Her trainer, Sir Mark Prescott, warned that there were 31 runners and, Newmarket not being a round course, her horse would be spotted precisely once despite the immense distance. When the giant gray emerged from the mist in a gallant fourth, his owner declared: “You British are incredible: all those dukes and duchesses standing in the rain looking at nothing!”

 

Rookie Error?

The publication of the latest stallion stats proved dispiriting as ever-whether because of the incorrigible stampede towards unproven sires, or the neglect of others that have shown auspicious functionality from limited chances. Yet we have just explored one example of the rewards available from independent thinking: Dr. Rodney Orr's astute choice of Not This Time, on the bubble at $12,500, to cover his $11,000 mare was rewarded at $310,000 when Time to Dazzle sold at the 2022 September Sale.

More often, people back off precisely when their judgement can prove most valuable. If you truly believe in a stallion, surely the time to double down is when his first runners are imminent.

It's hard to blame commercial breeders: they have to put bread on the table, and all they're doing is anticipating a reliable cowardice among those spending other people's money. These claim to focus on overpriced rookies because doing so gives them their “only” chance of landing on the next Not This Time, before his fee goes soaring beyond reach. We know that they never follow that logic through, to when the same stallion is about to be exposed by his first runners and dips to what will-if the original “judgement” in their favor happens to be vindicated-prove to be the lowest sales average of his career. But breeders are doubly rewarded for embracing that risk: they not only pay a cut-price fee (these “bubble” covers nowadays virtually given away) for the same semen, but also end up taking to market one of the few foals available until the sire's renewed vogue has cycled through.

Naturally people want to avoid exposure in an unpredictable world. But we saw last spring, in the panicked mid-season slashing of so many fees, that the current set-up is not sustainable.

It's interesting to see the kind of farms that have responded to the defeat of the proposed mare cap with a shrug: “Can't beat them, join them.” Perhaps they haven't noticed, passing the other way on the stairs, one of the farms that did most to drive up book sizes. With one or two exceptions, it does increasingly look as though 200 has pretty much become “book closed” at Spendthrift since the loss of B. Wayne Hughes.

That's still a monster number, compared to times past, but it's one that they could surely exceed with more of their stallions than the flourishing Vekoma (211)-as we see from the number of other farms that have apparently removed the word “no” from their vocabulary. If the Spendthrift team was ahead of the curve on all this, and people are now hastening to imitate them, could it be that they are yet again one jump ahead?

 

…But Some People Doing it Right

When the equivalent list was published in 2023, it showed Yoshida (Jpn) had covered just 34 mares in his fourth season. His first juveniles having done little to retrieve the situation, that winter he was returned to his native land. But at least that initial crop has turned out to contain Desvio, shock winner of the GII Sycamore Stakes last weekend-making a rare bargain of his dam Fitzrovia, an unraced daughter of Uncle Mo and GI Frizette Stakes winner Marylebone (Unbridled's Song).

Sold for $300,000 (with a maiden cover, by Competitive Edge) at the 2016 Keeneland November Sale, she was discarded to Brookstone Farm in the same ring four years later for just $20,000-an incredible price for a 7-year-old Uncle Mo mare out of a Grade I winner. She was, moreover, carrying Desvio, who promptly cleared that investment as a $60,000 short yearling.     Fitzrovia has since been paying her way very nicely, while given every chance with covers by Practical Joke, Blame, Epicenter and now Girvin. Only one of those was a shot in the dark, and the Brookstone/St George team absolutely deserve this unexpected bonus on their mare's page.

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