Breeding Digest: Long Trail Through India Leads to Another Top Gun

[Wandering Eyes]

Needless to say, some people are always going to chase the fast buck. In the main, however, we all know this to be the longest of games. You can't drive the green from every tee; nor should you panic if your first drive lands in the water. There are 17 more holes to go.

For Jane Lyon and her late husband Frank, one of the least fulfilling days in their Turf journey must have been the GI Matron Stakes of 2005. They had just made an expensive gamble to restore to their Summer Wind program a Hennessy filly sold to John P. Fort as a Saratoga yearling the previous year.

Fort had paid $400,000 for India, a daughter of their foundation mare Misty Hour (Miswaki), and watched her win a 5.5 furlong Saratoga maiden on her second start by 12 lengths. The papers reported the cost of bringing her home at $2.05 million.

High stakes, then, when India lined up for the Matron as 7-5 favorite. But she got upset in the gate, was gunned into the lead and folded meekly, finishing tailed off. Todd Pletcher told the press that she had returned bloodied and distressed.

No Breeders' Cup for India, then. And when India did resurface at Aqueduct that winter, odds-on in a short field for a Grade III, she managed no better than third. Eventually, however, she stretched out to a mile and got on a roll, winning two stakes and two graded stakes.

But while her genes had now told on the track, it was presumably their potential for her second career that had inspired her retrieval. After all, her dam had been recruited during her own racing career–from Sam-Son Farm, after winning a Woodbine stakes–because she represented Darby Dan royalty.

For Misty Hour's third dam is the matriarch Golden Trail (Hasty Road), who had arrived in the famous “bulk buy” of 38 mares from the estate of Isabel Dodge Sloane by a syndicate headed by John Galbreath. Her family is one of the oldest in America, tracing all the way to Maria Slamerkin in 1769. Little wonder, then, if Golden Trail was one of those mares reserved for Darby Dan, where Galbreath more or less “married” her to Graustark–sire of 11 of her last 12 foals (from 17 overall).

The second of these, Java Moon, was good enough to win a Grade III but would achieve greater fame as granddam of nine stakes winners. These were headed by the elite performer/producer Memories of Silver (Silver Hawk), but also included Misty Hour, who was out of Java Moon's unraced daughter by Nijinsky and finished second in the GII Fantasy Stakes after her transfer to Summer Wind.

Given the parallel lines of this dynasty–which turn up names like Dynaformer, Ryafan, Brian's Time and Sunshine Forever–India was favored with some of the best stallions around, especially with her stakes-winning half-sister Pilfer (Deputy Minister) meanwhile emerging as a top-class producer. Pilfer's second foal To Honor and Serve (Bernardini), winner of the GI Woodward and GI Cigar Mile, secured her an automatic booking to his sire and together they additionally produced not only GI Chandelier Stakes winner Angela Renee but also the dam of one of the leading sophomore fillies of 2025, La Cara (Street Sense).

Still a very active family, then, and India herself rewarded her owners' enterprise in sending her to Frankel (GB) with Mozu Ascot, a dual Group 1 winner in Japan. Admittedly she also produced some fairly tepid talents, while her 2015 daughter by Tapit, Secret Sigh, never made the gate. But the Summer Wind team continued to do right by the family, and started Secret Sigh with Frankel, too. The resulting filly was retained, while Secret Sight's next foal–a son of Uncle Mo–brought $1.5 million as a Saratoga yearling.

Unfortunately, Frankel's daughter showed zilch in one start while the Uncle Mo colt failed to break his maiden in a dozen attempts. Nonetheless the mare's 2023 foal, a colt by Gun Runner, proved an even bigger hit at Saratoga last year, realizing $1.9 million from M.V. Magnier and White Birch Farm.

This time, Summer Wind did not risk seller's remorse and stayed in for a piece. As a result, they may yet find themselves sharing the ultimate legacy of India's return to the farm. For this, of course, is Paladin, winner last Saturday of the GII Remsen Stakes.

On one level, Paladin emulated Further Ado (who had the previous weekend likewise banked 10 Derby points) in exalting the first crop of Gun Runner juveniles conceived even at $125,000. Though only half his current fee, that was steeply up from the $50,000 he had charged “on the bubble,” pending his first starters in 2021. But neither his giddy rise since, nor the failures of Frankel and Uncle Mo with the same mare, alter the fact that Gun Runner was here tapping into a most aristocratic line. Some will no doubt excite themselves that both Paladin and Further Ado (whose damsire is Sky Mesa) are out of mares by a son of Pulpit. But the rest of us will focus on sheer depth of family, and the seeding of this branch since Golden Trail: Graustark, Nijinsky, Miswaki, Hennessy, Tapit.

This was a chance Gun Runner has plainly earned, but that will prove no less true of his breeders (and part-owners) should their patient trail through India happen to end up in the Churchill winner's circle next May.

REPOLE RECRUITS SHARE OVERNIGHT MOMENTUM

Misty Hour and Pilfer are just two contributors to the reputation of their respective sires, Miswaki and Deputy Minister, as elite distaff influences. That's a phenomenon easier to identify than explain, but I wonder whether this may become another of the many ways in which modern stallion books are eroding the coherence of breeding.

On the face of it, you would have to say that Uncle Mo's legacy is being lavishly expanded by his daughters, who have lately come up with Thorpedo Anna (Fast Anna), Journalism (Curlin), Nitrogen (Medaglia d'Oro) and Muth (Good Magic). But the fact is that we're talking about a sire who long matched quality with quantity, and you would hope that any stallion favored by quite so many mares deserving of such a high fee (up to $175,000) would come up with a few good producers.

Buckpasser, one of the greatest of all broodmare sires, was also denied a full span of life: he died at 15, a year younger than Uncle Mo. His total output was 320 named foals. Uncle Mo, with two more crops yet to enter training, has so far bequeathed 1,099 starters.

Still, there's no denying that several of his daughters are matching his sons in a growing imprint on the breed. Last Saturday was a case in point. With the GII Cigar Mile success of Bishops Bay advertising his eligibility to enter competition with other sons of Uncle Mo at stud, two young fillies out of Uncle Mo mares followed up their debut wins in Grade II company on either coast: Zany (American Pharoah) in the Demoiselle Stakes, and Consequent (Into Mischief) in the Starlet Stakes.

Besides a shared damsire, however, these two fillies have something rather more astonishing in common: the dams of both have literally just joined the same program that raced Uncle Mo himself.
Consequent's owner-breeder Juddmonte bought her dam Cognitive as a $500,000 yearling at the 2016 Saratoga Sale and, after she failed to build on her debut success in a light career, culled her (in foal to Elite Power) at the same price to Repole Stable at Keeneland last month. The 10-year-old had already produced one Into Mischief filly, Show Card, to win four of her last five starts including two stakes, so the emergence of Consequent–who made her debut immediately after the November Sale–makes Cognitive look exceptionally well found. After all, she's out of a half-sister to none other than Dream Rush (Wild Rush), herself a Grade I winner and dam and granddam of two others, in Dreaming of Julia (A.P. Indy) and Malathaat (Curlin).

If Juddmonte presumably knew that Cognitive was about to launch another talented daughter, then Zany is herself owned by Repole Stable–who bought her for $350,000 at Saratoga last year–and had won on debut at Gulfstream on the eve the November Sale. So when her dam Mo' Green was included in D.J. Stable's reduction, Repole and his team stepped in to buy her (with a fashionable cover by Vekoma) for $550,000.

In this instance the vendors made a nice profit, having bought Mo' Green for only $70,000 as a 2-year-old before watching her crown a 4-for-14 career in the GIII Top Flight Invitational Stakes. She's a couple of years older than Cognitive, but both still have plenty of opportunity to build on the overnight gains they have achieved for their new owner.

Presumably Hips 349 and 496 were bought to support Fierceness or Mindframe. Whatever the extra spur of sentiment, when it comes to Uncle Mo mares, King Midas recruitment of this kind will give those young sires every chance.

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