Breeding Digest: Docking in the Right Harbor Can Redeem Failed Stallions

[Wandering Eyes]

The first sophomore skirmishes of the 2026 Classic crop vividly attested to the twin poles that support this business. One is that access to the most expensive blood must work out sufficiently to keep the elite programs in the game. But the other is that a good horse can come from anywhere, which gives us all some kind of chance.

The impressive success of Commandment in the Mucho Macho Man Stakes reiterated how the annual quest for the GI Kentucky Derby winner currently starts with the rags-to-riches emperor of American stallions. Last year Sovereignty put Into Mischief level with four others, none more recent than Bull Lea, as sire of three Kentucky Derby winners. And already the seven-time champion stallion's 2023 crop has produced a series of candidates to secure him a fourth, headed by juvenile champion elect Ted Noffey but also featuring Japan's leading dirt prospect Satono Voyage (Jpn) plus a whole bunch of exciting novices, of which we might offer 'TDN Rising Star' Cannoneer as just one example.

But then you also had the colt who, unlike Commandment, actually banked Derby gate points with a decisive success of his own in the Smarty Jones Stakes. Strategic Risk is by Noble Bird, a $3,000 cover dropped from the Ocala Stud roster at the end of 2023, when exported to Saudi Arabia through a Fasig-Tipton digital sale for just $34,000.

You may remember the son of Birdstone narrowly securing his Grade I day in the sun in the Stephen Foster Handicap in 2015, or indeed setting a track record (still standing, at 1:47.75) in the GII Fayette Stakes at Keeneland, but essentially he was a hardy, second-tier handicap performer who has proved thoroughly anonymous as a stallion. Yet who can state definitively that such a horse cannot sire a Derby winner? If you scroll back through his resumé, after all, you will be reminded that he was beaten a head for a Grade II race at Churchill, on the eve of the 2015 Derby, by Protonico-who would himself proceed to sire the first past the post in the 2021 Derby at a fee of $6,500. Obviously that race created issues, but the point stands. A good horse can come from anywhere.

In fairness, the other side of the same coin is that Thoroughbreds are no less predictable when it comes to disappointing us. One might almost say that a bad horse can come from anywhere! On paper, for instance, his success in the 2013 Derby appeared to confirm Orb as a paragon of what we strive to produce as breeders: he represented a regal family, and had made a seamless ascent through the ranks before storming through at Churchill on the first Saturday in May. Hardly the first horse to lose his way from that kind of pinnacle, he had demonstrably converted his elite genes into corresponding prowess and duly looked a highly eligible prospect at $25,000. Yet even the seasoned hands of Claiborne Stud could not eke anything out of Orb, whose fee and books dwindled until departing for Uruguay in 2021.

There was just one, fleeting moment when Orb deceived us that he might fulfil his blatant promise. That was when Sippican Harbor, a $260,000 Saratoga yearling from his second crop, returned to the Spa the following summer to win a maiden by 17 lengths and then follow up in the GI Spinaway Stakes.

Unfortunately she had to be retired after a midfield finish at the Breeders' Cup, and was retained by Lee Pokoik at $1.45 million when offered at Fasig-Tipton a year later with a maiden cover by Medaglia d'Oro.

Though the resulting colt ended up making two starts in his breeder's silks in maiden claimers, Sippican Harbor's second foal-a daughter of Curlin-had meanwhile been sold to Robert and Lawana Low for $750,000 as a weanling. She never made the racetrack, however; and nor has the mare's next foal, an Into Mischief filly named Waterway, who consecutively went through Fasig-Tipton digital sales in October 2024 and last January. On both occasions she was listed as sold to Melinda Smith, at $18,000 and $15,000 respectively.

Well, the owners of those two fillies will now be taking a very keen interest in what happens from here with Commandment. For he is the fourth foal out of Sippican Harbor and due reward for Pokoik in consistently ensuring that she be given every chance in her covers. For it is not as though Commandment, sold as a yearling for $500,000, is simply a case of Into Mischief rescuing a mare by a contrastingly disappointing sire.

Apart from anything else, Orb is perfectly entitled to filter something worthwhile as a broodmare sire: he's by a noted one himself (Sierra Leone the latest star out of a Malibu Moon mare) and his family traces to the matriarch Shenanigans (Native Dancer). But Sippican Harbor herself extends another noble line: her unraced dam, who introduces the priceless distaff influence Deputy Minister, is out of a Mt. Livermore half-sister to British Group 1 winner Peter Davies (Bering {GB}). And their third dam was Leallah, a sensational juvenile in 1956, who was by Nasrullah out of the great Lea Lark-herself, of course, a daughter of Bull Lea.

However tenuously, by this stage, it would be apt if Bull Lea could claim even a small role, should Commandment happen to become the horse to end his share in a Derby record.

 

Mare of Noble Blood Gives Bird Wings

Orb bowed out of the United States with a book of seven mares that ultimately delivered six live foals, which just happens to be exactly how Noble Bird signed off. Whatever their respective contribution to the pair of colts under discussion, the one who has redeemed Noble Bird from oblivion surely owes much to a family cultivated by the Phipps family-who also shared, through their kinship with the Janneys, in the noble line that produced Orb.

Strategic Risk was homebred by John C. Oxley, who had also raced Noble Bird, from the unraced yearling purchase Strategize (Afleet Alex). Registered as bred by Charles Fipke, Strategize had actually been acquired in utero with her dam Strategy (A.P. Indy), a nine-furlong stakes winner on dirt, for $425,000 as a 9-year-old Phipps cull at the 2010 Keeneland November Sale. Fipke's regard for the best families is familiar, and highly productive, and here he had been drawn to one of the very best Phipps brands: Strategy was a daughter of none other than Educated Risk (Mr. Prospector), millionaire half-sister to champion Inside Information (Private Account).

The latter herself became dam of another champion, Smuggler (Unbridled), and Educated Risk similarly emerged as an important producer: Strategy's half-sister by El Prado (Ire), the stakes-winning Consequence, is dam of the emerging blue hen Complicated (Blame), responsible for three graded stakes winners over the past 18 months: GI Natalma Stakes winner And One More Time (Omaha Beach); multiple graded stakes scorer Honor D Lady (Honor Code); and last year's GI First Lady Stakes winner Simply in Front (Summer Front).

The latter goes under the hammer at the forthcoming Keeneland January Sale, and this update through a sire as insipid as Noble Bird can only serve to emphasize the continued prowess of the maternal family. After all, it was in Noble Bird's first date with Strategize that had given him a breakout black-type winner in Strategic Bird, a $2,000 yearling who won her maiden by 13 lengths before following up in the Sandpiper Stakes in 2021.

Simply in Front also offers the precious oddity of El Prado (Ire) 3 x 3: as noted, the granddam is his daughter out of Educated Risk, while he also features as Summer Front's damsire. So here's a broodmare prospect that combines his old-school influence with one of the great Phipps families, and then adds all this recent activity in the foreground. That would make Simply in Front a valuable proposition had she never set foot on a racetrack. As it is, she will surely need checking out by all the major international programs.

 

A World of Mischief

We finish as we started: with Into Mischief. For his legacy will ultimately be expanded by his daughters, too. They have already started giving us horses like Shisospicy (Mitole) and White Abarrio (Race Day), and it is striking that the one whose second foal is Jerome Stakes winner My World (Essential Quality) was conceived when Into Mischief remained no higher than $20,000.

On the face of it, the fact that Quebec was able to win a couple of stakes-despite a pretty thin page-was an early sign of her sire's ability to upgrade a pedigree. To be fair, her third dam was half-sister to a champion sprinter in Eillo (Mr. Prospector); and, more importantly, Quebec was ahead of the curve in terms of what has become one of the axiomatic short cuts of modern breeding: she's out of a Distorted Humor mare, a pathfinder for the cross we now associate with Practical Joke, Life Is Good and all the rest.

Meanwhile this colt is promoting a stallion in the early stages of his own career. As we recently noted in our ongoing Value Sires series, Essential Quality has been depreciating a little too rapidly for a sire whose first crop has made a perfectly respectable start-albeit in the context of a historically underachieving freshman intake. His own juvenile championship was just a prelude, a Belmont winner by Tapit after all, and many of his mares will themselves doubtless have carried Classic blood. If he finds himself needing a little more from his stock, as they mature and tackle a second bend, but that is exactly what they promise to give him.

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