The Producers: Galloping Ami and Streak of Luck

Wandering Eyes · 2026-01-07T17:38:42Z

Last summer, we began “The Producers” as a way to spotlight a few of the extraordinary mares–and some of the people behind them–who produced the Grade I winners of 2025. With 83 individual North American Grade I winners in the books for the 2025 season, we return to it now, continuing with two mares who each made a massive impact at the fall breeding stock sales.

Galloping Ami, dam of Kopion

Galloping Ami (Victory Gallop) is a mare accustomed to making headlines. Named Outstanding Broodmare in Canada in 2016 after producing three black-type winners, including that year's Canadian 3-year-old colt champion Amis Gizmo (Giant Gizmo), she's only gotten better in the years since.

In 2025, her fourth stakes winner Kopion (Omaha Beach), the GI La Brea Stakes winner of 2024, roared to a GI Derby City Distaff Stakes win with a gaudy 109 Beyer Speed Figure (one of three 107+ Beyer Figures for her on the year).

Six months later, Galloping Ami's weanling by Curlin became North America's highest-selling weanling filly of 2025 when she sold to Wesley Ward for $1.25 million at Keeneland November.

Nick Lotz has raised not only Galloping Ami's foals at his Briarbrooke Farm near Paris, Ky., but also Galloping Ami herself. Lotz knows his way around a good horse–in addition to a number of top-level winners to flourish under his watchful eye at Briarbrooke, he also had a significant hand in breaking the legendary Ruffian as a young man during his time at Claiborne Farm. He stresses how gratifying it is to have his hands on good horses.

“That's why I live,” he said without hesitation. “That's what I live for. From the time I was 12, all I wanted to do was raise horses. This is not work. This is everything.”

It's a long association–more than three decades–with Ivan Dalos of Tall Oaks Farm that led to both Kopion and the Keeneland topping filly.

“I met Ivan through a bloodstock agent named Elizabeth Blythe,” said Lotz. “Ivan had a few mares in Canada and was racing some, but wanted to make a little more of a commercial effort to some extent and wanted to breed to some Kentucky stallions. Elizabeth was in the business of rounding up stallions and I was in the business of feeding horses, so that's how it got started.”

Galloping Ami and 2025 filly at Briarbrooke

Galloping Ami with her $1.25-million filly in June | Sarah Andrew

Dalos was inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame in August, as well as honored with the E.P. Taylor Award of Merit in 2022, He won Sovereign Awards for Outstanding Breeder in 2018 and 2020. Some of the top U.S. runners he's bred have included 2020 Eclipse champion turf male Channel Maker and 1999 Eclipse champion older male Victory Gallop, whose stellar race career is celebrated most for his dramatic last-gasp GI Belmont Stakes win to deny Real Quiet the Triple Crown.

“We kept three daughters of Victory Gallop,” said Lotz. “Ivan bred him, sold him as a yearling to [Dr. E.C.] Pug Hart, then turned around and bought two breeding rights in him after he retired, so we kept three daughters and they've produced 10 stakes winners and two stakes-placed horses. Galloping Ami and her full-sister [Victorious Ami] are both Broodmares of the Year in Canada.”

Lotz is quick to credit Dalos “for his unselfish love and joy of creating a good racehorse. [It's the] perfect time for Kopion to show up.”

Even after having his hands on so many top horses, Lotz captures the thrill of having a horse he raised for a client and friend make a big splash on the national stage.

“When Kopion won the Grade I at Churchill, I beat all the dust out of the couch and tears were running down my eyes,” he remembered. “It was the fastest Beyer Speed rating of Derby day. She ran faster than the colts did. She did everything wrong–broke last, missed the break, it was on a sloppy track, she was always on the lead before but fifth then, hung out wide, came five wide around the turn, and still caught 'em and pulled away and won by three.

“I've seen a lot of horses do a lot of things, but that was a big deal race.”

Lotz and Dalos had sent Kopion to the 2022 Keeneland September sale, where she brought $270,000 from Spendthrift Farm. More than a dozen other fellow first-crop Omaha Beach yearlings at that sale sold for more than Kopion, but she was the first of that crop to win a Grade I.

“She was gorgeous from the start,” recalled Lotz. “She was a little more feminine-looking than [the fall's $1.25-million Curlin filly], not quite as muscular. Pretty athletic. People kind of liked her right away. She was a pretty nice-looking foal and she became a pretty nice-looking yearling.”

In June, when the Curlin foal was four months old, Lotz already suspected she'd go to the fall sales as she was bred “as a project between Tall Oaks and Hill 'n' Dale. She was a pretty compact foal. A lot of Curlins are a little bigger, a little leggier. She was a little ahead of her growth curve for her age and group, but she was still sort of compact. I think she'll fill out as she grows up.”

Kopion was retired in November the same week her weanling half-sister sold. Galloping Ami, now 20, is in foal to extremely popular first-crop stallion Arabian Knight for this spring. What most people don't know is the mare has a deformed right front leg stemming from an injury when she was a three-week-old foal. She'd fractured her sesamoid in her left front while turned out with her dam in a paddock and compensated by carrying all her weight on her right front.

“It had been straight!” said Lotz with emphasis. “When it started to torque in, we put two screws in that ankle to hold it but it didn't work. It caused that deformity, but there's nothing genetic about any of it.”

Galloping Ami | Sarah Andrew

The leg may look rough and may have kept her from racing, but it hasn't hindered Galloping Ami's broodmare career.

“But then, about five or six years ago, she fractured a cannon bone,” lamented Lotz..”She did it out in the field and I had her booked to Into Mischief. That was when he was starting to move up, about $75,000 at that point. I bred her and two days later she fractured her leg. We had to put a cast on her, keep her in the stall. Usually, I just show her a picture of the stallion and she conceives, but not that year. It was too much stress. It was kind of shame that we missed out on that one.”

Dalos still owns three daughters of Galloping Ami, including Quality Ami (Essential Quality), a 3-year-old who sports the Tall Oaks silks and was most recently runner-up in an Oaklawn maiden special weight last month for trainer Tom Amoss.

Lotz said he and Dalos have always planned the matings together, but things at Tall Oaks are changing with a fresh face on the team.

“Ivan's daughter Colleen has become more and more involved in the last few years; she's the heir apparent as Ivan is about 85 now,” said Lotz. “She's very enthusiastic about the sport and is learning a lot. Colleen is very business oriented, so she wants to make a profit. When Ivan and I were planning matings, it was all I could do to get him to spend $25,000 for a stallion fee.”

Colleen Dalos is now the general manager of Tall Oaks. When mares like Galloping Ami–the third generation homebred of her father's first-ever broodmare prospect purchase and the granddaughter of that mare's first foal from a mating he researched and chose–get Kopion and a $1.25-million weanling filly in the same year, it's a great time to be at the helm.

Lotz couldn't agree more.

“Everybody needs a mare like this,” he said. “It's a lot of fun.”

Streak of Luck, dam of Ted Noffey

When Marie Jones bought Streak of Luck (Old Fashioned) at the 2021 Keeneland November sale for $620,000, the mare was a stakes winner at Canterbury Park, had placed in two graded events at Santa Anita, and was carrying her first foal by Authentic. Fast forward four years and that same mare, supplemented in mid-October to the Fasig-Tipton November sale, sold for 10 times that much–$6.2 million–as the highest-priced broodmare in North America in 2025.

Streak of Luck at Taylor Made in September | Sarah Andrew

Instrumental in the mare's increase in value was the decision by Jones and the team at Taylor Made, where she and her late husband have kept their horses for more than 40 years, to send Streak of Luck to Into Mischief for her second mating, which resulted in Ted Noffey. That 'TDN Rising Star, presented by Hagyard,' a Spendthrift colorbearer after a $650,000 Keeneland September purchase in 2024, is the champion-elect 2-year-old colt of 2025 after his unbeaten season culminated in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile and two other Grade I scores. He was one of just three runners, including Sovereignty and Journalism, who won three Grade I races in 2025.

Ben McElroy signed the $6.2-million ticket for Streak of Luck on behalf of Kia Joorabchian's Amo Racing USA, which sent her to Archie and Michelle St George's Brookstone Farm near Paris.

“She is correct, she's big-bodied, she's lovely,” said Michelle St George after two months with the mare. “To be around her, she is absolutely lovely. She is kind and gentle and has been an absolute dream. She settled right into the farm, she's so easy to do everything with. We obviously haven't foaled her out yet, but she is so easy to work with. I can't say enough nice things about her.”

Due in about a month to Not This Time, Steak of Luck is likely to go back to Into Mischief for a full-sibling to Ted Noffey, said St George. The mare's yearling colt is by Into Mischief and her freshly minted 2-year-old is a Munnings filly. Jones still has the yearling, while Repole Stable bought the 2-year-old in September at Keeneland for $425,000.

“I've got to be honest–this is the first time I've ever been around a $6.2-million mare,” said St George with a laugh. “It always means a lot when people entrust you with their mares.

“Mares are a long, hard journey, so it's an honor that Amo trusted us enough to have her, but we're fortunate to have other mares for them as well and we really appreciate it.”

Streak of Luck | Sarah Andrew

St George and her husband will foal about 65 mares at Brookstone in 2026, about 10 of them for Amo. She said they usually breed approximately 150 mares off the farm each year. Streak of Luck is the obvious star.

“Horses like her make it look easy,” said St George of Streak of Luck, who just turned 11. “We hope she produces a lovely racehorse for Amo and they can have as much fun as Spendthrift is having with Ted Noffey. From what the Taylors were telling us, this mare has been good to anybody she's crossed paths with. It's really fun for us and we hope things keep going.”

Ted Noffey, certain to be named the champion 2-year-old colt at the Eclipse Awards in two weeks, is the early favorite for the first Saturday in May. Although trainer Todd Pletcher hasn't officially committed to his next start, the GII Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Feb. 28 is a logical possibility with the Mar. 28 GI Curlin Florida Derby likely his main spring target leading up to the GI Kentucky Derby.

See our previous stories on Luna Rosa (dam of Locked {Gun Runner}); Virginia Key and Our Khrysty (dam and granddam of Tappan Street {Into Mischief}); and Linda (dam of Burnham Square {Liam's Map}).