First Yearlings for Upstart at Fasig-July

[Wandering Eyes]

A multiple graded stakes winner who was GI-placed at two, three, and four, young stallion Upstart has first-crop yearlings headed to the sales this summer. The $1.7m-earner’s first weanlings to sell last fall brought a median of six times the stud fee. Airdrie Stud launched the highly successful rookie careers of Creative Cause and Cairo Prince in recent years. Cormac Breathnach, Airdrie’s director of stallion nominations, discusses with TDN why Upstart may also be one to watch.

TDN: Tell us some highlights?

CB: Upstart was a brilliantly fast race horse. He won [and] placed, as a 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old. Really had a lot of credentials in the racing department and his physical then puts the cherry on top.

TDN: Was it specifically important to [Airdrie] that he had good stakes form at two, three, and four?

CB: Two-year-old form obviously is a big criterion for what people look for, commercial breeders as well as breed-to-race end users. They want horses that can show that kind of brilliance early. And especially with a triple digit Beyer. And the company that they kept in those races. Those were some very good horses that he knocked heads with, and won many times, so that obviously is a big, big feather in his cap.

TDN: When did he come on your radar as a horse that you were interested in standing here at Airdrie?

CB: It really was during the summer of his 3-year-old year. He had accomplished an awful lot to that point. Having seen him at the track in New York that summer, he really was a horse that we went after from then on.

TDN: And what about the horse as a physical?

CB: He’s a tall, leggy, and very smooth kind of athletic horse. He stands 16’2″. He’s got a pretty head, he’s got a nice short back. But he’s well-made and he’s got a lot of strength. So he very much is sort of a two-turn-looking horse. And again, when you put that with the fact that he was a 5 1/2-furlong maiden winner so impressively at Saratoga in August, that’s always a good thing. To be able to combine that sort of two-turn physical with that early speed and precocity is a nice thing to have.

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TDN: Have you seen that physical come through in his first-crop yearlings?

CB: We certainly have. Last November would have been his first crop of weanlings to sell. We had several in our consignment and there was a lot of competition for them. Lots of people that liked the ones in the earlier books then came back in the middle or later books and asked if we had any more by Upstart. So that’s always a good sign and the kind of feedback you want to get. The median weanling price was $60,000, so six times the stud fee, which is very encouraging.

TDN: And what types of mares would Airdrie have supported him with themselves?

CB: We give them a lot of support. We bred over 20 mares his first year. So we’ve sent sort of a diverse group of our own mares to him. Physically, he’s the kind of horse you can breed to just about anything. You don’t need to add a whole lot when you look at him. So he can help maybe the smaller mares but also he’s got a lot to offer with the mainstream mares in our population too.

TDN: Tell us a bit about the horse’s pedigree?

CB: He’s classically bred for two-turn races. We like the fact that he was by Flatter. It’s a very strong line from the A.P. Indy line. Flatter’s a horse that made himself from the low-end side into a really good commercial and breed-to-race type of horse. So his dam, Party Silks, a Touch Gold mare, she’s a half-sister to Josh’s Madelyn [Quiet American], who is a very fast filly, won the [GII] Raven Run among other races. So a nice pedigree blend. You get a lot of two-turn classic bloodlines with a lot of speedy performance as well.

TDN: Airdrie has a really good reputation for building stallions from this type of price point. What are some of the keys to achieving that?

CB: There’s several things. I think really the main thing is Governor Jones’s broodmare band [and] his ability to match those mares with the incoming stallions. But we [also] have a loyal breeder base that come back to us year after year that we really appreciate. The $10,000 price point in the case of Upstart is kind of a sweet spot. So combining all of that together, we’ve got great land, we have hopefully a good name as a consigner. We raise good horses and people like to buy from us. So [it] kind of all feeds in. There’s no one answer. But it’s a broad spectrum kind of approach.

The post First Yearlings for Upstart at Fasig-July appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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