All Equine All The Time

2014 Breeders' Cup Classic winner Bayern After Bayern put in another disappointing run on Sept. 26 in the Awesome Again Stakes, the colt was retired to Hill ‘n’ Dale Farm early in the week to prepare for the 2016 breeding season. One of 19 Breeders’ Cup Classic winners to return to the track the following year, Bayern’s record of two thirds in five starts is probably most similar to Wild Again, who raced four times after his victory in the inaugural Breeders’ Cup. However, while Bayern raced in graded stakes all year, Wild Again only made one stakes start after his Classic victory, retiring with a second in the Grade 1 Meadowlands Cup. Overall, Breeders’ Cup Classic winners have combined for 33 wins in 103 post-victory starts for a 33 percent strike rate. While you expect a Classic winner to be a classy runner even if they have lost a step post-Classic, those 19 Classic winners also combined to have 41 second or third-place finishes in addition to the 33 wins for 74...

2009 2-year-old champion Lookin At Lucky was retired at the end of 2010 One good thing about social media is that it leads to interesting discussions. After Beholder’s win the other day Brian Zipse of Horse Racing Nation asked when the last time a 2-year-old champion (Beholder was U.S. champion 2-year-old filly in 2012) has accomplished as much as her. While that was a really solid question, I started wondering how many 2-year-old champions are actually given a chance to race after 3. Due to the financial risk of a colt not coming back the same or moving forward as an older horse (especially in the case of injury) a lot of them are whisked off to stud before we get to see them past their classic season. This leaves a lot of 'what ifs' left behind, especially if a horse was running near the top of his game at the time of retirement or injury. For the purpose of my research I looked at 2-year-old champions from 1994-2013 of both sexes from the United States and Europ...

Tapit's Book 1 topper out of Silver Colors ‘And you get a Tapit and you get a Tapit and you get a Tapit …’ seemed to be the theme of the first week of the Keeneland September Yearling sale if you were willing to open up your wallet wide enough during the first four sessions of the sale. It seemed early in the week that Claiborne Farm’s War Front might finally get the upper hand on Tapit in the sales ring as he had three of the top five priced horses to go through the ring during the opening session and one of the top five during the second day. But Tapit wasn’t far away from the top of the list either day, with one of his colts RNAing for $1.2-million on Monday (the second highest price of the session if he would have sold) and at least one horse each day in the top 10 highest priced yearlings. But on day three, Tapit was ready for the games to end and handily took over the top of the standings as we’ve come to expect from the stallion. While War Front had three of t...

One of the bittersweet moments of the 2015 Keeneland September sale will be when Hip 3100 exits the ring. The colt consigned by Glennwood Farm and out of Stunning Image (IRE) is the final yearling to sell at Keeneland by Harlan's Holiday, who died in November of 2013. Overall, 73 Harlan's Holiday yearlings are scheduled to go through the ring (after outs) over the next few weeks with 24 of those in Book 1 (Sept. 14-17). They will join 417 other yearlings by the sire who have entered the ring at a September sale since 2006, with that group including U.S. champion Shanghai Bobby, Canadian champion Conquest Harlanate and  Grade 2 winner Intense Holiday among others. Shanghai Bobby in 2015 This year at Keeneland, Harlan's Holiday will again be represented by a good group of yearlings. Multiple yearlings offered are out of stakes winning dams with others being full sibling to the aforementioned Intense Holiday (Hip 340) and Grade 3 winner Poker Player (Hip 1044) in additi...

When looking at the freshmen sires in this year's Keeneland September sale, the number of yearlings by those stallions is staggering. Freshmen sires are represented by over 830 foals during the two week sale, a little over 20 percent of the catalog. That group is led by Bodemeister with 83 yearlings scheduled to sell from the stallion's first crop. As mentioned in my previous blog , 98 Bodemeister foals have sold or will sell at this year's summer Fasig-Tipton and Keeneland sales with the majority coming in this sale. To put the number of Bodemeister yearlings to sell at Keeneland into prospective, 61 percent of his first crop will be entering the Keeneland pavilion (before outs) in the first five books of the sale (Bodemeister has none cataloged in Book 6, which is the final two sessions of the sale). However, when looking at Bodemeister this interest in his yearlings makes sense. One of the most popular (if not the most popular) stallion prospects to retire for the ...

When one mentions that the racehorse industry has become commercialized, they only have to point to the yearling sales to prove their point.   This year’s first season sires are an example of that, with the racing industry getting to see a large sample of these new sires’ offspring a year before they make it to the track. Union Rags has 75 yearlings selling this summer Between the sales of the two major sales companies (Keeneland and Fasig-Tipton) summer yearling sales, many foals born to these new sires last year won’t race under their breeders’ names. Freshmen sires account for 990 yearlings selling this summer, with 45.3 percent of their foals born in 2013 going through the ring at Fasig-Tipton and Keeneland. On first glance, WinStar Farm’s Bodemeister, who had 135 foals born in 2014 looks to be the freshman stallion most visited by commercial breeders. Of those 135 born, 98 have either sold at a Fasig-Tipton yearling sale this summer or will sell at Keeneland S...

When looking at the new stallion standing in the northern hemisphere during the 2013 breeding season, it was enough to make one's mouth water. Even with some of the best racehorses we've seen on either side of the pond in the group, it was definitely headlined by the undefeated Frankel, who has enough star power in the racing industry to eclipse a Hollywood awards show.  While getting mares pregnant is just the first round of tests a stallion undergoes at the start of his breeding career, Frankel excelled at that challenge just like he did his racing career. Of the 133 mares who visited Frankel in his first northern hemisphere season, 126 were scanned in foal.  Frankel covered one of the strongest books a first year stallion in recent history has gotten with 113 of his mares at least wining on the track and 92 (69 percent of his mares in foal) earning black type (winning or placing in stakes races). Even more impressive is that Frankel attracted 38 Group or Grade 1 winners...