All Equine All The Time

California Chrome One of only three Kentucky Derby winners this century to race past his 4-year-old season, California Chrome became the all-time highest earner outside of Japan on Saturday when he won the $6-million winner’s share of the Dubai World Cup purse and boosted his earnings to $12,532,650. The winner of 12 of 21 races, the California-bred son of Lucky Pulpit was under the radar as a 2-year-old, winning only three of his seven starts but has quickly risen to be one of the most popular active racehorses in the world after dominating the Kentucky Derby trail in 2014 and winning two legs of the Triple Crown. California Chrome was only a neck short of adding the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Classic to his resume at the end of that year, finishing third to Bayern (Offlee Wild) before closing the season with a Grade 1 win on turf in the Hollywood Derby. His 2015 seasons was derailed a bit when, after a pair of seconds including the Group 1 Dubai World Cup, he went on an ambitious cam...

Tapit is represented by three horses Perhaps the most international event of the year in horse racing, Dubai World Cup night brings together horses from all sides of the world from Australia to England and Ireland to Hong Kong with nearly everything in between. Of course with a large group of horses running from different parts of the world also comes a wide range of sires and broodmare sires. At this year’s festival, 58 different sires and 68 different broodmare sires are represented in a variety of races from a six furlong dirt sprint to a two-mile turf race. Showing the versatility of some of the bloodlines represented, some sires and damsires can be seen in both sprint and route races. Meydan has been Dubawi’s (Dubai Millennium) personal playground the last few years and Saturday will be no different for the Darley stallion. The 14-year-old holds the most entries of any sire on the night with six ranging from the six furlong Group 1 Dubai Golden Shaheen Sponsored by Gulf News ...

Frankly Speaking, a 2-year-old colt by Frankel Every spring as racing ramps up in the Northern Hemisphere, trainers prepare 2-year-olds for their new careers as racehorses. For some of those 2-year-olds, they aren’t just carrying the hopes of what they may become on their backs, they are also carrying the hopes of breeders who t ook a chance on their sires in their first year at stud .  This year, expectations will be high for those first-crop sires with a lot of big names having their foals hit the track . Here are five stallions in Europe who we may see battling it out at the top of the First-Crop Sire list in the com ing months . One of two Juddmonte stallions with first foals hitting the track this year, Bated Breath (Dansili) is a Group 2 winning half-brother to Group 1 winner Cityscape (Selkirk). As normal for Juddmonte horses, he has family class behind him for generations with his fourth dam also the dam of champion Xaar (Zafonic). Bated Breath didn’t hit the t...

The late Scat Daddy was represented by a $535,000 filly. With over 300 2-year-olds finding new homes at the two-day Ocala Breeders’Co March Sale of 2-year-olds in training, there was much to take in at the second major 2-year-old sale of the season.  While not as many horses caused the $1-million mark fireworks seen at Fasig-Tipton’s Florida Sale , there was still enough to keep buyers entertained throughout the sale. Here are a few observations from the sale on stallions, buyers, and fairy tale purchases. Farewell to Smart Strike – Buyers still have a few more years before they are faced with trying to purchase horses from the final Smart Strike (Mr. Prospector) crop but his farewell tour was well underway at OBS March. His only yearling to sell at Fasig-Tipton Florida earlier this month sold for $200,000 but he bested that by more than $1-million with a colt out of Grade 2-placed Glamorista selling for $1.7-million to top the sale. Overall, the former leading ...

Candy Ride Tuesday marks the start of the second major 2-year-old sale of the year and with 521 2-year-olds slated to go through the ring at OBS's March Sale as of Sunday morning, buyers have a variety of horses to choose from. While buyers have long been doing their homework for this sale, they got their first glimpse of the potential the horses show on the track last week when the 2-year-olds put in their only public breeze before going through the ring at the breeze show.  With bullets of :9.3 for a furlong and :20.2 over a quarter mile, the 2-year-olds were motoring over the synthetic surface at OBS with 48 horses working under 10 seconds during the three-day preview last week. While buyers can always expect stallions like Tapit (Pulpit), Scat Daddy (Johannesburg), Uncle Mo (Indian Charlie) and War Front (Danzig) to be popular, the breeze show highlighted a few others that may be worth a second look before they enter the ring over the next few days.  Here are eigh...

The only son of top sire War Front at stud in England and only one of two standing in Europe, Due Diligence is poised for a big first year at stud in 2016. Standing at Whitsbury Manor Stud, Due Diligence raced for the Coolmore partnership with that group still keeping partial ownership of the horse when he retired to England late last year. A $190,000 yearling at the 2012 Keeneland September Sale, Due Diligence won his debut at Saratoga by 7 ½ lengths for the ownership group of Klaravich Stables and William Lawrence and trainer Chad Brown. But when he returned to the track for his second start in the Grade 3 Pilgram Stakes at Belmont two months later, his ownership had changed to Coolmore with Todd Pletcher getting the call as trainer. However, Pletcher didn’t have him in the barn long as Due Diligence was sent to Coolmore’s regular trainer, Aidan O’Brien, in Ireland after that start for his 3-year-old season.  His first start in the country came at Dundalk on the all-we...

With the first 2-year-old sale in the books, fireworks lit up the Gulfstream Park paddock on Wednesday night with four horses selling for $1-million or more. Here are some quick observations made about this year’s Fasig-Tipton Florida Sale and the stallions represented in it. Tapit Tapit continued his reign as the king of North America: While Tapit only had three horses go through the ring and two RNAed (for $145,000 and $520,000, respectively), one was all he needed to take over the leader board. Buyers weren’t willing to go over $1-million for any horse until the colt out of a half-sister to Hard Spun (Danzig) walked into the ring and hammered $1.8-million to Woodford Racing, Lane’s End and Robert LaPenta, $800,000 more than the three second most expensive horses. He was a $1.2-million RNA last year as a yearling so even though it may have seemed a little crazy to let go of that money then, his owners obviously knew they had something special on their hands. It’s good to be ...

Last fall All Equine All the Time took a look at Unbridled’s Song as his last yearlings went through the ring, today I dig a little deeper into the late stallion’s impact as his final 2-year-olds get ready to go through the ring in the first major 2-year-old sale of the year.  Taylor Made photo Buyers hoping to get their hands on 2-year-old from the final crop of Unbridled’s Song (Unbridled) will get their first chance of the year on Wednesday when four of his colts go through the make-shift sales ring in the paddock at Gulfstream Park during Fasig-Tipton’s Florida Sale. Unbridled’s Song was originally slated to have five of his final foals go through the ring this week but a colt out of a half-sister to Hansen’s dam Stormy Sunday (Sir Cat) was scratched before the sales week started. But while Hansen gave that colt’s page a nice set of blacktype, the colt had the weakest pedigree of the Unbridled’s Songs so his scratch still leaves buyers with a lot of options. The str...