All Equine All The Time

Upstart had the highest priced 2-year-old of any freshman sire at the OBS March 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale. This week’s OBS March 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale reiterated the fact the Thoroughbred industry is in a golden age of young sires when eight of the top 15 2-year-olds at the sale were by first or second crop sires. While it isn’t unusual to see the new generations fare well at the first breeze up sale of the season, this year’s sale saw a major increase in the demand for new sires, doubling in number from most of the last five years. Despite last year being generally lauded as the strongest group of first crop sires in years, only four 2-year-olds from the two youngest generations broke into the top 15 in 2019 with five from 2018. Those numbers followed up three in 2017, four in 2016, and two in 2015. That news was a bit bittersweet, however. While this year’s top price by a second season sire topped the sale ( American Pharoah’s (Pioneerof the Nile) Hip 237...

Tonalist sired a 2-time stakes winner in February. With 39 graded stakes in North America run during the 29 days of February, catalog pages saw major updates as horses added valuable blacktype to their families, even with the lack of Grade Is run during the month.  Tonalist’s Shape (Tonalist) was the big star of the month with two stakes wins in February while Tapit (Pulpit) again led a category – albeit this time as a broodmare sire instead of a sire. By The Numbers: Thirty nine different graded stakes ran in February with 24 running on the dirt and 15 on the turf with 37 different winners. There were no Grade Is run in the U.S. in February with 13 Grade IIs and the rest Grade IIIs. The shortest race was the 5 ½ furlong Grade III Sweet Life run at Santa Anita on turf won by Laura’s Light (Constitution) with the longest race being the Grade II Mac Diarmida won by Zulu Alpha (Street Cry) over 11 furlongs on turf. Eight of the graded stakes in February were run at les...