All Equine All The Time

Tapit When Tapit retired in October of 2004, it’s doubtful his level of success was expected by anywhere but his connections’ wildest dreams.   A Grade 1 winning son of Pulpit (A.P. Indy), he was a $625,000 yearling with strong bloodlines standing at an introductory fee of $15,000.   However, even the bluest blooded horses in the stud book aren’t expected to become the sire that Tapit has become.   Tapit’s first foal crop hit the ground running in 2008, with his first champion, Stardom Bound, headlining that group.  Since then he has sired five other champions, including 2011 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner Hansen and Distaff winner Untapable.  His first United States classic winner came in 2014 with Tonalist winning the Belmont Stakes, and the colt later went on to win two editions of the Jockey Club Gold Cup.  With 875 northern hemisphere foals of aged 3-years-old or older and 535 winners as of Jan. 1, Tapit has sired 43 graded stakes winn...

Tale of the Cat in 2014 A Grade 2 winner at seven furlongs and Grade 1 placed at nine furlongs, Tale of the Cat (Storm Cat) was more than useful as a racehorse. His successful racing career turned out to be a foreshadowing of his stud career when he joined the stallion ranks in 1999, retiring to Ashford Stud in Versailles, Ky for $25,000.  By a top sire in Storm Cat and from a strong female family that includes champion Johannesburg (Hennessy) (out of Tale of the Cat’s half-sister) and Pulpit (A.P. Indy), Tale of the Cat has constantly ranked in the top 30 on the General Sires list since graduating from the crop-specific lists (where he was ranked in the top five on the first, second and third crop sires lists). While never a leading General Sire, Tale of the Cat is more often than not seen in the top 15 with his best ranking on that list being a seventh. The stallion has also done well enough with his 2-year-olds to lead the Two-Year-Old Sires list in 2003 and to rank seco...

Carpe Diem was a $1.6-million 2-year-old From the beginning of the time when the commercial industry took over as a major part of horse racing, some horses have brought millions of dollars at a young age before it was known if they were anything more than well-bred, big walking, well-built youngsters. The yearling market is often the beneficiary of this high-dollar trade with 58 million-dollar yearlings selling at the major Keeneland and Fasig-Tipton sales from 2010 to 2014 with 12 of those horses topping the sales. In that same time, the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic a n d Florida Sale , Keeneland, and OBS 2-year-old sales had 12 horses sell for $1-million or more. It’s well known that many horses who top the sales don’t often live up to their price tag on the track, no matter what age they are but digging farther into the data and looking at the sales toppers from 2010 to 2014 at both yearling and 2-year-old sales brought some interesting data to light. Looking at t...

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...