All Equine All The Time

Every year hopes and expectations are high in breeding sheds around the world with the biggest weight placed on stallions with first foals are arriving. While there are 11 months until breeders can first see how the foals are received by buyers at the winter breeding stock sales, how first foals look in the first few months of the year can affect a sire’s book in his second breeding season. Over 145 stallions in North America are listed on Blood-Horse as entering stud in 2016 in a strong year of new recruits. Here are 11 stallions whose foals breeders and fans should look out for this year. The star of the new sires this year is obviously American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile), the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years. Named Champion 3-Year-Old and Horse of the Year in 2015, American Pharoah stood his first season for $200,000 and covered a book of 208 mares that included some of the best broodmares in the sport with the foals from that first covering season starting...

American Pharoah Perhaps the most exciting stallion prospect to hit the market this century, American Pharoah accomplished nearly every task thrown at him including the Triple Crown. The colt, by Pioneerof the Nile, finished fifth on debut in a Del Mar maiden special weight but he was beaten by some talented colts with two of them going on to win graded stakes races and the two others placing in Grade 1 events. That debut loss may not have been an eye catcher for American Pharoah but his victory less than a month later caught the attention of everyone in racing when he pulled away to win the Grade 1 Del Mar Futurity by 4 ¾ lengths. He was at the top of the conversation for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile after winning the Grade 1 FrontRunner Stakes later that month but the colt suffered a season-ending injury only a few days before the Breeders’ Cup. On the sidelines for five months, American Pharoah romped in the Grade 2 Rebel Stakes in his first race as a 3-year-old and made ...

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...

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 ...