All Equine All The Time

One of Animal Kingdom's first yearlings With multiple classic and Breeders’ Cup winning racehorses retiring to stud in 2014, there were many choices for breeders when making breeding decisions for their mares. This year, they’ll be able to see if they made the right decisions when that group of stallions have their first runners on the track. Here are a few of those freshmen sires in North America you may want to keep an eye on this year and next as their first runners get rolling on the track. Animal Kingdom – Animal Kingdom has already had some success with his first crop of 2-year-olds in Australia and there’s no reason to think that won’t continue in the United States. According to The Jockey Club, he has 110 northern hemisphere 2-year-olds in this year and his average at this early season 2-year-olds in training sale sits at $288,750, with his top priced horse being a $550,000 colt from four sold. While they started winning fairly early in Australia, I expect the...

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...

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...