All Equine All The Time

If one wants to find a successful Mr. Prospector son, they need to look no farther than multiple Group 1 Machiavellian. Bred in Kentucky, Machiavellian was the first foal out of the impressive and blueblooded group stakes winning Halo mare Coup de Folie. Raced in Europe for Stavros Niarchos after selling as a yearling for $825,000, Coup de Folie returned to the United States at the end of 1985 for her first breeding season. Bred in the spring of 1986 she delivered a dark bay colt, later named Machiavellian, in January 1987. Machiavellian was sent to France as a yearling and joined Francois Boutin’s string for his racing career.  Debuting in early August 1989, he won his first start by two lengths over another Mr. Prospect son in Jade Robbery. Machiavellian then reeled off two straight Group 1 wins in three weeks when winning the Prix Morny Agence Francaise on Aug. 20 followed by the Sept. 10 Prix de la Salamandre. His season ended after the second victory but it was still ...

Zoffany With the European flat racing season starting shortly, a large group of stallions is entering its second year with runners on the track in Europe. While Zoffany  (Dansili) led the charge on the First-Crop sire list last year, he’ll have competition as the 3-year-olds are allowed to stretch out and more stallions get to shine. Here are five stallions other than Zoffany who may be able to make a big impact on the European racing scene in 2016. Playing a second fiddle of sorts to stablemate Zoffany, Canford Cliffs (Tagula) was another strong first crop stallion for Coolmore in 2015. Canford Cliffs bested that stallion by winners and had only two less stakes winners than him to tie for second in that category. Canford Cliff’s 2-year-olds were led by the Group 2 GAIN Railway Stakes winner Painted Cliffs with Most Beautiful also giving him a Group 3 win in the Grangecon Stud Balanchine Stakes. A group stakes winner at two himself, Canford Cliffs ran even better at three an...

Uncle Mo A day after having the most Triple Crown nomin ees of any stallion , Uncle Mo (Indian Charlie) was on top of another list when he topped all sires on the U.S. Experimental Free Handicap with 10 2-year-olds listed including the highweighted champion 2-year-old colt Nyquist. Two-year-olds must have made at least one start in graded or listed stakes company in North America to be assigned a weight with The Jockey Club listing all horses weighted at 100 or above. Nyquist was given a weight of 126 as the highest weighted 2-year-old on the list, beating out highweighted filly Songbird (Medaglia d’Oro) by one point. Overall, Uncle Mo had four of the top 50 horses on the Experimental Free Handicap, including the seventh highest rated filly in Gomo. The only stallion to have more than one horse in the Top 10 was Bernardini (A.P. Indy), whose Greenpointcrusader and Rachel’s Valentina were both rated 120. Rachel Valentina’s 120 rating made her the second highest weighted filly in ...

Standing for €7,500 (approx. $8,164US/£5,510) in his first season at stud in 2012, the 84 runners to come from Zoffany’s (Dansili) first crop ran well enough to secure their sire European champion first crop sire honors in 2015 on Racing Post’s rankings. Zoffany in 2011 With 32 of his runners winning 43 races for a 38.10 percent strike rate, Zoffany earned £808,329 (approx. $1,189,649US/€1,099,186), £294,004 more than the second placed sire Dream Ahead (Diktat). While bested by fellow Coolmore stallion Canford Cliffs (Tagula) in the number of winners (34) and wins (44), Zoffany’s five stakes winners were three better than another other stallion in the top 25 in the European standings. Zoffany’s best week of the year undoubtedly came at the prestigious Royal Ascot meet where he had three winners with Waterloo Bridge winning the Group 2 Norfolk Stakes, Illuminate taking the Group 3 Albany Stakes (she later won the Group 2 Duchess of Cambridge Stakes as well) and Washington DC ...