All Equine All The Time

Last weekend was a big one for racing on both sides of the Atlantic as the first major classic races of the year took place in England and the United States. As is usually the case, the classics weren’t the only stakes races on their respective cards with 20 blacktype events taking place over the three days of racing between Churchill Downs and Newmarket. As is often the case in these weekends, some pedigrees looked familiar no matter where you were so s it back and enjoy the show as we take you through some of the bigger points of the weekend. Sire Lines – First, let’s get the overall numbers out on the table. Sixty horses sired by 48 different stallions placed finished in the top three in the stakes over the weekend with those 48 stallions hailing from seven different sire lines. Not surprisingly, Northern Dancer led everyone with 28 placers, including six winners (21.4%), followed by Mr. Prospector with 14 (six winners – 42.8%), and A.P. Indy with seven – including two win...

A regally-bred son of Unbridled’s Song, Keep Up’s career almost ended before it began when he broke his knee as a yearling. Three screws and seven months of stall rest later, he was cleared to enter training and the rest is history. " When we brought him up that day, we had to wait three weeks because of all the inflammation just to x-ray him," said Headley Bell of Mill Ridge Farm, where the colt was raised. "Then when we x-rayed him and saw the severity of the fracture at that stage you’re just trying to save his life. That’s all you’re doing. I think the vet said he had 10 percent chance to make it, really and then the racing was just a far reaching dream that we had. But he continued to take every step and then we early trained him and he did that then we gave him time to mature and he would just continue going. Then it was like 'he’s done this and he’s done that, what the hell' and you keep on going down the road and see what happens." Keep Up m...

The pensioned A.P. Indy A.P. Indy (Seattle Slew) hasn’t stepped into a breeding shed in five years but this Kentucky Oaks, open only to 3-year-old fillies, has the 27-year-old stallion’s mark all over it. The oversubscribed Oaks field has 15 entries with 14 fillies automatically in the gate and one waiting on the outside looking in. Some of the top stallions in the sport are seen in the first two or three generations on the fillies’ pedigrees in both the sire and broodmare sire lines but none more than the 1992 Belmont Stakes winner.  While A.P. Indy isn’t the sire or broodmare sire of any runner in the race, he is the grandsire or great-grandsire of nine of the runners with seven sired by his sons or in two cases, grandson. In the two other cases, he is seen on the bottom side of the pedigree with his sons’ daughters producing the runners. As far as his representation with sires go, Bernardini and Tapit are responsible for four of those runners with two each including the ...