Smart Strike owns two North American general sire titles and is the sire of more than 100 stakes winners, but the 22-year-old Mr. Prospector stallion isn’t done yet.
Smart Strike’s 3-year-old daughter Minorette (out of a dam by Sadler’s Wells) won the Grade 1 Belmont Oaks Invitational July 5, becoming her sire’s 14th Grade 1 winner. The newly reconfigured Oaks, formerly the Garden City Stakes, is a 10-furlong event on the grass and looking at Smart Strike’s pool of Grade 1 winners we find a remarkably diverse group.
The group features high-level juveniles like champions Lookin At Lucky and My Miss Aurelia, distance turf runners like champion English Channel, and sprinters and milers on dirt and turf like Fabulous Strike and Soaring Free. And of course Curlin, Horse of the Year at 3 and 4 and soon-to-be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Daughters of Smart Strike, who stands at the Farish family’s Lane’s End Farm in Versailles, Kentucky, are also doing well and produced two more stakes winners over the holiday weekend. The 3-year-old Stacked Deck won the Charlie Barley Stakes July 5 at Woodbine and the following afternoon, the 4-year-old Legacy was best in the Cypress Stakes at the inaugural Los Alamitos Thoroughbred meeting. Smart Strike now has 43 stakes winners as a broodmare sire, an impressive 8 percent from starters.
Stacked Deck helped keep his sire First Samurai one of the hottest sires in North America. He is one of two stakes winners in the first week of July for the Claiborne Farm-based son of Giant’s Causeway. The other, Grade 3 winner Northern Passion, annexed her fourth stakes victory in the Sweet Briar Too Stakes during the Canada Day program at Woodbine. Combined with a pair of new graded winners June 28, that’s four stakes winners now in seven days for First Samurai, three of them first-time stakes winners. He now has a total of eight stakes winners for 2014.
The late Pulpit stood alongside First Samurai at Claiborne and he also sired a pair of stakes winners on the Independence Day weekend here in the U.S., both bred on a familiar cross.
Mr Speaker is a member of Pulpit’s penultimate crop and added to his sire’s career Grade 1 tally by upsetting the Grade 1 Belmont Derby Invitational July 5. The Phipps-bred colt is out of a daughter of Unbridled, and the great Personal Ensign, and is the same cross that produced Grade 1 winner and super sire Tapit. Mr. Speaker is Pulpit’s 11th Grade 1 winner.
Pulpit’s Tea Time is out of a mare by the Unbridled son Empire Maker and she got her picture taken after the Beautiful Day Stakes July 3 at Delaware Park, her second straight stakes triumph. Pulpit has also sired the Grade 3 winner Super Ninety Nine out a mare by Unbridled’s Song and Pulpit’s son Sky Mesa has sired Grade 1 winners out of mares by both Unbridled (Sky Diva) and Unbridled’s Song (General Quarters).
Tea Time is the first stakes winner from 51 starters so far out of daughters of the excellent sire Empire Maker. Like Empire Maker, Henny Hughes now stands in Japan but his first stakes winner as a broodmare sire emerged over the weekend.
Highway Boss is the very first starter out a Henny Hughes mare and he took the Everett Nevin Stakes at the Oak Tree at Pleasanton meeting July 6. The 2-year-old gelding is the second juvenile stakes winner already this year by the Darley USA stallion Street Boss.
Distorted Humor is the broodmare sire of 30 black-type winners and two of them, both by Gone West-line stallions, added stakes victories July 5.
Heart Stealer, a graded stakes winner in 2013 and 2014, found the competition a little easier in the $75,000 Pasaena Stakes at Gulfstream Park. She’s by the top Gone West stallion Speightstown, a barnmate of Distorted Humor at WinStar Farm. That same afternoon in South Florida, C. Zee took the $90,000 Cherokee Run Stakes. The 3-year-old colt is the only stakes winner so far by the Louisiana-based Elusive Bluff, a son of the top Gone West stallion Elusive Quality.
Daughters of Arch have already produced important runners like 2012 champion and dual classic winner I’ll Have Another (by Flower Alley), champion Uncle Mo (by Indian Charlie) and Canadian Horse of the Year Uncaptured (by Lion Heart). Clearly Now might be next in line. The 4-year-old colt is now a three-time graded stakes winner after his scintillating score in the Grade 3 Belmont Sprint Championship July 5.
A lot of good runners have raced 7 furlongs at Belmont Park over the years but the track record for the distance now belongs to Clearly Now. He zipped in 1:19.96 and proved his is clearly the best runner so far by Claiborne Farm’s third-crop stallion Horse Greeley, a Grade 2-winning and Grade 1-placed son of Mr. Greeley. Overall, Arch is the broodmare sire of 17 stakes winners, a sterling 8 percent from starters.
(originally published on http://www.thisishorseracing.com)
Matt O'Neil Consulting 