A pair of promising young stallions were represented by their first stakes winners last weekend, while some veteran sires continued their 2014 success into the New Year.
With 20 first-crop winners and five stakes-placed runners in 2014, it was only a matter of time before the sons and daughters of Majesticperfection started earning stakes trophies. That time came on the second day of 2015 when Majestic Affair rolled home in the $100,000 Frank “Cappy” Capossela Stakes on the Aqueduct inner track. The well-traveled gelding was making his fifth career start over on a fifth racetrack and was coming off of a runner-up finish in Laurel Park’s James F. Lewis III Stakes in mid-November. He’s out of a mare by Blumin Affair, a member of the late, great Dynaformer’s very first crop foaled back in 1991.
Majesticperfection, a son of Harlan’s Holiday, stands for $10,000 at Airdrie Stud in Midway, Kentucky.
With a second-place run in the House Party Stakes in late November, Ekati’s Phaeton became Tale of Ekati’s first black-type runner. With a gutsy win in the Jan. 3 Old Hat Stakes the 3-year-old filly is now her sire’s first stakes winner and first graded stakes winner. She’s out of a mare by Capote, a cross that’s already been quite successful.
Daughters of Capote have also produced Grade 1 winner Cat Moves, by Tale of Ekati’s sire Tale of the Cat, and Grade 1 Arkansas Derby winner Line of David, by another Tale of the Cat son, Lion Heart. Capote is also the damsire of the winner of the last Futurity of 2014, the Louisiana Futurity Dec. 30 at Fair Grounds. That race fell to Cook Some Rice, a son of the Unbridled’s Song stallion Half Ours, also sire of the third-place finisher in the race, Slowpoke Sam. Capote daughters have now produced a total of 93 black-type winners.
Tale of Ekati stands for $15,000 at Darby Dan Farm in Lexington.
Unbridled’s Song was all over stakes pedigrees during the first weekend of 2015.
His newly turned 3-year-old daughter Devine Aida made it three wins in a row when she captured Gulfstream Park’s Ginger Brew Stakes by 3 1/2 lengths in her stakes debut. She’s out of a mare by the Gone West son Came Home and is the latest black-type product of the sneaky good Unbridled’s Song-Gone West cross that’s responsible for at least seven other stakes winners, five of them graded winners, including Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies winner Ria Antonia.
If the overall success of the producing daughters of Unbridled’s Song is any indication, Devine Aida has a very promising second career on the horizon. The dam sire of Grade 1 winner Carpe Diem, by Giant’s Causeway, along with quintet of Grade 2 winners last year, Unbridled’s Song mares have picked right up where they left off in 2015.
One of those 2014 Grade 2 winners, Kentucky Jockey Club victor El Kabeir, outclassed his rivals Jan. 3 in Aqueduct’s Grade 3 Jerome Stakes. That same afternoon in Florida, Bluegrass Singer hit all the right notes in the Mucho Macho Man Stakes. Both are by Storm Cat-line stallions, bringing the total of stakes winners on this cross to at least 19 (13 graded).
El Kabeir is one of 12 Northern Hemisphere graded winners by Ashford Stud’s Scat Daddy, a son of the Storm Cat grandson Johannesburg. Bluegrass Singer is the 23rd Northern Hemisphere stakes winner for the Storm Cat son Bluegrass Cat, who will stand the 2015 season at Ballena Vista Farm after stints at WinStar Farm in Kentucky and Rockridge Stud in New York.
The Ashford Stud stalwart added a 22nd stakes winner to his 2014 scorecard Dec. 30 when Praetereo crossed the wire first in Valley Forge Stakes at Parx Racing. It was the first career stakes winner for the then 6-year-old who is out of a mare by the recently repatriated Silver Charm.
After the ball dropped in Times Square it took just about 63 hours for Giant’s Causeway to sire his first stakes winner of 2015, and a graded winner at that.
Night Prowler got the half-length victory in the Grade 3 Dania Beach Stakes one of the features on the first Saturday of the year card at Gulfstream. The 3-year-old Chad Brown pupil is the first Giant’s Causeway stakes winner from three starters out of mares by More Than Ready.
-originally published on http://www.thisishorseracing.com
Matt O'Neil Consulting 