Speightstown: Leading sire by stakes winners, stakes wins

WinStar Farm stallion Speightstown ended 2012 second on the Midwest general sire list behind Giant’s Causeway, finishing the year with nearly $10 million in progeny earnings distributed among a wide variety of runners over all surfaces. A considerable part of his earnings, however, came from his offspring’s performances on synthetic tracks. Speightstown led Midwest sires by number of synthetic stakes winners, with four, and by number of synthetic stakes wins, with seven.

Three of his four synthetic stakes winners are sprinters, which is familiar among Speightstown’s progeny, although hardly standard. The son of Gone West out of the stakes-winning Storm Cat mare Silken Cat has a good balance of speed and stamina in his pedigree, but on the racetrack he primarily stuck to one-turn sprints, which led to a championship. In 2004, Speightstown dazzled racing fans when he won five of six starts — all stakes at distances from six to seven furlongs — including his career finale, a scintillating score in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Lone Star Park.

Speightstown won 10 of 16 career starts and earned $1,258,256, making only one start beyond seven furlongs – seventh in the one-mile Gotham Stakes as a 3-year-old.

Voted champion sprinter of 2004, Speightstown began his stud career in 2005 at WinStar in Versailles, Ky., as part of a partnership agreement between WinStar, Taylor Made Farm, and owners Eugene and Laura Melnyk, who had purchased the horse for $2 million at the 1999 Keeneland July selected yearling sale. Speightstown attracted a full book in his first year, and he has continued that momentum through five subsequent crops of racing age. At age 15, Speightstown has entered his peak years as a sire, reflected in WinStar’s decision to raise his fee from $50,000 to $60,000 this year.

Essence Hit Man, Speightstown’s leading synthetic earner in 2012, was voted champion sprinter in Canada in 2011 and tallied three stakes wins last year on Woodbine’s Polytrack. The 6-year-old gelding earned $327,152 of his 2012 earnings of $379,357 on synthetic surfaces. He holds Woodbine’s six-furlong track record of 1:08.16 on Polytrack, set in the 2011 Jacques Cartier Stakes.

Sum of the Parts, Delegation, and Town Prize were Speightstown’s three other synthetic stakes winners of 2012. Sum of the Parts fashioned an impressive campaign as a sprinter, winning twice on Keeneland’s Polytrack — an allowance race in the spring and the Phoenix Stakes in the fall — and also taking the Tom Ridge Stakes over Presque Isle’s Tapeta Footings surface. Delegation, a 3-year-old in 2012, started out at sprint distances but claimed his stakes win in the Grade 3 Durham Cup Stakes at Woodbine at 1 1/8 miles. Town Prize made only one start in 2012, taking the six-furlong Woodstock Stakes in the spring at Woodbine.

Essence Hit Man, Sum of the Parts, and Delegation amassed sizeable synthetic earnings in 2012, but all have run well on other surfaces. Sum of the Parts got his biggest payday in last year’s Red Legend Stakes at Charles Town on dirt, winning and earning $235,200, and Essence Hit Man is graded stakes-placed on both turf (Highlander Stakes) and dirt (Amsterdam Stakes). Delegation and Sum of the Parts distinguished themselves in last year’s Breeders’ Cup, with Delegation finishing third in the Dirt Mile and Sum of the Parts fourth in the Sprint after dueling with eventual winner Trinniberg through fast early fractions.

That is only part of his success in 2012. He also sired Grade 1 winners Golden Ticket (in the 1 1/4-mile Travers) and Poseidon’s Warrior (in the six-furlong Alfred G. Vanderbilt) as well as graded stakes winners Jersey Town (a Grade 1 winner in 2010), Bridgetown, and Island Bound. Through Feb. 9 in the Northern Hemisphere, he has sired 299 winners among 484 foals age three and up, with 41 stakes winners (an 8.5 percent strike rate from foals). In addition to producing a bevy of top runners, Speightstown has been a consistently strong commercial sire, posting six-figure averages for both yearlings and 2-year-olds sold at auction in 2012.
 

Leading Kentucky sires by 2012 number of synthetic stakes winners

Leading Kentucky sires by 2012 number of synthetic stakes wins