American Pharoah's siblings looking to make name for themselves
Triple Crown winner American Pharoah’s days on the racetrack are now a memory growing ever more distant. The champion retired at the end of his smashing 2015 campaign and is now nearing the completion of his first season at stud at Coolmore’s Ashford Stud in Versailles, Ky. But part of the beauty of the Thoroughbred industry is that it never stops moving on, and a number of American Pharoah’s close relatives are preparing to one day make their own names in racing.
Almost a year to the day after American Pharoah’s historic Belmont Stakes victory, his 2-year-old full sister, American Cleopatra, arrived at trainer Bob Baffert’s Santa Anita barn after completing her early lessons at the McKathan Brothers Training Center in Florida.
American Cleopatra is one of two current full siblings to American Pharoah but is the last of the line owned by Ahmed Zayat’s Zayat Stables. Their dam, Littleprincessemma, was purchased as a yearling by Zayat, and after her racing career, she was bred to the operation’s former runners at stud in Kentucky. Her first foal was Xixixi, by Maimonides. A winner on the track, he is now standing his first season at Xanthus Farms near Gettysburg, Pa., for a fee of $5,000.
Littleprincessemma produced American Pharoah in 2012 and American Cleopatra in 2014 after a barren season. That November, with American Pharoah a multiple Grade 1-winning juvenile on the ascendancy, the Zayats sold her for $2.1 million to Jane and Frank Lyon’s Summer Wind Farm – her value no doubt enhanced by the fact that she was carrying a full sibling to the soon-to-be juvenile male champion. She delivered Irish Pharaoh in February 2015, and the entire family’s value promptly skyrocketed as American Pharoah ripped through the Triple Crown.
Irish Pharaoh was privately sold to an undisclosed buyer last year, with Jane Lyon saying she is under contract not to release details on the buyer or the purchase amount.
Littleprincessemma produced a filly by two-time reigning leading sire Tapit in February. The youngster has already been named, appropriately enough for the dreams she carries with her, Chasing Yesterday. In another attempt to recapture yesteryear’s magic, Littleprincessemma was booked back to Pioneerof the Nile this spring to produce another full sibling to American Pharoah.
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