Boisterous leads California freshmen

The regally bred Boisterous is doing his best to fly the flag for his family, emerging as California’s leading freshman sire of 2018.

Boisterous, who stands at Tommy Town Thoroughbreds, was represented by five individual winners from 20 first-crop starters – by far the most runners for a freshman in the state – for earnings of $275,627 through Dec. 19, making him the category leader by both earnings and winners.

Boisterous closed the season strong, as his daughter Kookie Gal became his first two-time winner and first stakes winner with a four-length victory in the Soviet Problem Stakes on Dec. 15 at Los Alamitos. The California-bred filly has won 2 of 3 outings, all for owner-breeder team Gary Barber and Wachtel Stable.

Barber purchased Boisterous from his breeder, the vaunted Phipps family stable, for $350,000 at the 2013 Keeneland November breeding stock sale and raced Boisterous for another year before settling him in California.

Boisterous, a son of Distorted Humor, won 12 of 34 starts during five seasons of racing for earnings of more than $1.4 million. His seven graded stakes triumphs were highlighted by the Grade 1 Man o’ War Stakes in 2013. He placed in seven other stakes, three of those being Grade 1 events.

Boisterous is out of Grade 1-placed stakes winner Emanating, by Cox’s Ridge. The mare, a half-sister to Grade 1 winner Gold Fever, also is the dam of Grade 3-placed Peyton and stakes-placed Lulu Le’ Mon. This is the family of multiple Grade 1 winner Versailles Treaty, who went on to produce Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf winner George Vancouver and Grade 2 winner Saarland; Grade 1 winner Bellamy Road; and graded stakes winner and sire Out of Place. Further back, it is the family of leading sire Exclusive Native, whose progeny included Triple Crown winner Affirmed and multiple Grade 1 winner and sire General Assembly.