
Protonico retired to stand at Taylor Made Farm
Multiple graded stakes winner Protonico is the latest addition to the expanding stallion roster at Taylor Made Farm.

Multiple graded stakes winner Protonico is the latest addition to the expanding stallion roster at Taylor Made Farm.

Firing Line, second to Triple Crown winner American Pharoah in the 2015 Kentucky Derby, has been retired, his connections announced Tuesday evening.
Elusive Hour, a stakes-placed runner and perennial top-five sire in Michigan, will relocate to Pleasant Valley Thoroughbreds in Edmore, Mich. for the 2017 breeding season, where he will stand for an advertised fee of $1,000.

Effinex, a Grade 1 winner and the third-richest New York-bred earner of all-time, has been retired and will stand stud at Barry Ostrager’s Questroyal Stud North in Stillwater, N.Y.

Retired from racing at the end of 2015 but not bred to any mares this past breeding season, Social Inclusion will stand the 2017 breeding season at Woodford Thoroughbreds in Reddick, Fla., for a fee of $4,000.

Neither Winchell Thoroughbreds nor Three Chimneys Farm had an entrant in the 2015 Kentucky Derby. But Ron Winchell and Goncalo Torrealba, the principals behind those respective operations, were in good spirits anyway that day at Churchill Downs as they discussed the sturdy chestnut colt they had recently agreed to race in partnership.
Mont Saint Legame won last weekend’s Cattleya Sho at Tokyo Racecourse, the first of two races in Japan offering points toward the 2017 Kentucky Derby. Although the colt has yet to set foot on American soil, he is by a familiar name.

At this time last year, Uncle Mo was well on his way to a record-shattering freshman season. The resident of Coolmore’s Ashford Stud was represented by 28 individual winners, including seven stakes winners, in 2015 en route to earnings of $3,632,314, a record for a North American freshman. He was, of course, led by Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner Nyquist, who emulated his young sire with an unbeaten championship campaign.

The parallels between the stud careers of War Front and his sire, Danzig, are undeniable. Both went to stud with little fanfare and almost non-existent expectations. Both sired multiple Grade 1 winners in their first crops (Danzig three and War Front four from a larger crop), first crops that included stakes winners on both dirt and turf. And both horses eventually came to be regarded primarily as turf sires, especially effective in Europe.

With more than a month remaining in 2016, two-time reigning leading sire Tapit has again broken his own single-season progeny earnings record for a North American stallion.