Turf or dirt, homebred or sales selection, older horse or younger, East Coast or West – the international Juddmonte Farms operation dominated Saratoga with any type of horse last Saturday.
There is no denying, that Unbridled’s Song has sired a long series of seriously talented runners. Will Take Charge (Take Charge Lady, by Dehere) earned champion 3-year-old male honors in 2013, Midshipman was champion 2-year-old male of 2008, and Unrivaled Belle won the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Ladies’ Classic. After his 13 1/2-length demolition of a good Travers field, Arrogate clearly belongs with that group in terms of talent.
Stonesider, a winning son of Giant’s Causeway and sire of multiple stakes winners, will relocate to Valor Farm in Pilot Point, Texas, for the 2017 breeding season.
First-time starter Regere won a $20,000 maiden-claiming race at Delaware Park today to become the first winner for his freshman sire, Rule. Rule, who stands for $4,000 at Montesacro Farm in Georgetown, Ky., has had four starters from his first crop of 22 foals, and he also is represented by the juvenile gelding Ruled, who was second in the Graduation Stakes at Assiniboia Downs as a maiden.
On August 19 and 20, the mare Unbridled Melody achieved the feat of having two of her progeny win stakes on turf at Saratoga. She four stakes winners from five foals of racing age.
Japanese supersire Deep Impact was represented by a rare winner in the U.S. on Friday, as Tale of Life won an allowance race at Saratoga.
The late Scat Daddy added two additional Grade/Group 1 winners to his résumé over the weekend, as Harmonize posted a breakthrough victory in the Del Mar Oaks and Lady Aurelia continued her globetrotting juvenile campaign by winning the Prix Morny in France.
Three Chilean-breds have shown off their home country’s best by capturing stakes at the boutique Saratoga meet this summer. Dacita returned to capture the Grade 1 Diana Stakes on July 23, stablemate Guapaza won the Grade 3 Waya Stakes on Aug. 6, and Turco Bravo picked up the Birdstone Stakes on Aug. 10.
On Friday night, Rosemary Farm, a horse-rescue operation in the Catskills region of New York, purchased an unknown Thoroughbred with a “strange leg” from a livestock auction where kill buyers were shopping and immediately drove him to Rhineback Equine Hospital for evaluation. It turns out that the farm’s mystery horse, an “impulse save,” was the 8-year-old ridgling King Congie, a winner of 2 of 11 career starts for West Point Thoroughbreds, including a score in the 2011 Tropical Park Derby.
For almost 300 years, all Thoroughbreds have descended in male line from three stallions imported into England from the Middle East between about 1686 and 1730. The fortunes of the male lines descending from the Byerley Turk, Darley Arabian, and Godolphin Arabian waxed and waned for most of that period, but over the last century, the male-line descendants of the Darley Arabian, primarily through Phalaris, have swamped descendants of the other two line founders
