Sparkman: Lady Eli displays class from an Aga Khan mare
Lady Eli is easily the best horse sired by Divine Park, but she is yet another illustration of the value of buying mares from the great breeders of the world.
John P. SparkmanJul 10, 2015
Lady Eli is easily the best horse sired by Divine Park, but she is yet another illustration of the value of buying mares from the great breeders of the world.
Uncle Mo and Twirling Candy were quick out of the gate as juveniles, stamping themselves as stars of the sport with debut wins on the East Coast and West Coast, respectively. Fittingly, both have established themselves as freshman sires to watch, with several runners from their first crops looking like standouts as 2-year-old racing kicks into high gear with the opening of the Del Mar summer meet on Thursday and the Saratoga meet on July 24.
Grade 1 winner Congaree will relocate to Lane’s End Texas in Hempstead, Texas for the 2016 breeding season for a fee to be announced later, American Racehorse reports.
Grade 3 winner Conveyance has been retired from racing and will stand the 2016 breeding season at Buck Pond Farm in Versailles, Ky., for a fee to be determined.
Utopia, a Japanese Group 1 winner and former U.S. stallion, died of an apparent heart attack at the Jockey Club of Turkey’s Karacabey National Stud in Bursa, Turkey.
Classic-placed Grade 3 winner Medal Count has been retired from racing and will stand the 2016 breeding season at Spendthrift Farm in Lexington, Ky.
Sprint champion Speightstown got to showcase the versatility of his offspring over the holiday weekend, with a pair of graded stakes winners on July 4 at Belmont Park.
Henry Lindh, the owner and breeder of Grade 1 winner Grecian Flight, died Friday in New York City at age 84.
Juddmonte Farms, Winchell Thoroughbreds, Kenneth and Sarah Ramsey, and Kaleem Shah have earned regional Owner of the Year honors from the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association (TOBA), and will be honored at the organization’s annual awards dinner Friday, Sept. 11 at Hill ‘n’ Dale Farms in Lexington, Ky.
Although flashy, high-profile stallions tend to get all the publicity, the key to building a breeding program in a regional market requires good broodmares. Ease of transportation today makes it possible for broodmares to be sent to national breeding centers such as Kentucky to be covered by top sires, but if the broodmare population for a state program is not up to national standards, that program will not consistently produce top-level horses, regardless of the quality of its stallions. As the Florida breeding industry began to grow in the early 1950s, it was particularly blessed with the arrival of a number of broodmares of sometimes doubtful pedigree who turned out to be top-class producers.