Every win counts when trying to prove out a young stallion, but some wins count for a bit more. Pioneerof the Nile received arguably the biggest resume boost an emerging sire can get on Saturday when his son American Pharoah pulled away from Firing Line to win the Kentucky Derby by a length.
The Kentucky Derby marked a major coup for young stallions. Winner American Pharoah hails from the second crop of Pioneerof the Nile; runner-up Firing Line is a first-crop representative for Line of David; and third-place finisher Dortmund is from the third crop of Big Brown.
When a stallion prospect retires to the breeding shed, he goes in with the hope that his first foals are capable of winning major races in the spring four years later. Lovely Maria did just that for her sire Majesticperfection, winning the Kentucky Oaks on Friday by 2 ¾ lengths and giving the stallion a signature victory from his first crop.
Best in Show proved herself a pretty good racemare, winning the Comely Stakes at 3, but she far surpassed “pretty good” as a broodmare.
Sky Classic, a Canadian Hall of Famer, champion in the United States., and sire of 1999 Canadian Horse of the Year Thornfield, died Thursday in his paddock at Pin Oak Stud in Versailles, Ky.
Grade 1 winner Can the Man will join Jimmy Creed and Warrior’s Reward among the sires that comprise the inaugural stallion roster at Spendthrift Australia for the upcoming Southern Hemisphere season.
DRF sales editor Joe Nevills analyzes the Kentucky Derby field, in post position order, in the form of Haiku; a Japanese poem of 17 syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five.
This year’s Kentucky Derby might be quite polarizing between the favorites and the longshots, but the great equalizer for them all will be the distance of the race. The Derby will be the first start at 1 1/4 miles for every horse in the field. Since there is no prior ontrack performance on which to base an opinion, one helpful tool to measure a horse’s capability is the average winning distance (AWD) of the sire’s and dam’s progeny.
A closer look at the pedigrees of the entrants for the 141st running of the $2 million Kentucky Derby, to be contested Saturday at Churchill Downs.
While a majority of the runners in this year’s Kentucky Derby will indeed be returning to “My Old Kentucky Home” when they step onto the track for the post parade, a handful of colts serve as standard-bearers for state and regional breeding programs looking to add to their history or add international flavor to America’s most storied race.
