The victory of Discreet Cat’s daughter Secret Compass in the Grade 1 Chandelier Stakes on Sept. 28 at Santa Anita confirms that the 10-year-old son of Forestry is a young stallion who must be taken seriously.
The 2-year-old male division ramped into high gear last week, as Belmont and Santa Anita held the first of their major juvenile stakes of the fall season. In the six-furlong, Grade 2 Futurity Stakes in New York, In Trouble rolled to a 2 1/4-length win over Corfu and earned a 94 Beyer Speed Figure, the best for a juvenile male in a stakes race this year through Monday.
Stakes winner Make Music for Me and winner World Renowned, both retired this year, will stand their first seasons at Brazeau Thoroughbred Farms in Hemet, Calif. Stud fees for both horses will be announced at a later date.
Indiana Stallion Station of Anderson, Ind., will host a stallion show and open house on Saturday, Oct. 12, beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern.
Thomas Haley Asbury, owner of Hedgewood Farm in Lexington, Ky. died Sept. 29 at age 86.
Alternation, who rose to prominence last year when he won five stakes including the Grade 2, $500,000 Oaklawn Handicap, has been retired and will stand at the Pin Oak Stud operation of his breeder and owner, Josephine Abercrombie.
Darley’s American breeding operation will auction off seasons to three of its stallions, selling online without reserve. The Lexington, Ky.-based wing of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s Darley operation, based at Jonabell Farm, will offer one season each to Lonhro, Medaglia d’Oro, and Street Sense through standard “stands and nurses” terms.
Grade 1 winner Data Link has been retired from racing and will begin his stallion career in 2014 at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Ky.
Close Hatches is campaigned by Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte Farms, which stands her young sire, First Defence, at its U.S. branch in Lexington, Ky. First Defence, who stood for $7,500 this year, is one of a pair of stallions at Juddmonte’s Kentucky farm, the other being veteran Mizzen Mast. That Grade 1-winning son of Cozzene made headlines last fall when two of his daughters – turf sprinter Mizdirection and French import Flotilla – won Breeders’ Cup races.
A.P. Indy’s son Pulpit has developed quite a reputation as a sire of sires over the past few years, primarily through the exploits of his son Tapit, who has soared near the top of both racetrack and commercial sire lists. One great son does not a sire of sires make, but Pulpit has several other successful sons at stud, led by Sky Mesa, who enjoyed another successful weekend last week, when the 3-year-old filly Sky Girl won the Grade 3 Dogwood Stakes and the 2-year-old filly Aibhilin captured the Selima Stakes.
