Multiple graded stakes-placed Roi Charmant, who stands at Magali Farms in Santa Ynez, Calif., was represented by his first winner on Saturday, when Pheisty Kid took a maiden special weight race at Golden Gate Fields.
Await the Dawn, a Group 2-winning son of leading sire Giant’s Causeway, will begin his stallion career at Summerhill Stud in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa.
Saturday’s Belmont Stakes undercard assisted in clarifying several divisions as the North American summer racing season unofficially began.
Grade 1 winner and freshman sire Dixie Chatter was represented by his first winner June 7 when his daughter Chattering Nikita captured a maiden special weight event at Northlands Park.
From a statistical viewpoint, the late Sadler’s Wells was the greatest sire in English and Irish Thoroughbred history. Not only did he lead the combined English/Irish sire list for a record 13 consecutive seasons and a record 14 times overall (beating records set by Highflyer two centuries earlier), but he sired 329 stakes winners, a record for a horse who served only in the Northern Hemisphere. Both of those records might well be in jeopardy in less than a decade’s time, however. And in the spirit of the hit television series “Game of Thrones,” the horse who may dethrone Sadler’s Wells is his own son Galileo.
Dr. William Lockridge, influential breeder and co-founder of Ashford Stud in Versailles, Ky., died June 8 at the age of 81. A veterinarian by trade, Lockridge graduated from Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine at age 21 and practiced in the Southwest for 12 years.
Looking back at classic winners over the past 20 years gives a good indication of the shifting nature of Thoroughbred ownership during the late 20th century and into the 21st.
Curlin, arguably one of the best two or three U.S. horses of the 2000s, dominated racing headlines during his 2007 and 2008 campaigns, providing racing fans with a handful of superior performances on the track and plenty of intrigue elsewhere as well. The all-time earnings leader in North America, Curlin was naturally highly regarded as a potential standout sire upon his retirement in 2008 to William S. Farish III’s Lane’s End in Versailles, Ky.
Palace Malice’s victory in the Belmont Stakes represented an all-encompassing triumph for William Stamps Farish III's Lane’s End, which bred the colt and stands his sire, Curlin.
The excitement of Palace Malice's Belmont Stakes victory was enjoyed by more individuals than the average classic winner, as Cot Campbell, president of the trailblazing Dogwood Stables partnership, was joined by several partners on the winning podium following the final leg of the Triple Crown.
