Cesario, a Grade 1 winner on two continents and the dam of two champions in Japan, died Saturday at Northern Farm in Japan of a ruptured artery. The daughter of Special Week was 19.
Fresh off earning another Eclipse Award as North America's outstanding owner, the international Godolphin operation has started 2021 in strong fashion. Godolphin recorded three homebred graded stakes winners in the United States on Saturday alone, highlighted by Eclipse Award champion Essential Quality's successful 3-year-old debut in the Grade 3 Southwest Stakes at Oaklawn. Mystic Guide gave the Godolphin blue a double at Oaklawn by winning the Grade 3 Razorback Handicap, and Antoinette captured the Grade 3 The Very One at Gulfstream.
Tapit, one of North America's perennial leading sires, turned 20 on Saturday. The Gainesway stallion celebrated by sweeping Saturday's Kentucky Derby preps, as Eclipse Award champion Essential Quality returned a winner at Oaklawn Park and Greatest Honour continued his march through the Gulfstream Park prep series.
Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf winner Fire At Will is expected to make his 3-year-old debut on the main track in Saturday's Grade 2 Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park in a bid to step onto the Kentucky Derby trail. His pedigree strongly suggests that his future lies on the turf.
Popular dual Eclipse Award champion Covfefe delivered her first foal, a filly by Constitution, on Tuesday in Kentucky.
Sealy Hill, a Canadian Hall of Famer who went on to a stellar career as a broodmare, died Tuesday at Bonne Chance Farm near Versailles, Ky. The daughter of Point Given was 17 and had been pensioned from breeding since 2018.
Coolmore's Ashford Stud, Spendthrift Farm, and Three Chimneys Farm, three prominent Kentucky farms standing some of the nation's most well-known stallions, have together filed a lawsuit challenging The Jockey Club's rule limiting the books of future stallions, the first legal challenge to the first such rule of its kind adopted by North America's governing Thoroughbred breed organization.
Eclipse Award champion sprinter Runhappy recorded his first stakes winner as a sire in February, as Nicky the Vest rolled to an 11 3/4-length score in the Gander Stakes at Aqueduct. With that runner leading a torrid streak for his sire, Runhappy heads toward the close of this month as the leading second-crop sire by individual winners, represented by 10 victors thus far in 2021.
Forest Music, a foundation mare for the successful Stonestreet Farm breeding program and the dam of classic sire Maclean's Music, has died at age 20. Stonestreet announced the Unbridled's Song mare's passing on Feb. 19. She had delivered a Bernardini filly on Jan. 25.
Triple Crown winner American Pharoah recorded his third Grade/Group 1 winner as a sire, and first on dirt, as when Cafe Pharoah won the February Stakes Sunday in Japan. The colt is bred on the same cross as the stallion's first son to stud, new Japanese resident Four Wheel Drive, and could give that one a bit of added attention early in his career.
