Evans's legacy continues with Three Chimneys stallions

Three Chimneys Farm has an established history with the stellar female family responsible for 2005 Horse of the Year Saint Liam and 2017 Horse of the Year Gun Runner. The farm has continued to reinvest in that family, developed by the late Edward P. Evans, as it expands its stallion roster. This year, Three Chimneys adds a pair of Grade 1 winners in Funtastic, a half-brother to Saint Liam, and Sharp Azteca, out of a daughter of the champion.

“Ned Evans was an artist at breeding Grade 1 winners and developing female families,” said Three Chimneys chief operating officer Chris Baker, who worked for Evans. “This family was his masterpiece.”

Baker managed Evans’s Spring Hill Farm in Virginia when the late owner-breeder campaigned Grade 2 winner Quiet Giant, a daughter of his outstanding Quiet Dance, who had already produced Saint Liam and several other graded stakes performers. Benjamin Leon’s Besilu Stables bought Quiet Dance for $800,000 and Quiet Giant for $3 million at the Evans’s estate dispersal in 2011. Baker, who became part of Besilu’s advisory team, advised on Quiet Giant’s mating to Candy Ride that eventually produced Gun Runner.

Majority ownership in Three Chimneys was later sold to prominent Brazilian horseman Goncalo Borges Torrealba and his family, with Baker becoming the chief operating officer. Three Chimneys bought into Besilu’s bloodstock, including the yearling Gun Runner. Winchell Thoroughbreds later bought into the colt and campaigned him in partnership with Three Chimneys. Gun Runner won 12 of 19 starts for earnings of more than $15.9 million, with six Grade 1 victories including the Breeders’ Cup Classic and Pegasus World Cup. He entered stud this year at Three Chimneys.

“I am a big believer in top families, and with two Horses of the Year in his first two dams, one could make a case that there is no more active or relevant pedigree in the stud book today than that of Gun Runner,” Torrealba said.

Meanwhile, Funtastic, by More Than Ready and out of Quiet Dance, was racing in the colors of Three Chimneys, for which he was minor stakes-placed last year. The colt stepped up into Grade 1 company this summer to win the United Nations Stakes on the Monmouth turf.

Saint Liam only stood one season at stud before he broke his leg rearing while being led to his paddock at Lane’s End Farm. The injury proved fatal. His lone crop of 98 foals included 10 stakes winners and another eight stakes-placed runners, led by 2011 Horse of the Year Havre de Grace and graded stakes winners Buddy’s Saint, Liam’s Dream, and Upgrade.

“At the end of the day, it’s about breeding Saturday afternoon racehorses,” Torrealba said. “If you consider that Horse of the Year Saint Liam sired Horse of the Year Havre de Grace, one of only a handful of mares to earn that title, in his only crop, there is clearly a concentration of dominant traits that pervades multiple generations of this important pedigree.”

Saint Liam also made the most of limited opportunities as a broodmare sire, with his daughters producing Grade 1 winner Sharp Azteca, Grade 2 winner Ahh Chocolate, and Group 3 winner California One.

Sharp Azteca, by leading New York sire Freud, won 8 of 17 career starts and earned more than $2.4 million. Highlights of his career include winning the Grade 1 Cigar Mile by 5 1/4 lengths over Mind Your Biscuits last December at Aqueduct, establishing a track record in last year’s Grade 3 Monmouth Cup, and posting additional graded stakes victories in the Grade 2 Kelso Handicap in 2017 and the Grade 3 Pat Day Mile in 2016. He finished second by a half-length to Battle of Midway in the 2017 Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, second to Mor Spirit in the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap earlier that year, and second by a half-length to Mind Your Biscuits in the Grade 1 Malibu Stakes in 2016.

“Sharp Azteca was brilliantly fast, and when you watch his races, you will see speed, toughness, and tenacity, all three of which are elements we like in a stallion prospect,” Torrealba said. “We believe that Sharp Azteca can be another offshoot branch of the Storm Cat line through Giant Causeway’s full brother Freud, similar to what Harlan, Harlan’s Holiday, and Into Mischief did.”