Fasig-Tipton Midlantic: Forefathers played role in Triple Crown story

Without Forefathers, there might have been no American Pharoah.

Forefathers prompted owner Ahmed Zayat to aggressively invest in the family that eventually produced the 2015 Triple Crown winner.

Forefathers stands at Red River Farms in Louisiana. He was represented by one juvenile at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic sale of 2-year-olds in training, a filly who worked a furlong in 10 seconds at the under-tack show, tying for the fastest work. The filly, from the family of Grade 1 winners Jersey Girl, Jersey Town, and Purge, was a private purchase by Clarence Racing at $35,000.

Zayat launched his Zayat Stables in 2005 and quickly began making waves in the bloodstock market with aggressive purchases to stock the operation. Among his early acquisitions was Forefathers, a $680,000 purchase out of the 2005 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga select yearling sale who would go on to place in a pair of Grade 2 stakes.

Zayat thought so highly of Forefathers that in late 2005, he privately purchased his dam, the stakes-winning Lord At War mare Star of Goshen, in foal to Empire Maker, and her daughter Regala Di Trieste, in foal to Gulch, in a package deal from Gary and Betty Biszantz’s Cobra Farm.

Star of Goshen’s resulting foal was named Pioneerof the Nile in a nod to Zayat’s Egyptian heritage. Zayat entered the colt in the 2007 Keeneland September yearling sale but elected to buy him back for $290,000 – a move he would later repeat with Pioneerof the Nile’s second-crop son American Pharoah at the 2013 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale.

Meanwhile, at that 2007 Keeneland September sale, Zayat purchased a Yankee Gentleman filly bred by Brereton C. Jones out of the Woods Edge Farm consignment for $250,000. He named the filly Littleprincessemma after his youngest daughter. The rest is history, as Littleprincessemma produced a Pioneerof the Nile colt, American Pharoah, in February 2012.