Imagination tries to follow in the footsteps of National Treasure

Can history repeat itself? That’s one question for Santa Anita Derby runner-up Imagination in the Preakness Stakes. The colt races for many of the same connections as last year’s Preakness winner, National Treasure, and is from the same extended female family as that colt – one that has had a great deal of success throughout racing history.

Imagination, by Into Mischief, was bred, like National Treasure, by Peter Blum in Kentucky. The colt was a $1.05 million Keeneland September yearling purchase by SF Racing, Starlight Racing, and Madaket Stables, and now races for a partnership of those entities along with Stonestreet Stables, Dianne Bashor, Robert Masterson, Waves Edge Capital, Catherine Donovan, and Tom Ryan. Many of those also are involved in the multi-pronged partnership behind National Treasure.

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Imagination is out of the Empire Maker mare Magical Feeling, winner of the Grade 2 Barbara Fritchie Handicap. Her six winners from seven starters include graded stakes winners Imagination and Occult, and stakes winners Exulting and Magical. Other relatives in this branch of the family include Grade 1 winners Dream Tree, Golden Ticket, Leofric, Telling, and Well Chosen.

Magical Feeling and Treasure, the dam of National Treasure, intersect in the female line at the mare Mine Only – the third dam of Magical Feeling and fourth dam of Treasure, respectively. Mine Only’s great-granddam is Igual, the dam of 1946 Triple Crown winner Assault.

Igual’s granddam is stakes winner Masda, the older full sister to the great Man o’ War, the 1920 Preakness and Belmont Stakes winner after being held out of the Kentucky Derby due to the preferences of owner Samuel Riddle. Imagination did not run in the Kentucky Derby, owing to Churchill Downs’ suspension of trainer Bob Baffert, and now joins the Triple Crown trail.

“Every race, he’s improving,” Baffert said. “And I think distance is not going to be a problem for him.”

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