Kentucky Derby pedigree profile: Track Phantom

Track Phantom

Colt by Quality Road – Miss Sunset, by Into Mischief

Bred in Kentucky by Breeze Easy LLC ($500,000 Keeneland September yearling purchase by L and N Racing)

Track Phantom has had a consistent campaign this winter at Fair Grounds, winning the Gun Runner and Grade 3 Lecomte before finishing second by a half-length to early Derby favorite Sierra Leone in the Grade 2 Risen Star on a sloppy, sealed track. He looks to put an exclamation point on his prep season in Saturday’s Grade 2, $1 million Louisiana Derby at 1 3/16 miles. The colt, who is by a classic sire, has already outrun most of his female family distance-wise.

Quality Road was brilliant enough to score a dazzling win in the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap at a one-turn mile and tough enough to carry himself two turns, with additional Grade 1 triumphs in the Florida Derby, Donn Handicap, and Woodward among his seven graded stakes scores. The son of classic sire Elusive Quality has become a perennial leading sire and is approaching 100 career stakes winners. His standouts include Kentucky Oaks winner and Eclipse Award champion Abel Tasman; National Treasure, who gave him his first Triple Crown race win in last year’s Preakness and took the 2024 Pegasus World Cup; Eclipse champion juveniles Caledonia Road and Corniche, both with Breeders’ Cup wins; and City of Light, whose major wins included the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile and Pegasus World Cup.

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California-bred Miss Sunset won 10 of her 20 career starts, with nine stakes wins highlighted by the Grade 2 Raven Run sprinting at Keeneland; she was second by a nose in the Grade 1 Madison. Her first two foals are winners, with Track Phantom joining O’Conner Sunset, who has scored all his wins in sprints despite being by classic sire Curlin.

Miss Sunset’s dam, Tuscan Sunset, scored all her wins at 4 1/2 furlongs; the mare’s only other winner is stakes-placed Tiger the Man, who also got all his wins sprinting; Tuscan Sunset is a half-sister to two stakes winners – Sizzlin South, a stakes winner at up to seven furlongs, and Sparklin Lil, who won from 5 1/2 furlongs to a mile and 70 yards. Sparklin Lil is the dam of a prominent distance outlier for the family in multimillionaire Prayer for Relief, who won four graded stakes and was Grade 1-placed around two turns.

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