Leading Pennsylvania sires: Jump Start maintains advantage

Jump Start moved to Pennsylvania for the 2010 breeding season and immediately topped the state’s sire list by general progeny earnings on the strength of his Kentucky-sired runners. A half-decade later, Jump Start has rooted himself at the top of the list as a Pennsylvania resident.

Last year marked the third season that the 18-year-old son of A.P. Indy topped the Pennsylvania sire list by general earnings, having also claimed the title in 2010 and 2015. He also was last year’s leading sire by juvenile earnings and synthetic-surface earnings (Presque Isle Downs races on the all-weather Tapeta surface), and he finished second by earnings on turf.

Jump Start stands at Northview PA in Peach Bottom for an advertised fee of $10,000.

The stallion had four stakes winners in 2016, headed by Panamanian Group 2 winner Dancera.

Domestically, Jump Start was led by Disco Chick, a three-time stakes winner at Parx Racing and Pimlico Race Course who also finished third in the Grade 2 Honorable Miss Handicap at Saratoga. Nine of her 11 starts last year were in-the-money efforts in stakes company.

Other runners of note for Jump Start include stakes winners Downhill Racer and Bound, United Arab Emirates Group 2-placed Prayer for Relief, Argentine Group 2-placed Cut Start, and multiple Grade 3-placed Idolo Porteno, a two-time Group 1 winner in South America.

Jump Start finished the year with 3.4 percent of his runners achieving a Beyer Speed Figure of 90 or above, and two horses tied for the highest Beyer at 96. Disco Chick achieved a 96 in winning the Skipat Stakes on May 20 at Pimlico, while Purcell hit the mark as the runner-up in the Banjo Picker Sprint Stakes on Sept. 3 at Parx Racing.

Jump Start, an Overbrook Farm homebred, won 2 of 5 starts for $221,265, taking the Grade 2 Saratoga Special and finishing second in the Grade 1 Champagne Stakes.

He is out of the Grade 2-placed Storm Cat mare Steady Cat and is a half-brother to Steady Course, who is the dam of Grade 1 winner Mastery and stakes winner Clear Sailing. Grade 1 winner and prominent sire Miswaki is in Jump Start’s extended family.