As stallions age both quality and quantity of their books clearly decline. Fertility begins to wane a bit, but more significantly the market moves on to the shiny new star, and as the market goes, so goes the attention of commercial breeders. Overall quality of progeny almost inevitably declines for even the greatest sires as they age through their 20s, but that does not stop great sires from continuing to produce Grade 1 winners. Distorted Humor averaged only $134,060 for 25 yearlings sold at the recent Keeneland September yearling sale, 28th on the list of leading sires by average, behind five sires who have yet to sire a Grade 1 winner, but that did not stop Distorted Humor from getting his 17th top-level winner, Restless Rider, in Friday’s Alcibiades Stakes at Keeneland. Bred by Charles Nuckols and sons at their Hurstland Farm in Midway, Ky., in 1993 and raced by the late Russell Reineman and Prestonwood Farm, Distorted Humor was a good but notably temperamental (like several sons of his sire, Forty Niner) sprinter-miler in the 1990s. Trained by W. Elliott Walden (now president of WinStar Farm where Distorted Humor stands), Distorted Humor won eight of 23 starts, all from 3 to 5, earning $769,964, including the Grade 2 Commonwealth Breeders’ Cup Stakes and Churchill Downs Handicap, and Grade 3 Ack Ack and Salvator Mile handicaps. He also ran third in the Grade 1 Cigar Mile in his final start. But on more than one occasion, he looked capable of winning at the Grade 1 level, and he developed a reputation for sulking. :: DRF BREEDING LIVE: Real-time coverage of breeding and sales Distorted Humor made a sensational start with his first crop to reach the races when Awesome Humor (out of Horns Gray, by Pass the Tab) won the Grade 1 Spinaway at 2, but the real star emerged the following year when Funny Cide (out of Belle’s Good Cide, by Slewacide) captured the Kentucky Derby and Preakness to earn champion 3-year-old male honors in 2003. Distorted Humor followed that up with two-time Grade 1 Whitney Handicap winner Commentator (Outsource, by Storm Bird) and Grade 1 winner Fourty Niners Son (Cindazanno, by Alleged) in his second crop and Grade 1 Travers winner Flower Alley (Princess Olivia, by Lycius) in his third. That established Distorted Humor as a perennial player among America’s leading sires, and he climbed all the way to the top in 2011 when 2010 Belmont winner Drosselmeyer (Golden Ballet, by Moscow Ballet) upset the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Distorted Humor has never quite established himself as a sire of sires, which is one reason his yearling average is so low for a horse of his stature. Still, Flower Alley sired 2012 Derby and Preakness winner and champion 3-year-old male I’ll Have Another, and Distorted Humor’s son Maclean’s Music sired 2017 Preakness winner Cloud Computing and Saturday’s Grade 1 Champagne winner, Complexity. Drosselmeyer is also quite successful in Brazil, although he made no impact in his homeland. Restless Rider was bred in Kentucky by Barbara Banke’s Stonestreet Thoroughbred Holdings, and is the third foal to live out of Silky Serenade, by Unbridled’s Song. Silky Serenade is a winning half-sister to Grade 2 Futurity and Kentucky Jockey Club stakes winner Private Vow, by Broken Vow. Stonestreet purchased Restless Rider’s second dam, Smooth as Silk, by Deputy Minister, for $1,350,000, in foal to Unbridled’s Song, at the Keeneland November breeding stock sale in 2006, the year after Private Vow’s Grade 2 wins. Smooth as Silk’s dam, English-bred Sacque, by Elegant Air, won the Grade 3 River Cities Breeders’ Cup and two other stakes races and is a full sister to German stakes winner Milanese, from a rather pedestrian family that has not produced Grade 1-level talent since the 1930s. Nevertheless, Silky Serenade’s progeny have been very well received by the marketplace. Her first foal to live, the winning gelding Canada, by Giant’s Causeway, sold for $500,000 as a yearling at Keeneland, and her second, unraced 3-year-old colt Granite, by Speightstown, made $400,000. Silky Serenade’s current yearling colt, by Into Mischief, sold for $750,000 at Saratoga after Restless Rider’s victory in Churchill Downs’s Debutante Stakes. Restless Rider was the bargain of the group, plucked for $150,000 by trainer Ken McPeek as agent for Paul Fireman’s Fern Circle and Goncalo Torrealba and Robert Clay’s Three Chimneys Farm. Silky Serenade foaled a colt by Kantharos this year and was bred back to Honor Code. Distorted Humor is now the dean of American stallions and is scheduled to stand his 21st season at stud next year at WinStar. His career totals of 150 black-type winners and 64 graded stakes winners are unmatched by any other active American sire. Don’t tell yearling buyers. There are more bargains to be had.