The one failure in the long and glorious stud career of 2011 leading sire Distorted Humor has been the absence of a successor at stud to carry on his male line. Two of his best sons, 2003 champion 3-year-old male Funny Cide and dual Grade 1 Whitney Stakes winner Commentator, were geldings, and his Breeders’ Cup Classic and Belmont winner Drosselmeyer was an abject failure in the U.S., although he has become a pretty good sire in Brazil. Distorted Humor’s 2005 Grade 1 Travers winner Flower Alley did sire 2012 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner and champion 3-year-old male I’ll Have Another, but Flower Alley was soon exported to South Africa and I’ll Have Another was sold to stand in Japan. Distorted Humor is now 25 and his best days as a sire are now behind him, but it may not be too late for one of his sons to pick up the gauntlet. In recent weeks his young son Alternation has sired both Grade 3 Super Derby winner Limation (out of Lime Lady, by Limehouse) and Serengeti Empress (Havisham, by Bernardini), who may have earned favoritism for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies with her 19 ½-length victory in the Grade 2 Pocahontas Stakes on Saturday at Churchill Downs. :: DRF BREEDING LIVE: Real-time coverage of breeding and sales Of course, two graded stakes winners does not a stud career make, but Alternation’s credentials are good enough to encourage thoughts that his record may rapidly improve if his early success from a relatively limited number of foals (81 in his first crop and 63 in his second) attracts both increased patronage and higher-quality mares. Bred in Kentucky by his owner Josephine Abercrombie’s Pin Oak Stud, Alternation is a 4th-generation descendant of one of Abercrombie’s foundation mares, the Amerigo matron Take a Stand. The dam of stakes winners Stage Luck (dam of champion Open Mind) and French Friend, Take a Stand established a prolific family at Pin Oak that includes very good Pin Oak sire Broken Vow, by Unbridled; champion grass mare Forever Together, by Belong to Me; and Canadian champion Peaks and Valleys, by Mt. Livermore. Alternation’s dam, stakes winner Alternate, by Seattle Slew, is a half-sister to Peaks and Valleys. Trained by Donnie Von Hemel, Alternation raced twice at 2 in 2010, winning his second outing by seven lengths at Remington Park. He won two allowance races at Oaklawn Park at 3, and was off slowly and rallied too late when fifth in the Arkansas Derby there behind winner Archarcharch. Alternation redeemed himself with a last-gasp head victory over Adios Charlie in the Grade 2 Peter Pan at Belmont, and ran fourth in the Jim Dandy at Saratoga and Super Derby at Louisiana Downs before closing the season with a second in the Oklahoma Derby at Remington. Alternation found the best form of his career during the first half of his 4-year-old season, reeling off victories in the Essex Handicap, Grade 3 Razorback Handicap and Grade 2 Oaklawn Handicap at Oaklawn, and the Grade 3 Pimlico Special, before finishing fifth in the Grade 1 Stephen Foster at Churchill. He won one more race, the Governor’s Cup at Remington, but went off form in his final four starts, at 4 and 5. Though obviously a well-bred and talented horse, Alternation had not won a Grade 1 race, and was never going to be in high demand when he retired to Pin Oak in 2014. Limation is the best of three stakes winners from his first crop, but Serengeti Empress is easily his most promising offspring. Bred in Kentucky by Tri-Eques Bloodstock, she is the first foal out of the unraced Bernardini mare Havisham. Listed as sold to Dixon Enterprises as a weanling at the 2016 Keeneland November sale, she was purchased for $70,000 as a yearling at Keeneland September by Joel Politi. Havisham’s dam, Argentine-bred Love Dancing, by the American speed sire Salt Lake, was a Group 3 winner in her homeland and ran third in the UAE Oaks, but had produced nothing of note. Love Dancing is half-sister to two group-placed runners, and her dam, Le Midi, by Fitzcarraldo, was a multiple group winner in Argentina. But one must read all the way back to Serengeti Empress’s seventh dam, Sudestada, dam of the great Argentine champion filly Rafale, before one encounters a truly top-class runner. Havisham has since produced a yearling full sister to Serengeti Empress but was sold for $12,000 at the 2016 Keeneland November sale and exported to Korea. Serengeti Empress, who is inbred 3x4 to Seattle Slew, ran away with the Pocahontas for trainer Tom Amoss, and that followed her 13-length win in the Ellis Park Debutante. Having won over the course and distance, she may prove very hard to beat on Nov. 2 in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Churchill.