Tapit could set record with fifth Belmont Stakes winner

There are few names better to find in the pedigree of a Belmont Stakes candidate than Tapit – and he has an outsized mark on Saturday’s renewal. Tapit, who is seeking to claim outright the record he co-holds with the great Lexington as the Belmont’s leading sire, is the sire of entrants Tapit Trice and Tapit Shoes. He is also the broodmare sire of four other entrants in the nine-horse field, in Arcangelo, Hit Show, Il Miracolo, and Red Route One.

“At this point, it just becomes even harder to put in perspective what Tapit has achieved as a stallion,” said Ryan Norton, stallion director at Gainesway, where the big gray stallion has stood his entire career.

“At 22 years old he is still going strong,” Norton continued, “and it looks like he is not slowing down in producing top-level racehorses each and every year.”

Tapit Trice, winner of the Grade 1 Blue Grass Stakes, most recently finished seventh in the Kentucky Derby.

“Tapits have had a lot of success in the Belmont,” trainer Todd Pletcher said. “He’s out of a Dunkirk mare who I trained and ran second in the Belmont. From a pedigree standpoint, you would think he’s capable.”

Tapit Shoes has only a maiden win to his credit, and was most recently second to Red Route One in the Bath House Row Stakes at Oaklawn Park. But there’s one factor that gave trainer Brad Cox the confidence to step the colt up in the classics.

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“Tapit,” Cox said. “Plain and simple.”

Three-time North American leading sire Tapit is the sire of Belmont Stakes winners Tonalist (2014), Creator (2016), Tapwrit (2017), and Essential Quality (2021). He is also the sire of runner-ups Frosted (2015) and Tacitus (2019) and third-place finishers Lani (2016) and Hofburg (2018).

Lexington, America’s leading sire 16 times, despite his stud career at Woodburn Farm being interrupted by the Civil War, sired Belmont winners General Duke (1868), Kingfisher (1870), Harry Bassett (1871), and Duke of Magenta (1878). His accomplishments came when the Thoroughbred breeding industry was entirely different than it is today. Tapit’s runners have had to compete against exponentially larger foal crops sired by a larger number of stallions, due partially to an enhanced emphasis on commercial breeding, as well as the relative ease of shipping horses in modern times. To illustrate, the great Man o’ War, the most recent stallion to sire as many as three Belmont winners before Tapit arrived on the scene, sired 381 foals throughout his entire stud career. The busiest stallion in North America last year, Gun Runner, covered 248 mares in 2022 alone as one of 925 active stallions on the continent, according to The Jockey Club’s Report of Mares Bred.

While the Belmont five times had two-horse fields from 1887 to 1920, the growth of the commercial Thoroughbred marketplace and a rising foal crop meant larger fields to contend with; the largest Belmont field was 15 in 1983, and Tapit’s four winners have been part of an average field size of 10.75. Additionally, while Lexington’s first three Belmont winners came at a marathon 1 5/8 miles, before the race was shortened to its most commonly run configuration, 1 1/2 miles, in 1874, the distance has become an anachronism in American racing. Simply put, it is not a distance that racehorses or sires are geared toward.

Tapit has consistently produced stamina throughout his career. Essential Quality is among his six individual Eclipse Award champions, all of whom scored signature wins around two turns. The most recent of those was the brilliant 2022 Horse of the Year Flightline.

“Let’s not forget he is the sire of Flightline, who people consider a horse of a generation,” Norton said. “So it only makes sense that he was sired by Tapit, who no one would argue is definitely a stallion of a generation.”

Meanwhile, as a broodmare sire, Tapit’s daughters have produced 96 stakes winners worldwide. In addition to his four grandsons in the Belmont, he will be represented in this regard this weekend at Belmont by Kentucky Oaks winner Pretty Mischievous in Friday’s Grade 1 Acorn and by multiple Grade 1 winner Cody’s Wish in Saturday’s Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap.

“I made the prediction in the early spring that Tapit would be the leading broodmare sire in North America at the end of 2023,” Norton said. “Nothing has happened to make me back off of that prediction - as a matter of fact, with Pretty Mischievous winning the Kentucky Oaks, I feel even more confident. . . . It is incredible. Not many stallions that are leading broodmare sire do it while they are still actively breeding, so for him to able to accomplish this feat would just be another achievement on his already incredible résumé.”

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