The Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap has a history of being a stallion-making race because it showcases the brilliance that is so desired in the American market. Solid sires have continued to emerge from the race in recent years – including Ghostzapper and Quality Road, who are positioned to showcase themselves on Belmont’s major week of racing.

The ebbs and flows of racing seasons will see certain stallions fluctuate when it comes to the quality and quantity of top performers in a given year. One of the stallions seeing the biggest boosts in 2017 was Malibu Moon, whose foals achieved a Beyer Speed Figure of 90 or higher on 26 more occasions than in 2016.

Quality Road posted the biggest victory of his young stud career last Friday at Churchill Downs, as daughter Abel Tasman asserted her class in her division by splashing home to win the Kentucky Oaks.

The filly classic was the second Grade 1 victory for Abel Tasman, who is from just the third crop by the Lane’s End stallion. She has now been first or second in six of her seven career outings, including a win last December in the Starlet Stakes.

In a 14-race career that featured eight wins, four of them in particularly prestigious Grade 1s, Quality Road still managed sometimes to look like something of an underachiever.

Quality Road had a solid Saturday, siring three winners, including Blofeld, who got back to his winning ways in the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Handicap.

Blofeld, a member of Quality Road's first crop, earned Grade 2 victories in the Belmont Futurity and Nashua Stakes as a juvenile in 2014. The Gulfstream Park Handicap marked his first win since then.

Each year, when January slides into February and the snow begins to thaw (or not), anyone with a blog, a microphone, or an old-fashioned byline is required by cultural tradition to step forward with their list of Kentucky Derby prospects.

The two Kentucky mixed sales in November offered buyers their first look at foals from a number of new sires.

Twenty-two first-crop sires had weanlings cataloged at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky selected fall mixed sale and the Keeneland November breeding stock sale, including five champions, three winners of Triple Crown races, and two Breeders’ Cup winners.

While the mixed sales give buyers a chance to get in on the ground floor with a young stallion’s offspring, the potential comes with the risk of the unknown when buying foals of unproven stallions.

Horse of the Year for 2010 will come down to two horses, Blame and Zenyatta. Horse of the Half-Year? That was an easy call: Quality Road.
No horse in North America was nearly as dominant the first six months of 2010 as Quality Road. His 2 3/4-length win in the Grade 3 Hal’s Hope on Jan. 3 served merely as a palate teaser. One month later, he turned in what might have been the single most powerful victory of the season, a track-record-setting 12 3/4-length thrashing of eight overwhelmed rivals in the Grade 1 Donn Handicap.

Edward P. Evans, one of the nation’s most successful owners and breeders, died on Friday night in New York City following a brief illness. He was 68.