In the fickle and hyper-competitive world of Thoroughbred stallions, failure to produce Grade 1 winners and fast 2-year-olds in a horse’s first crop to reach the races is too often a ticket to quick export to faraway lands. With hot new stallions retiring to stud every year, patience is not a virtue cultivated by either stallion managers or the yearling market.
Cooler Mike
Giant Gizmo–Executive Affair, by Bold Executive
Bred in Canada by Mike and Nick Nosowenko
Queen’s Plate hopeful Cooler Mike brings a proven classic sire line to the Canadian Triple Crown, balancing out a speed-oriented female family that is cause for concern ahead of the series.
Mind Your Biscuits, winner of the Group 1, $2 million Dubai Golden Shaheen in March for a second consecutive year, has been bought by Japan’s Shadai Farm and will stand stud there next year, according to Thoroughbred Racing Commentary.
Mind Your Biscuits will race this year for Shadai and his current ownership group, which includes Head of Plains Partners and trainer Chad Summers. He will continue to be trained by Summers.
Mind Your Biscuits is being pointed to the Grade 1 Metropolitan Mile on June 9 at Belmont Park.
The #metoo movement in American culture and politics has reminded us all of the gender inequality baked into our small world’s traditionally, historically patriarchal culture. There are few better examples of gender inequality, though, than in the world of Thoroughbred breeding. That inequality is, of course, enforced by the simple reality that the record number of foals produced by a single broodmare is 18, while successful contemporary stallions routinely sire more than 2,000 foals in their lifetimes.
Although classic sire Uncle Mo didn’t have a starter in the Preakness Stakes, he had an outstanding Saturday at Pimlico anyway.
His daughter Ultra Brat dominated the Grade 3 Gallorette Stakes by 10 1/4 lengths, and his son Uncle Mojo romped by 12 3/4 lengths in an allowance earlier in the day.
The well-regarded freshman sire Cairo Prince was represented by his first winner Saturday at Belmont when his daughter Abyssinian wired the field for a seven-length maiden score.
This was the second start for Abyssinian, who finished the five furlongs in a solid 59.44 seconds on a sloppy, sealed track and earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 71, the fourth-best by a juvenile in 2018. The filly finished second in her debut at Belmont on May 3.
Telekinesis
Ghostzapper–Intentional Cry, by Street Cry
(Bred in Ontario by William D. Graham)
The 2011 dispersal of Edward P. Evans’s Spring Hill Farm has had a far-reaching effect on the Thoroughbred industry, with those connected to it including U.S. Horse of the Year Gun Runner and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf winner Hootenanny.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Cuddle Alert, a $10,000 claimer in 2016 who went on to win the $100,000 Spring Fever Handicap for California-breds the following year, was retired last month with a minor injury, trainer Reed Saldana said.
Cuddle Alert has been bought privately by Perry and Denise Martin, who raced California Chrome, the Horse of the Year in 2014 and 2016. Saldana said the Martins plan to breed Cuddle Alert to California Chrome in 2019.
By the Forestry stallion Bedford Falls, the 7-year-old Cuddle Alert won 7 of 34 starts and earned $391,514.
Maryland-bred Lewisfield will be representing the legacy of late breeder and owner Jim Lewis in the Grade 3 Maryland Sprint Stakes on Saturday at Pimlico.
A stakes-winning son of Maryland stallion Great Notion, Lewisfield races as a homebred for Lewis’s widow Linda Zang, an internationally renowned dressage rider, judge, and coach. Zang carried on Lewis’s racing and breeding program following his death in 2012. Lewisfield’s dam, Smart Crowd, was a winning homebred for Lewis, and the gelding is named for a farm founded by Lewis’s father, James F. Lewis, II.
