The career of Danzing Candy was a work in progress when he was sidelined with an injury last summer.
Danzing Candy won consecutive graded stakes at Lone Star Park and Santa Anita in May and July and would have been favored in the Grade 2 Pat O’Brien Stakes at Del Mar in late August when a hairline fracture of a sesamoid was detected.
Danzing Candy was immediately retired. A few months later, Danzing Candy was bound for a stud career at Rancho San Miguel in San Miguel, Calif.
When California owner Terry Lovingier left Kentucky in mid-November, he was bound for home with a renewed breeding operation.
Lovingier had reached an agreement to stand Stay Thirsty at his Lovacres Farm in Warner Springs, Calif. To support the young stallion, Lovingier purchased 10 broodmares at the Keeneland November breeding stock sale alone.
“By the time I left to come back, I made the deal,” Lovingier said of the acquisition of Stay Thirsty.
Tim Ritvo, chief operating officer for The Stronach Group, was relocated from his regular post at Gulfstream Park to Santa Anita Park earlier this year with the aim of observing the California track’s functions, identifying flaws in the operation, and fixing them.
During various check-ins with the media over the summer, Ritvo said one of the most serious issues facing California’s racing industry, beyond just Santa Anita, was a low horse population, which led to small field sizes.
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.
More Than Ready has developed into a sire capable of getting a diverse spectrum of high-level runners among distances, surfaces, and hemispheres.
The stallion’s roots, however, are in dirt sprints. He saw his greatest success on the racetrack around one turn, highlighted by the Grade 1 King’s Bishop Stakes, and the distance and surface remains a strong point in his resume at stud.
Tricks To Doo’s dominant score Saturday in the Inaugural Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs earned an 89 Beyer Speed Figure, helping grow Into Mischief’s lead as the most prolific sire of juvenile runners with Beyers of 80 or higher in 2017.
Coolmore and Mike Repole will donate a total of $220,000 to the Thoroughbred Charities of America’s Horses First Fund following the sale of two no-guarantee seasons to champion Uncle Mo to benefit racehorses and their caretakers displaced by the wildfires that devastated California’s San Luis Rey training center earlier this month.
Fear the Cowboy won the Grade 3 Harlan’s Holiday Stakes on Saturday at Gulfstream Park to put his name into consideration for the $16 million Pegasus World Cup. In the process, he didn’t just earn the highest Beyer Speed Figure of his career, or the top number among this past weekend’s stakes runners – he earned the top figure of sire Cowboy Cal’s career.
The regally bred Principe Guilherme romped by 11 3/4 lengths in an optional-claiming event Saturday at Fair Grounds, moving forward toward the New Orleans track’s series of Kentucky Derby preps. The eye-opening performance served as an exclamation point as perennial leading sire Tapit closes the year strong with his juveniles.
Although Australia and New Zealand have hardly been fertile ground for producing American stallion prospects, the record of sires imported from the Antipodes is surprisingly good. As far back as 1894, New Zealand-bred Sir Modred, who stood at James Ben Ali Haggin’s Rancho del Paso in California, led the American sire list. In the 1970s, Noholme II, a champion in Australia and full brother to the legendary Todman, was highly successful despite beginning his stud career in Arkansas, siring champions Nodouble, Carnauba, and Shecky Greene.
