Grade 1 winner V. E. Day will relocate to Buck Pond Farm in Versailles, Ky., for the 2018 breeding season and will stand for an advertised fee of $6,500.
The 6-year-old son of English Channel stood his debut season this year at Waldorf Farm in North Chatham, N.Y., for the same price.
Racing has always been a game of association for Don Robinson of Winter Quarter Farm. He bred Cambodia, a fourth-generation member of a Thoroughbred family he has worked with, in partnership with late friend Eric Kronfeld, best known as the breeder of Zenyatta. Robinson now races Cambodia in partnership with Alan Schubert, who bought in after Kronfeld’s death.
Two of New York’s leading stallion operations have merged, creating Irish Hill & Dutchess Views Stallions LLC, based at Irish Hill Century Farm in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
The operation will stand seven stallions for the 2018 breeding season, including Zivo, Desert Party, and newcomer Market Rally, who were already based at Irish Hill Century Farm.
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Late sire City Zip’s hallmark versatility will be on display at the upcoming Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar.
The stallion is likely to be represented by Eclipse Award champion Finest City, defending her victory in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint; a dirt router in prominent Breeders’ Cup Classic contender Collected; and a fleet-footed turf-route mare in Filly and Mare Turf hopeful Zipessa. He also has a Juvenile Turf pre-entrant in Snapper Sinclair, who owns a stakes win sprinting on turf.
The Jones family’s Airdrie Stud holds two gray aces heading into the fall, with Creative Cause sending up to three foals to the Breeders’ Cup from his first two crops, and Cairo Prince wrapping up a breakout debut yearling season at auction.
In both instances, the stallions benefitted greatly from the extensive support of farm owners Brereton and Elizabeth Jones’s broodmare band. All three of Creative Cause’s Breeders’ Cthat up pre-entries were bred or co-bred by the Midway, Ky.-based operation.
The Breeders’ Cup was a victory that eluded the globetrotting Singspiel. He finished second in the 1996 Turf at Woodbine in his Eclipse Award championship campaign and was training toward a second attempt in 1997 at Hollywood Park when he sustained a career-ending fracture.
There are a few parallels between Arrogate, the defending winner of the Breeders’ Cup Classic, and Elate, a prominent contender in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff.
Both horses were later-developing horses who required patient handling from their Hall of Fame trainers. Arrogate posted his first Grade 1 victory in scintillating fashion in the Travers Stakes in August of his 3-year-old season at Saratoga. Elate broke through at a similar point of the season, romping to her first Grade 1 win in the Alabama Stakes at the historic track.
