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.

Though it was not one of the names on the laundry list of owners tied to Kentucky Derby winner Always Dreaming, the fingerprints of WinStar Farm could be seen all over the race’s superfecta.

Kenny Troutt’s elite racing and breeding operation stands Bodemeister, the sire of Always Dreaming, as well as Pioneerof the Nile, who sired fourth-place finisher and champion juvenile male Classic Empire. WinStar also co-owns third-place finisher Battle of Midway with Don Alberto Corp. after purchasing a stake in the colt about two weeks prior to the race.

With five straight favorites winning the Kentucky Derby, he has become the answer to a trivia question: Who is the Derby’s most recent losing favorite?

The answer is Bodemeister, a game second to I’ll Have Another in both the Derby and Preakness Stakes.

Now a young stallion at WinStar Farm in Versailles, Ky., Bodemeister has gotten revenge in a big way, with Kentucky Derby winner Always Dreaming in his first crop.

The myriad connections of the male line of 143rd Kentucky Derby winner Always Dreaming to the Kentucky Derby began 64 years ago, when his seventh-generation male-line ancestor Native Dancer finished second, beaten a head, by Dark Star in the 79th Derby. That was Native Dancer’s only loss in 22 lifetime starts, and if the excuses then made for Native Dancer’s defeat in the Derby do not stand up well to closer inspection, he needs no excuses for his profound influence on the subsequent history of America’s greatest classic.

The Kentucky Derby field is the most heavily scrutinized of the year in North America, yet much remains unknown about the group until after the race is over.

Most important among the race’s variables is which horses are best able to handle the Derby’s 1 1/4-mile distance, a route of ground no horse in the field will have raced before and most never will again. Since there is no prior form with which to evaluate horses at the classic distance, a useful tool to determine each entrant’s potential is the average progeny winning distance of his sire and dam.

“There are always dreams every year,” said Garrett O’Rourke, manager of the American wing of Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte Farms. “We have foals hit the ground and, crazy dreamers that we all are, we start dreaming about all of them.”

Irish War Cry, a multiple Grade 2 winner and Kentucky Derby hopeful, will stand at Hill ‘n’ Dale Farm in Lexington, Ky., upon his retirement from racing.

The breeding rights for the 3-year-old son of Curlin were purchased by a diverse group including John G. Sikura of Hill ‘n’ Dale, Craig Bernick of Glen Hill Farm, SF Bloodstock, Colts Neck Stables, China Horse Club, Bobby Flay, Sol Kumin, and Vincent Viola.

The partnership formed to buy Grade 2 winner and Kentucky Derby contender Tapwrit for $1.2 million was at the same time relatively spur of the moment and years in the making.

The catalyst for the joint venture between Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, Bridlewood Farm, and Robert LaPenta was a passing conversation between barns prior to the 2015 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga select yearling sale, where Eclipse president Aron Wellman asked Bridlewood general manager George Isaacs if he’d seen the buzzed-about Tapit colt in the Denali Stud consignment.

A mother’s influence on development in the early months can often go overlooked in the success of a racehorse, but it’s hard to look at the produce record of Rebridled Dreams and not have it in mind.

If Farrell’s Kentucky Oaks bid is successful, she would become the third Grade 1 winner out of the Unbridled’s Song mare, who is the cornerstone of Bob Cummings and Annette Bacola’s Coffee Pot Stable breeding program.

The chasm between pedigrees of American dirt horses and the international mainstream of pedigrees of the rest of the world’s elite Thoroughbreds, which race mostly on turf, has widened in the last two decades. Although more than 95% of the world’s Thoroughbreds descend in male line from American-bred stallions, grass racing in the rest of the world has selected different descendants of Northern Dancer and Mr. Prospector that work better in their local environment than the strains that work here on dirt.