With Honors, a stakes-winning 2-year-old filly trained by Keith Desormeaux, has been retired and will be bred next spring to Medaglia d’Oro, Alex Solis Jr., the racing manager for the Roth family’s LNJ Foxwoods stable, said Wednesday.
“She’s off to Claiborne Farm,” Solis said, referring to where the Roths board their mares.
The Auerbach family, trainer Barry Abrams, and their partners bought California racing history for $80,000 in 1996.
In June of that year at Hollywood Park, the partnership claimed Unusual Heat on a day the then 6-year-old won a one-mile turf race. Within two years, Unusual Heat began his stud career at a small farm in Hemet, Calif.
Lucky Pulpit’s reign atop the California sire ranks was cemented less than a quarter of the way through 2016, as California Chrome stormed down the stretch to dominate the $10 million Dubai World Cup.
The victory in what was then the world’s richest race helped California Chrome become North America’s all-time leading earner, with career earnings standing at $14.5 million following his win in the Los Alamitos Winter Challenge on Dec. 17.
Haynesfield, a former Kentucky stallion and Grade 1 winner, was recently moved to California for the 2017 breeding season. The millionaire racehorse could draw significant attention from the state’s breeders after recent changes among the leading stallions.
Unusual Heat, who led California stallions in progeny earnings six times from 2008-2013, was pensioned in October. Another top stallion, Tribal Rule, died in 2014, even though his progeny are still performing well.
California’s freshman sire class of 2017 sits poised to be one of the most competitive groups in recent memory, not only among its own ranks, but for the state’s overall leading juvenile sire title.
Eight stallions have 10 or more foals in their debut crop. Four of the stallions are Grade 1 winners.
The most prolific of the newcomers, and the one whose yearlings were best received at auction, is Smiling Tiger. The 9-year-old son of Hold That Tiger stands the 2017 breeding season at Harris Farms in Coalinga, Calif., for an advertised fee of $4,000.
The gamble will take all of 2017 to unfold.
California owner and breeder Richard Barton has amassed a massive broodmare band in recent years and has sent many of them to the young stallion Champ Pegasus, whose first foals race next year. By next Christmas, Barton is hoping the stallion will be the talk of California racing.
Famed geologist Charles Fipke, whose adventurous nature has taken him to remote locations the world over in pursuit of his profession, is unafraid to take risks.
Geologists had unsuccessfully searched for diamond deposits in North America for more than a century. Fipke, with only a shoestring budget, did not relent in prospecting his native Canada, and in 1991 made the groundbreaking discovery of what would become the Ekati diamond mine.
Few horses have been better named than Saturday’s Tenacious Handicap winner Honorable Duty. I normally prefer names that manage to evoke both the name of the sire and the dam, and since Honorable Duty is by Distorted Humor out of Mesmeric, by A.P. Indy, his does neither. But Honorable Duty is a perfect description of the stud career of his sire and of the service his female family has provided for his breeder, Juddmonte Farms.
Breeders’ Cup Distaff winner Stopchargingmaria has been booked to Pioneerof the Nile for her first season as a broodmare, joining an outstanding book of mares committed to the young classic sire.
Stopchargingmaria, by Tale of the Cat, sold for $2.8 million to Goncalo Torrealba of Three Chimneys Farm as a broodmare prospect last month at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky fall selected mixed sale.
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Curlin’s book for the 2017 breeding season will include a pair of Grade 1-winning daughters of Bernardini from the Stonestreet Farm broodmare band – Rachel’s Valentina and Cavorting.
John G. Sikura, president of Hill ‘n’ Dale Farm, where Curlin stands, confirmed the plans for the two mares.
Curlin relocated to Hill ‘n’ Dale from Lane’s End for the 2016 breeding season and covered 141 mares in his first year at the new residence. He will stand the upcoming season for an advertised fee of $150,000.
