Classic Empire has a lot to live up to.
The colt became the second Eclipse Award champion juvenile in three years for sire Pioneerof the Nile on Saturday night. The first of those champion youngsters? American Pharoah, who followed his 2014 championship season by sweeping the Triple Crown, winning the Breeders’ Cup Classic, and earning Horse of the Year honors in 2015.
As a bright chestnut with white points, City Zip is the sort of horse who catches the eye. But when it comes to his accomplishments in the breeding shed, he’s been somewhat overlooked despite a good deal of success.
Beautyinthepulpit, a multiple stakes-placed runner, will retire to Buckridge Farm in Kinderhook, N.Y., for the 2017 breeding season.
The 9-year-old son of Pulpit will stand for a private fee with the stud fee waived for mares who have black type anywhere in their first two dams, who earned more than $50,000 on the track, who have produced a winner of $50,000 or more, or for breeders who send more than one mare per season.
Beautyinthepulpit finishes his career with eight wins in 31 starts for earnings of $410,627.
Only a handful of representatives for Kenny and Lisa Troutt’s WinStar Farm could get up on the stage to accept the operation’s Eclipse Award as outstanding breeder last Saturday night at Gulfstream Park. However, farm president and chief executive Elliott Walden noted that there were dozens who belonged there.
“Of all the awards presented tonight, I think the breeder is one of the most collaborative efforts,” Walden said. “You have the stallion team, the broodmares, the yearlings, the owners that buy our horses at the sales, the trainers that they give them to.
As they usually do, the pedigrees of the 2016 Eclipse winners followed the overall trends of American pedigrees. Over the last several decades the Northern Dancer and Mr. Prospector male lines have dominated grades stakes results, with the emergent A.P. Indy branch making steady inroads into that dominance. Those male lines thus dominate the numbers of stallions at stud, and it is only logical that those numbers will be reflected during awards season.
Grade 1 winner Keen Ice will retire to Calumet Farm at the end of this racing season, the farm announced on Sunday.
Keen Ice, who is best known for defeating Triple Crown winner American Pharoah in the 2015 Travers Stakes, is expected to start in this Saturday’s $12 million Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream Park.
Two of reigning leading sire Tapit’s best runners from a Beyer Speed Figure standpoint will be among Kentucky’s new stallions of 2017.
Frosted, who retires to Darley’s Jonabell Farm in Kentucky, earned the year’s top figure with a 123 for his 14 1/4-length romp in the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap at Belmont Park. That also was the top career Beyer for Tapit, far surpassing the 112 awarded to Trappe Shot for a runner-up effort in the Grade 1 Alfred G. Vanderbilt Stakes in 2011 at Saratoga.
