Adam Staple is a pedigree guru. That is, his role as stallion coordinator for Ocala's Signature Stallions often requires him to advise breeders as to which stallions best suit their mares, and if none do - which rarely happens, he says - to recommend an outside stallion.
Staple can point with pride to his 14-year-old broodmare, Seattle Moon, by Seattle Dancer. She is the dam of Vous, his homebred 2-year-old, winner of this past week's $100,000 Hollywood Wildcat Stakes at Calder Race Course.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Jim Equils was not sure what to think last April at Santa Anita when he and his wife, Marcia, claimed The Candi Queen for $20,000 and watched her finish last of six.
"I said, 'What have we done?' " he said.
This week, Jim Equils was able to look back on that moment and laugh. Thursday at Hollywood Park, The Candi Queen scored the most important win of her career, drawing off to a 17-length win in an allowance race over 1 1/16 miles for California-bred fillies and mares.
The New York Racing Association has instituted a change in the nomination process for the 2004 Big Apple Triple for New York-bred 3-year-olds.
Instead of a $200 early nomination fee due in January for eligibility to each of the Big Apple Triple races, which are run in the summer, nominations will close on a normal schedule, approximately two weeks before the race.
The Big Apple Triple consists of the Mike Lee at Belmont Park in June, the New York Derby at Finger Lakes in July, and the Albany at Saratoga Race Course. The 2004 dates for these races have yet to be assigned.
The Tattersalls December mare auction in Newmarket, England, got off to a flashy start Monday with a session-topping Storm Cat filly sold for a million guineas, or about $1.67 million. A slightly smaller catalog than last year's resulted in lower gross receipts and a higher average price at the opener.
Peinture Rose, a 3-year-old half-sister to champion and sire Peintre Celebre, topped the session when she went to French bloodstock agent Frederic Sauque on behalf of an unidentified Swiss client. Ted Voute sold the filly, the first seven-figure lot he has ever sold.
Grade 2 winner Century City will enter stud in 2004 at Wintergreen Stallion Station in Lexington, Ky., for a $12,500 fee.
A 4-year-old Danzig colt, Century City won this year's Grade 2 Arcadia Handicap and the Turf Paradise Breeders' Cup Handicap. In his last start he finished third in the Breeders' Cup Mile won by Six Perfections.
November has been a month to remember for Kurt Butenhoff, a New York farm owner and breeder.
About a week after announcing the arrival of the first two stallions to stand at his new farm, Empire Stud in Hudson, N.Y., Butenhoff won his first graded race, the Grade 2 Long Island Handicap at Aqueduct on Nov. 15, with Spice Island.
Two of Maryland's leading breeding farms were looking to fill a niche, and both have succeeded.
Preakness Stakes winner Louis Quatorze will stand the 2004 season at Allen and Audrey Murray's Murmur Farm in Darlington, Md. The Pons family's Country Life Farm is replenishing its sire ranks with Parker's Storm Cat, who joins another first-year stallion, No Armistice, at the farm in Bel Air, Md.
It is welcome news for farms whose headlines the past two years resulted in losses for the Maryland breeding industry.
It should be Wando-mania at the Sovereign Awards presentation in downtown Toronto on Dec. 6 when the handsome chestnut 3-year-old is expected to garner awards for Horse of the Year and top 3-year-old colt or gelding.
A son of Langfuhr out of Kathie's Colleen, Wando became the seventh Canadian Triple Crown winner this summer and won 4 of 6 starts for earnings of over $1.6 million.