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At the time the exportation of Trippi to South Africa looked to be a major loss to the Florida breeding industry, and he’s continued to underline the point since. In fact, that point became an exclamation mark after his daughter R Heat Lightning scored an impressive win in the weekend’s Spinaway Stakes (gr. I). R Heat Lightning is the first ...

Leading Second Crop Sire Afleet Alex (TrueNicks,SRO) moved further clear of the chasing pack – headed by Florida’s Wildcat Heir (TrueNicks,SRO) and Blind Luck’s sire Pollard’s Vison – at the weekend with a pair of stakes winners, headed by Afleet Express, who timed his bob of the head to take the Travers Stakes (gr. I) from Fly Down (by ...

Dada, dada, dadaa, da, da, daa….Who's the horse with hot three-year-old crop? Shaft! Mine Shaft!. With due apologies to the late Isaac Hayes, we think there are plenty of reasons to be ''talkin' 'bout'' Mineshaft (TrueNicks,SRO), who missed an historic double at Saratoga on Saturday by about an inch. The only Horse of the Year by A.P. Indy ...

Having finally cleared some matings – late Southern Hemisphere and very early Northern Hemisphere – off the desk, and taken our nose out of the middle of the 1300 or so strong catalog two of Keeneland September, we realized that we ought to take a quick look back at the pedigrees of some of the winners of major U.S. stakes events last ...

We mentioned in an earlier post that the crack two-year-old and sprinter Oasis Dream has several talented middle-distance runners, including top four-year-old filly Midday. However, he can still get the kind of two-year-old that his race record and pedigree would lead one to expect, and he had a pair of juvenile stakes winners last week in Approve ...

After a deliberately low-key start to a season timed to peak for late summer and fall, Rip Van Winkle returned to his best to win a very strong renewal of the Juddmonte International (gr. I) over the title sponsor’s duo of Twice Over and Byword. Off the board behind Goldikova on his seasonal debut in the Queen Anne Stakes (gr. I), Rip Van Winkle ...

Following on from Alan Porter's article on freshman sires ranked in the top 10 nationally, below is continued analysis of freshman sires that have already sired stakes horses. ... A second son of Forestry (TrueNicks,SRO) with a 2010 freshman stakes winner is Maryland-based Deputy Storm (TrueNicks,SRO), a very speedy individual who was out of the ...

Despite the colossal natural talent that he obviously was, the pedigree of Bellamy Road (TrueNicks,SRO) didn’t make him a natural commercial sire, nor an obvious sire of precocious two-year-olds (he's by Concerto, a son of Chief’s Crown and useful sire in Florida, but not exactly at the head of anyone's ''sire of sires'' list, out of a mare by ...

It was only by a nose, but Wasted Tears took her most recent winning streak to seven in the John C. Mabee Handicap (gr. II). Taking out one unplaced effort on the dirt, she actually has a ten race undefeated run on the sward stretching back to May, 2008. You'd have to credit a significant proportion of that to courage and toughness as well as ...

Dubawi (IRE) (TrueNicks,SRO) was a horse very well-suited by some give in the ground, a point underlined by his win in the 2005 renewal of the Prix Jacque Le Marois (gr. I) at Deauville. That the same is true of his offspring is evident by their efforts at Deauville on August 15. Five years on from his sire's victory in the same race, the English ...