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Cairo Prince (TrueNicks) (Pioneerof the Nile—Holy Bubbette, by Holy Bull; Airdrie Stud) established himself as one of the winter favorites for the Kentucky Derby (gr. I), with three juvenile starts bringing wins in a maiden at Belmont Park and the Nashua Stakes (gr. II), and a close second to Honor Code (with Wicked Strong third) in the Remsen ...

  Earlier in the year our own Ian Tapp visited South Africa (read about his travels here) and just in time for the start of the Southern Hemisphere breeding season, 47 stallions associated with the Cape Breeders Club in South Africa have joined TrueNicks. Obviously there isn't room to do justice to all of them here, but we can note the ...

It hasn't taken long for the second-season sires of 2014 to make their presence felt, and already four of them have been represented grade I winners. The leader among horses who began their careers in the U.S. is Kingmambo's much-traveled son Thewayyouare (TrueNicks), who now stands in Ireland. He has 16 winners from 37 runners, and had a big ...

Among the questions that we are most frequently asked with regard to suggest matings is ''what about the inbreeding to....?'' or ''is inbreeding to x a good thing?''  Unfortunately, as a generalized question, there is no simple straightforward answer, and so our reply usually starts with a ''Well, it depends....'' While this might appear ...

As a consultant, there is a tendency to feel that you should have a ready answer for most inquiries. There are times, however, when the correct answer is ''I don't know.'' We were reminded of this when presented with a query regarding the mare Cameron's Buddy. The 10-year-old mare is by Frisk Me Now, a multiple graded stakes winner of $1.7 ...

While breeding produces more than its share of upsets, a look at the leading European third-season sires has a reassuringly predictable quality about it, the pecking order being very close to what most knowledgeable judges would have predicted on the basis of performance, pedigree, and opportunity. The leader by cumulative earnings, New Approach ...

With the William Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale (from April 8-10) just over the horizon, it's worth a look at the very eclectic mix of stallions that will be represented here by their first yearlings. It's an unusually mixed bag, including Northern Hemisphere shuttlers, both proven and unproven in their part of the world, as well as ...

From time to time on this blog, we've looked at what we might call ''super nicks,'' or crosses calculated on immediate ancestors (like, say, the sire and broodmare sire) that are particularly notable for the numbers and class of stakes winners they are providing. In the current era, none would surpass a cross we've considered in detail before, ...

For 13 straight years, from 1992 to 2004, the title of leading sire in England and Ireland fell to Sadler's Wells. The next three years saw another great stallion, Danehill, rule the roost. Sadler's Wells' son Galileo (TrueNicks) took the title in 2008, followed by Danehill's son Danehill Dancer (TrueNicks) the following year. Since then, however, ...

With the recent announcement of the nominees for the 2013 Eclipse Awards, we though that it might be enlightening to run a TrueNicks ruler over the contenders and see what was revealed by the ''Tale of the Tape.'' The title of champion 2-year-old might be quite close race between Shared Belief (TrueNicks A++), who ended the year dominating the ...