Breeding Digest: Tempo a Long Time in The Making

Every dogmatist will have his day. Overall, however, our sport is too variable and unpredictable to sustain inflexible rules. As an old school type, admittedly, it's hard to resist treating Golden Tempo (Curlin)-culmination of a multi-generational breed-to-race project-as a reproof to those who breed horses to stand on a dais, rather than in the winner's circle. After all, the Phipps program is no longer as extensive as when it acquired his sixth dam, champion Lady Pitt (Sword Dancer), in 1969. So a GI Kentucky Derby winner in its centenary year certainly confirms what can be done if you set out to build a family, rather than make a fast buck from new sires that will in the vast majority of cases reliably dilute its quality.

But the long game takes time and money, scant resources for most of us, to the extent that even the Phipps family has enlisted partners to help them stay in the game, including St Elias Stable in this colt. Moreover Golden Tempo and  Sovereignty, consecutive Derby winners homebred out of Bernardini mares, are only counterweights against a series of other stars, such as Sierra Leone, to have recently vindicated colossal speculation in the commercial yearling market. There is never only one way to do anything in this game. If a blanket of roses remains the governing ambition, then last Saturday's podium will hardly clarify strategy: a homebred aristocrat chased home by a pair that respectively cost $975,000 and $12,000 as yearlings.

The one common denominator to the trifecta is Curlin: sire of the winner, damsire of the runner-up, grandsire of the third. Poignantly, this latest demonstration of his influence came the very week that he suspended operations to regroup from a health setback that affected his fertility. Whatever the future may yet hold, at 22, Curlin has proved one of those rare racetrack champions to have absolutely maintained equivalent caliber in their second career.

In the process, he has rebuked a couple of the lazier market prejudices. For a start, the self-fulfilling one against ageing stallions will be costing anyone who has been anticipating a slowdown in this guy, or indeed Into Mischief, both having launched their first runners back in 2012. Moreover Curlin was yet another dumped by commercial breeders as soon as his stock got anywhere near a starting gate.

Having started out (at Lane's End) on $75,000, the dual Horse of the Year was promptly cut to $40,000 and to $25,000 by the time he produced 39 live foals in his fifth crop. People always claim to support new stallions as their only chance of catching a future mega-sire while still affordable, but very few seem to have perceived Curlin that way when dropped within reach of middle-budget breeders. As I'm always saying, the time to double down on these sires is precisely when everyone else is running scared. By the time his few supporters at $25,000 in 2014 were taking a yearling to market, in 2016, Curlin had already hit $100,000 (now at Hill 'n' Dale) thanks to the endeavors of Stellar Wind, Keen Ice and Exaggerator. So those who supported him because they believed in him, rather than because he was new and shiny, found themselves holding coveted goods, cheaply secured, just as supply ran out.

Since then Curlin has become one of the best stallions never to have won a general sires' championship. Many of his principal performers have followed his own template, continuing to thrive with maturity (a Smart Strike trademark) and distance, but he has lately shown his range by getting horses as fast as Cody's Wish and Elite Power out of mares by Tapit and Vindication respectively. Another Curlin trademark is toughness, as exemplified by Journalism running 2-1-2 in the Triple Crown last year. That horse was among serial near-misses in the Derby, a race already won by two grandsons, but he has now redressed that omission with a colt who will be highly eligible, with his superb maternal genes, to join Good Magic and others contesting the eventual succession.

Carrumba | Sarah Andrew

Golden Tempo's dam Carrumba elevates her late sire Bernardini still further into the distaff stratosphere. As a Grade III winner, also placed when aptly making her solitary Grade I start in the Ogden Phipps Stakes, she had already made a small contribution to a family saturated with black type. The next three dams admittedly did not stand much racing: Carrumba is out of a twice-raced daughter of El Prado (Ire) and Dancingmydreams (Seeking the Gold), a sister to champion Heavenly Prize and GI Matron Stakes winner Oh What a Windfall. Dancingmydreams was herself only denied the Matron by a head, on her second start, but sadly broke down next time. Her other foals included GI Manhattan Handicap winner Dancing Forever (Rahy), matching her sister Heavenly Prize whose son Good Reward (Storm Cat) included that race on his resumé. Heavenly Prize, one of eight Hall of Famers bred by the Phipps family, is a real nexus of this dynasty: besides additionally producing Good Reward's brother Pure Prize, an accomplished sire in Argentina, her daughters included the dams of Grade I winners Instilled Regard (Arch)-yet another Manhattan winner-and Persistently (Smoke Glacken), herself responsible for a Group 1 scorer in Japan last year.

Dancinginmydreams, Heavenly Prize and Oh What a Windfall all duly compensated for the failure of their dam Oh What a Dance (Nijinsky) to make the racetrack, where her siblings Dancing Spree, Furlough and Fantastic Find all won Grade Is, confirming their own dam Blitey (Riva Ridge) the most celebrated of Lady Pitt's daughters. Fantastic Find, incidentally, gave the family another Matron Stakes via her daughter Finder's Fee (Storm Cat), meanwhile third dam of a creature named Flightline (Tapit).

Obviously this family has always been seeded by commensurate sire power, but don't forget that Curlin himself came within reach of many: his dam was transported to Kentucky from Texas with a trailer of llamas, while he was famously sold for $57,000 in Book 5. But he has long since become eligible for a program launched when the Kentucky Derby was barely 50 years old, which now finds itself with a priceless stallion prospect. As such, Golden Tempo reiterates an axiom by now, no doubt, wearily familiar. For an umpteenth time: there should be nothing more commercial than putting a winner under your mare.

Sarah Andrew photo

Some Other Churchill Themes

Naturally a Derby winner demands a deeper dive than usual, so we'll just confine ourselves now to a couple of brief observations.

The Derby must have been a head-swimming spectacle for Jacob West. Two patrons who have done so much to advance his career having combined in Renegade (Into Mischief), he must have felt somewhat conflicted to see that colt thwarted by a rival whose dam grazes the storied paddocks of the farm he joined a year ago. If West represents a new direction for Claiborne, the Phipps family stands for a contrasting continuity and the Derby finish must duly be counted a win-win for the way Walker Hancock is striving to take the farm forward.

Even those of us most sceptical about the alchemies claimed for the combination of sire-lines, meanwhile, must acknowledge the consistent fun Curlin has had with mares by A.P. Indy and his sons. Having rather more time for broodmare sires, however, I would sooner celebrate Curlin's developing profile as a distaff influence, as damsire not only of Renegade but also of T O Elvis (Volatile). He's out of Stopshoppingdebbie, nine-for-nine round Emerald Downs, and another shrewd recruit by Jeff and Melissa Prunzik of Stone Bridge Farm.

Bernardini, incidentally, consolidated his march towards that inevitable first broodmare sire championship, his daughters already up to three Grade I scorers in 2026 with La Troienne Stakes winner Shred the Gnar (Into Mischief) joining Magnitude (Not This Time) and Golden Tempo.

However fiercely Into Mischief is defending his crown, both the young pretenders had a pretty sensational weekend: Gun Runner with a famous one-two in the GI Kentucky Oaks, and Not This Time maintaining his lead with four graded stakes winners including Rhetorical's GI Turf Classic. Always a Runner (Gun Runner), incidentally, somewhat mirrored the Derby winner, in that she is co-owned by a program that has cultivated her family through three generations. As for Not This Time's spree, three of the four came on grass and we repeat our challenge to the top European programs to deploy stock by this sensational stallion over the water.

Handsome Work from Beau

And finally a guarantee: we're going to be hearing a lot more about Beau Liam. A $2,000 mare surely can't come up with a talent like GII Pat Day Mile winner Crude Velocity without some pretty special virile assistance, and Beau Liam's ratios are standing up to the big names, with their big books-off a conception fee of $6,000. Class leader Yaupon (now $60,000) has 47 winners from 106 starters, for instance, playing Beau Liam's 30 from 67. The feted Maxfield ($50,000) has three stakes winners from 80 starters; Beau Liam has four.

Inevitably he has a couple of small crops incoming, but the word was getting out last spring when his book rallied to 94. For now Beau Liam remains only $7,500. In an era of challenging stud fees, he looks a priceless opportunity for breeders on a budget.