Get Stormy

When they throw $1.7 million at a race that entitles the winner to a guaranteed, fees-paid berth in the field for the GI Breeders' Cup Turf, sometimes you cast all logic aside and roll the dice against all odds. As the saying goes, 'you miss 100% of the shots you don't take,' and it was with that mindset that Get Smokin (Get Stormy)--a Grade II and Grade III winner, but unproven over the 12-furlong trip of the GII FanDuel Kentucky Cup Turf--was even entered in the first place. But given...

Mary Abeel Sullivan, the breeder and owner of MGISW Get Stormy (Stormy Atlantic), has passed at the age of 94. The cherished youngest child of a prominent Hackensack, New Jersey family, Mary had three older siblings, Forster, Edith and Alice. Her family and loved ones said she never "participated," but rather dominated her pursuits. She was active in the children's theater and ice skating. Her love of horses followed, along with tennis and golf. She married George Brewster, also of Hackensack in the late 1940's. George was the son of...

Polite but perfunctory. That was pretty much the tone in which people tended to praise Kitten's Joy while he was with us, and I guess it should be no different now that he's gone. Even so, it strikes me that his loss has been inadequately lamented. Not just in his own right, as an avowed turf stallion who freakishly contrived two general sires' championships in North America; but also, virtually unremarked, as a final straw in what has over the past nine months become an outright catastrophe for the enlightened...

Sponsored by Alex Nichols Agency 4th-GP, $60k, Msw, 3yo, f, 6f, 2:01p.m. ET Beautifully bred and sporting the royal Godolphin blue, LOVED (Medaglia d'Oro) will be unveiled by Brendan Walsh, a conditioner well-versed with her family as the trainer of the filly's half-brother, MGISW and new Darley sire Maxfield (Street Sense). Out of a daughter of Caress (Storm Cat), Loved hails from the female family of leading sires Bernstein (Storm Cat) and Sky Mesa (Pulpit), as well as MGSW & GISP Golden Velvet (Seeking the Gold), the dam of two...

There is always something especially shocking about the death of a stallion in his prime. Nature contains no more vivid an incarnation of vitality than this most literal of life forces, daily renewing the gift of existence. For a candle as bright as Get Stormy to be extinguished so abruptly, then, will leave a grievous void at Crestwood Farm. Having spent five years in training, even at 16, Get Stormy's second career was only just entering its key phase. For not until the next year or two will his best...

Get Stormy (Stormy Atlantic--Foolish Gal, by Kiri's Clown), a three-time Grade I winner and leading sire at Crestwood Farm, died unexpectedly Sunday at the age of 16 from what is believed to be a cardiac event, Crestwood reported Monday. Bred and owned by Mary A. Sullivan, who races under the name Sullimar Stables, Get Stormy was trained by Tom Bush had a long, successful career that included seven graded stakes wins. Racing until the age of six, Get Stormy captured the GI Maker's Mark Mile S., GI Woodford Reserve Turf...

Gary Barber's Got Stormy (Get Stormy) cuts even farther back to the shortest distance of her career in Friday's GIII Buffalo Trace Franklin County S. over 5 1/2 turfy furlongs at Keeneland. Twice a Grade I winner going a mile last term and second behind fellow female and last Saturday's GI First Lady S. heroine Uni (GB) (More Than Ready) in the GI Breeders' Cup Mile, the Mark Casse pupil failed to find her best form through the first half of 2020. She was fourth at 1-5 in the GIII...

After winning two Grade Is last year, Got Stormy had a hard time finding the wire first this season, but finally returned to the winner's circle Saturday at Kentucky Downs. Rushing up to contest the pace in the initial strides, the heavy favorite was shuffled back to fifth through a :22.54 opening quarter and :46.27 half-mile. Searching for running room turning for home, the chestnut swung out four wide in the lane and charged clear in the final sixteenth for an authoritative victory. "We always felt that way [that she'd...

Nearly a decade ago, Get Stormy (Stormy Atlantic) took longtime breeder Mary Sullivan and trainer Tom Bush on a winner's circle tour of the country, winning three Grade I races and earning over $1.6 million. The 14-year-old stallion is still rewarding the owner/trainer team, most recently with his daughter Getmotherarose's victory in the GIII Honey Fox S. at Gulfstream Park Saturday (video). "We were obviously thrilled that the filly was able to step up and win a Grade III," Bush said Monday morning. "She's made steady progress for us ever...

Right, that's enough ranting for now. In the course of this series, I've repeatedly professed bewilderment and alarm over the damage to the Thoroughbred gene pool threatened by a witless stampede towards unproven newcomers, and the no less puerile impatience with which they are promptly abandoned. But we won't revisit those complaints today. Embarking on this final instalment, dealing with those stallions talented or lucky enough to have come out the other side with a viable stud career in Kentucky, we'll just offer one simple consolation. Because if you're one...

The annual Stallion Open House at Crestwood Farm in Lexington is scheduled for this coming Sunday, Jan. 12, from 1-4 p.m. at the nursery's stallion barn located at 3758 Spurr Road. Breeders are invited to register in person for the 2020 free season raffle for each of the farm's six stallions. Food and drinks will be served in a heated tent. The newest addition to the Crestwood line-up is Heart to Heart (English Channel--Ask the Question, by Silver Deputy), champion 3-year-old in Canada in 2014 and a Grade I winner...