Given has bred a couple of which he has high hopes. One he chose to use a retired mare the other he bred from scratch. <\/P>
Shipwreck, 2yo colt\u00a0<\/STRONG> THE MARE:<\/STRONG>\u00a0 This breeding starts with the mare Shiphole,<\/STRONG> who\u00a0is probably the top broodmare in my operation at the moment. The funny part is that I didn’t even breed her. Believe it or not, she was a barn starter that I picked up simply because of her pedigree, which is Kingmambo x A.P. Indy x Gustoso. Not bad for a barn starter! When I got her, she had run three races, all as a 2yo, which were run in 2003. She finished 12th and 10th in two dirt starts going 5.5f, and then finished 8th in a turf start at 6.5f. I guess those performances were enough to cause her owner to quit, because he never raced her again after that. \u00a0 I received her\u00a0for my Confessor stable<\/EM>, which I opened in late 2004. I selected her mainly for her broodmare potential, but I was pleasantly surprised when in her first race for me, off a break of more than a year, she crushed a turf mile allowance by four lengths with an 88 SF! Talk about a shocker! I figured it might have been a fluke, but sure enough in her next race she smoked another turf allowance field, this time going 10f, by 4-1\/2 lengths with a 92 SF. Ok, now I was getting excited, and in her next start (her 4yo debut) she massacred another turf allowance at 10f with a 92 SF. At this point I figured that she was a dominating allowance horse that might have trouble when moved up to stakes, but I needed to find out so I entered into a turf stakes at 10f. Apparently the linesmakers agreed with me that she was up against it because they sent her off at 15\/1. Shame on both of us for doubting her as she rated perfectly behind the leaders, pounced in the stretch, and won by three lengths with a massive 102 SF! That race, her second as a 4yo, was clearly her top performance ever. I entered her into a graded race next time out, and she struggled. After that she ran ten more times, managing to win two more turf stakes routes.\u00a0 She was named the 2005\u00a0GR Simsters Older Turf Mare-of-the-Year,<\/U> a nice accolade in a residency that won the 2006 Equinics.<\/STRONG>\u00a0\u00a0She retired with a record of six wins from 18 starts including three stakes victories, all coming at 10f or 10.5f on the turf, and she also came in third in an 11f stakes on the dirt. She is listed as a D mare, but I firmly believe that if she had the opportunity to race her entire year as a 3yo she would have been a graded winner on the turf and at least a B mare! THE SIRE<\/STRONG>: For her first foal I sent Shiphole to Sadler’s Wells, and that foal just ran 2nd in his\u00a0debut, an 8.5f MSW on the turf. The SF was somewhat low so I think that he might end up preferring the dirt, which wouldn’t be a shock since all of my Sadler’s Wells love the dirt. Well, I mean they like it more than the turf, it’s not to say any of them are stakes material on the dirt because they sure aren’t! In any case, I had notions of sending her back to Sadler’s Wells for the 2006 progeny,\u00a0 but after some\u00a0internal\u00a0debate I decided on Empire Maker<\/STRONG>. And trust me, it’s not because I’ve had much luck with Empire Maker. I’ve probably bred\u00a0six Empire Maker’s, and of the four I bred from his initial crop, only one is still in my stables, and that one has been running in the claims. So even though he was one of my favorite horses on the track, and I fell in love with him even more when I met him at Juddmonte in the Spring of ’04 (along with Summer Squall and Point Given he was one of the sweetest horses I met on the trip), I only bred two from him in my 2005 2yo crop. Those two horses both look they are going to blossom into talented turf routers, so perhaps my luck with him is turning around. And since this diary that Knightmare is so kindly organizing is mainly concerned with horses that should<\/EM> be bred to route, I figured that Empire Maker would be as good a choice as any. When looking at Yoss, there are four Empire Maker x Kingmambo crosses that have been done so far. One of them, the Sim Oz’s Forbidden Treasure<\/STRONG>, is a graded winner, and another, the Super Stables Rosette<\/STRONG>, is a stakes winner. Even though it’s a very small sample size, you have to be encouraged with that 50 percent strike rate that it has for stakes winners. On the flip side, however, ______ x Kingmambo x A.P. Indy has been used 15 times with no stakes winners and Empire Maker x _____ x A.P. Indy has been used two times with no stakes winners. Here’s hoping that Shipwreck<\/STRONG> reverses that trend! THE BOTTOM LINE:<\/STRONG> So pretty much, I took my top long routing broodmare and\u00a0sent her\u00a0to a very talented routing sire that creates nice crosses to Northern Dancer and Mr. Prospector (far and away the two most successful Sim crosses). For those keeping track, Shipwreck<\/STRONG> cost me 738 BP’s on a Wednesday night.\u00a0 He\/she will likely debut in a month, and I will keep you updated on how that debut turns out!<\/P> <\/STRONG>\u00a0<\/P> Horse Number Two<\/STRONG> <\/P> Ghost Eye<\/STRONG>, 2yo colt or filly This was a breed that\u00a0I did from scratch on a Thursday for 761 BP’s. Awesome Again is one of the hottest sires in real life and his stud fee is up to 125k at Adena Spring in The rest of the pedigree was a no-brainer to me. I believe that many Sim DS’ get boosts the year after they lose their sire eligibility, a category that Since I already had a nice cross from the sire – DS combo, for the DDS I wanted a classy horse to add stamina to the breed. The horses I considered were Buckpasser, Seattle Slew, and Secretariat. Buckpasser had already been used for DDS, so that left Secretariat and Slew. I decided to go with Secretariat because he’s been a bit more successful for me in the Sim than Seattle Slew. I think if everything pans out this combo could yield a very talented result, and the horse will probably debut 2839 in a 6f dirt race!<\/o:p><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Given’s Hopefuls<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":255,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/255"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/B>Empire Maker x Shiphole (Kingmambo x A.P. Indy)
DP = 8-2-10-0-2 (22)
DI = 2.14
CD = 0.64
4s x 3ds Mr. Prospector
4s x 5ds Northern Dancer
Awesome Again x
DP = 7-7-12-0-0 (26)
DI = 3.33
CD = 0.81
4s x 3ds Northern Dancer
5s x 5dds Nasrullah