Let\u2019s discuss some real life sire news.\u00a0 One way sim-players can stay ahead of the curve in the game is to stay up to date with which sires are getting hot, which racehorses and retiring, etc.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to attempt to offer regular updates, focusing on lesser-used sires and hopefully trying to include sires outside of the US.\u00a0 If you have a sire you would like to see mentioned or think is worth noting please feel free to post a comment or shoot me a private message on the forum.\u00a0 So let\u2019s begin!<\/p>\n
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This was a big weekend for the sire Midnight Lute.\u00a0 He was a champion sprinter and two time winner of the Breeders\u2019 Cup Sprint.\u00a0 Trainer Bob Baffert has called him one of the fastest horses he\u2019s ever trained.\u00a0 He\u2019s the best son of Kentucky Derby winner Real Quiet who descends from the red-hot stallion Fappiano.\u00a0 Fappiano died in 1990 at age 13 but his may be the most influential sireline in the US today.\u00a0 Tail-male descendants of Fappiano are represented in two main branches through his sons Unbridled (sire of Unbridled\u2019s Song and Empire Maker) and Cryptoclearance (grandsire of Candy Ride).\u00a0 Midnight Lute descends through Fappiano\u2019s son Quiet American who is also the broodmare sire of Bernardini.\u00a0 Another son, champion Rubiano is the broodmare sire of War Front.\u00a0 Interestingly Rubiano\u2019s dam was bred to Unbridled based on the success of Rubiano and produced a mare named Tap Your Heels.\u00a0 Tap Your Heels didn\u2019t do much on the track but she produced leading sire Tapit.<\/p>\n
So with all the very fashionable Fappiano descendants available to breeders it might be easy to overlook Midnight Lute.\u00a0 He retired to Hill \u2018n Dale Farm in KY and saw a decent sized initial book of mares who produced 111 named foals.\u00a0 His numbers dropped for the next three years (which is typical for a young stallion) down to a low of just 58 in his third crop.\u00a0 As his runners started to hit the track he gained traction and by 2015 (his sixth crop) he produced 115 named foals.<\/p>\n
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Two of those 2015 babies won major races on the way to the Kentucky Oaks this past weekend.\u00a0 Midnight Bisou won her second graded stakes race of the year in the Santa Ysabel at Santa Anita.\u00a0 She had previously won the Santa Ynez Stakes in early January.\u00a0 Those victories put her atop the Kentucky Oaks entry point leaderboard.\u00a0 Second on that list is Midnight Disguise who won the Busher Stakes at Aqueduct.\u00a0 It was her second stakes victory of the year and she\u2019s pointing towards a grade two as a prep for the Oaks.\u00a0 Midnight Bisou is out of a Northern Dancer-line mare while Midnight Disguise is out of a mare from the Bold Ruler line.<\/p>\n
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Through the first two months of 2018 Midnight Lute has sired four stakes winners of six stakes races.\u00a0 In all of 2017 four of his offspring won stakes races and each only won once.\u00a0 None of them won a graded stakes race.\u00a0 Certainly more can be expected as his 2015 foal crop ages.\u00a0 Midnight Lute himself was a 17 hand horse who only managed 13 starts over 4 years of racing.\u00a0 Many of his offspring have inherited his size (Midnight Disguise is 17.2 hands already) and need time and patience to come around.\u00a0 Considering this trajectory of increased foal crop sizes and presumably those foals were produced by better mares Midnight Lute bears watching as a future stallion.<\/p>\n
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In the game Midnight Lute has sired 15 graded stakes winners compared to 10 in real life.\u00a0 He also has 866 runners compared to just 369 through 2017 in real life.\u00a0 In the game he has crossed really well with Danzig mares and also those from the A.P. Indy line.\u00a0 I am surprised he is so popular and so successful in the game, primarily because his sire (Real Quiet) and broodmare sire (Dehere) and dam\u2019s broodmare sire (Blues Times) were not tremendously popular sim sires and don\u2019t bring a lot to a foal\u2019s page.\u00a0 On the plus side the sim foals don\u2019t have to worry about growing pains due to large size.\u00a0 He already has three two year old winners.\u00a0 Considering his decent production record in the game he\u2019s not a bad gamble but at the right price I might purchase shares to sit on for next year in the event that he has a banner year in 2018 and gets an upgrade.<\/p>\n
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Another stallion who had a good weekend was Shackleford.\u00a0 Shackleford won the 2011 Preakness and 2012 Met Mile and Clark Handicap.\u00a0 A grandson of Storm Cat by Forestry, Shackleford was produced by the Unbridled mare Oatsee.\u00a0 She was named Broodmare of the Year in 2011 after having previously produced grade one winner Lady Joanne and two other graded winners.\u00a0 He entered stud in 2013 at Darby Dan Farm and produced 118 named foals from his first crop but that number dropped down to only 73 in his second.\u00a0 He sired only two graded stakes winners from his first crop (so far) with Malagacy taking a grade two as a three year old and Well Abled winning a grade three at two.\u00a0 Shackleford\u2019s smaller second crop included two year grade three winner Dream It Is and Promises Fulfilled.\u00a0 On Saturday Promises Fulfilled dominated a strong field in the Grade Two Fountain of Youth, trouncing last year\u2019s two year old champion Good Magic in his three year old debut.\u00a0 He was produced by the very good Marquetry mare Marquee Delivery.\u00a0 She was a graded placed runner and of her four previous foals three were winners including a stakes winner.<\/p>\n
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Shackleford has not been a rousing success so far as a stallion.\u00a0 His father, Forestry was a disappointment as a sire.\u00a0 He was royally bred, a grade one winner produced by a grade one winning mare and entered stud as the highest priced sire of his generation at $50,000.\u00a0 His fee eventually swelled to $125,000 but the crop produced for that fee included only two graded stakes winners, of which Shackleford was one of them.\u00a0 Forestry shuttled to Brazil for several years and in 2014 it was decided he would not return from that country.\u00a0 Certainly having a major son on the Triple Crown Trail could change Shackleford\u2019s fortunes significantly and the astute sim-breeder should keep an ear out to see what Promises Fulfilled does next.\u00a0 In the game Shackleford has produced seven graded stakes winners to date.\u00a0 The flip side of this situation is that, if Shackleford doesn\u2019t have a hit horse this season he may well be exiled from Kentucky as well and since he\u2019s doing better in the game in real life acquiring a share at this point is certainly a gamble.<\/p>\n
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The last sire I want to mention this week is a newly retired horse, Russian Revolution.\u00a0 He is retiring to stud for the 2018 Australian season but oddly he is already available in the game.\u00a0 He bred 21 foals in 2017 and so far 8 in 2018.\u00a0 Of those 17 are winners already.\u00a0 Russian Revolution won two group one races in Australia, the 2017 The Galaxy and the 2018 Oakleigh Plate.\u00a0 Both races were run at 1100m (which is about 5 \u00bd furlongs Yanks).\u00a0 He was a blazing fast son of Australian super sire Snitzel out of a Stravinsky mare named Ballet D\u2019Amour.\u00a0 Ballet D\u2019Amour was bred and raced in the US but was sent to Australia for a broodmare career.\u00a0 Her first two foals did poorly but her 2012 filly by Sebring became a group three winner and Russian Revolution is her 2013 foal.<\/p>\n
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Ballet D\u2019Amour was an interesting acquisition for Australia.\u00a0 She is a tail-female descendent of the immortal Fanfreluche who was named Canadian Horse of the Year and Champion 3 Year Old Filly in the US in 1970.\u00a0 She was also awarded the Sovereign Award for Outstanding Broodmare in 1978.\u00a0 Fanfreluche has had an impact on Australian breeding through her granddaughter Rolls.\u00a0 Rolls was bred in Kentucky but never raced and was shipped to Australia.\u00a0 She only produced three foals.\u00a0 Her first was the Star Way mare Shoal Creek.\u00a0 Shoal Creek was bred to Fairy King and produced leading sire Encosta de Lago.\u00a0 Later Rolls saw the court of Danehill to whom she produced leading sire Flying Spur.\u00a0 Ballet D\u2019Amour\u2019s second foal was by Flying Spur and again that foal was not a successful racer.\u00a0 But it seems safe to say that Russian Revolution will see some mares by Encosta de Lago and Flying Spur in his book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let\u2019s discuss some real life sire news.\u00a0 One way sim-players can stay ahead of the curve in the game is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":401,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breeding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44533","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\/401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44533"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44534,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44533\/revisions\/44534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}