If you look at the North American first-crop sires leaderboard you will find Khozan who already has 7 winners and $298K in earnings firmly entrenched in the pole position. Now American Pharoah and his 162 two-year olds will likely catch him at some point but I believe Khozan is going to be a young sire worth tracking and his days standing in Florida may well be numbered. This is an exciting stallion prospect and should be on the radar of any dirt breeder.<\/p>\n
Khozan (Distorted Humor x A.P. Indy x Lyphard) is 1\/2 brother to 3-time champion Royal Delta(two-time Breeder’s Cup Distaff winner) and G1 winners Delta Prince and Crown Queen.\u00a0 As such he was highly sought after and sold for an even $1,000,000. Trained by Todd Pletcher, Khozan pulled the 14th post in his debut race and beat a competitive field at Gulfstream being given a 102 Beyer for his effort. Moving up to a mile in an allowance, Khozan wowed the Gulfstream grandstand winning in hand by 13 and in the process became the overwhelming favorite for the Florida Derby. Remember how the Florida Derby is a sire-making race? Materiality won that year and is one of the few winners of this event who likely won’t become a sire. Odds are Khozan would have won the Florida Derby and who knows where he would have gone from there. Unfortunately, Khozan broke his leg while training two weeks before the race and was never able to make it back to the track. He was retired and stands at Journeyman Stallions in Florida for a mere $4,000.<\/p>\n
Despite his impressive family and the promise he showed on the track, the young Khozan horses didn’t burn up the auction ring. His yearling average was only $14,958. How low is that? Well, compared to fellow members of his class such as American Pharoah $446,793, Carpe Diem $128.063, Liam’s Map $154,117, and Honor Code $217,337 it’s minuscule. Fortunately, Khozan did receive decent support and has 73 two-year-olds. His seven winners (from 15 starters) can all be viewed at either Journeyman Stallions or Stallionregister. They are winning $50K MSWs at Gulfstream so it isn’t like he’s getting cheap wins at 2nd tier tracks. Filly Solid as a Rock ran her opening 1\/4 in 21.70 while beating a 1\/5 favorite and running the field into the ground from a front running position. Liam’s Lucky Charm won by 5. Smash Factor, who DS is someone called Untuttable, won at 11\/1 and again ran the field into the ground. I don’t know if these horses have the female family to carry their speed past a mile but they…are…fast.<\/p>\n
In the SIM, Khozan is on his fourth crop. He was somewhat popular among Florida local breeders his first two years pulling 63 and 67 pairings. That curtailed sharply to 38 last year and he sits at 14 this season. He appears to have come into the SIM with some moderate juice, again considering he hasn’t been paired up with great mares, posting over 70% winners in his first two classes and getting one stakes winner along with numerous stakes-placed runners.\u00a0 In 2019 he has 20% winners for his 2yos. Due to his moderate success, you can’t get him for 10, but he does bottom out at a relatively cheap 83. Khozan looks like he will be an excellent sire to use for Florida State tag breeders, although you should act now because I see him going to Kentucky before too long if this keeps up, especially if some of these runners go on to stakes victories later this summer.<\/p>\n
Projecting stallion success is always tricky business but I’m fairly confident I’d rather have future shares of Khozan over Liam’s Map and Carpe Diem. Based on his early performance you almost assuredly expect his book to increase in both size and quality next season. At the very least his floor seems to be that of someone like Wildcat Heir who was the leading 2nd crop sire and 5 time Florida sire Champion. Wildcat Heir set a record with 39 winners from his initial class. I don’t expect Khozan to get that many that would be astonishing from 73 2yos, but he could very well be around 20. Khozan has a far superior pedigree to that of Wildcat Heir so his ceiling is, in my opinion, much higher. Just looking at the pillars of his 4×4 they are Mr. Prospector, Danzig, Seattle Slew and Lyphard. This horse has some serious juice. When considering pairings with Khozan I would look at Storm Cat line mares, Awesome Again (and Ghostzapper), Curlin, Unbridled line (Empire Maker and Unbridled’s Song) and Street Cry.<\/p>\n
It will be interesting to see how all this unfolds. The big guns from this freshman class won’t have any lay-ups for the sire title as they compete with Khozan. Going forward, it will be all about who gets the black type horses and that remains to be seen. In the meantime, Khozan has reintroduced himself to us and might just live up to all that promise he showed on the track in the breeding shed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you look at the North American first-crop sires leaderboard you will find Khozan who already has 7 winners and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":459,"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-49428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breeding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49428","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\/459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49428"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49438,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49428\/revisions\/49438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}