Breeding Digest: Yoshida’s Parting Shot Proves A Bargain

Once again American investors have shown an increasing receptivity to European bloodlines, this time at the big yearling sale in Deauville. For now, however, we’re still only talking about a minority even among those with the resources required to import elite yearlings.

But with a reciprocal curiosity also growing in Europe–thanks to Justify, in particular, but also to those breeze-up pinhookers now preparing their next raid on the September Sale–it does feel as though the overdue renewal of transatlantic traffic is beginning to gain commercial traction.

We still have a long way to go, however, before the U.S. domestic market sheds its timidity about leaving the safe, narrow lanes leading to sires that made their name on dirt.

True, Oscar Performance has stepped boldly into the breach created by the loss of his sire, almost simultaneously with that of English Channel. His farm has shown that, yes, with sufficiently imaginative management, it really can be viable to stand a (presumed) grass horse in Kentucky.

But the next question is whether his success might stimulate a greater willingness to gamble on stallions eligible to follow in his slipstream—horses like Yoshida (Jpn) and War of Will.

Each met the commercial prejudices of the American market halfway, parlaying cosmopolitan pedigrees to win Grade I races on both turf and dirt (with War of Will additionally proving his efficacy on synthetics).

Now of course there are many different reasons why a young stallion may succeed or fail, so we should perhaps not take too bleak a view of the brevity of Yoshida’s career in the Bluegrass. WinStar secured him a solid first book, yielding 90 named foals, but they were given a cool reception at the sales. And while nobody could have expected them to discover a precocity he had never shown himself, 10 winning from 42 juvenile starters last year, the commercial tanker was quickly marooned. His second crop of yearlings had bombed in the ring, achieving a median barely half their conception fee, and he was down to 34 mares last spring. Having originally launched at $20,000, a third consecutive cut to $7,500 had already been announced for 2024 when it was decided to allow the horse a fresh start at Darley Japan, back in his native land.

Grayosh | Sarah Andrew

Unsurprisingly, the horses he left behind have meanwhile begun to stir a little: not just because that’s what almost invariably happens, but because that was his profile all along anyway. So far this year he has had 32 winners from 76 starters–and, rare distinction in an intake that has underperformed woefully by this measure, these now include a first graded stakes scorer.

Grayosh was standard issue, to start with. She cost Sean Flanagan no more than $25,000 as a Fasig October yearling, and was one of the many that never made the track at two. But she has been progressing sharply since breaking her maiden in April, on her third start, reaching a new peak with a plucky denial of the favorite in the GII Lake Placid Stakes last weekend.

She’s the second foal of a Paddy O’Prado mare picked up by breeder Susan Bedwell for just $15,000 at the Fasig-Tipton February Sale after doing little to build on an early black-type podium (on turf), but the family does introduce a rather startling celebrity behind a second dam who was Listed-placed in France. For the latter was out of an unraced half-sister (by The Minstrel) to no less a pair than El Gran Senor and Try My Best, which duly means that this cheap mare’s fourth dam is none other than Best In Show.

The other conspicuous flourish in Grayosh’s page is the replication of El Prado (Ire) who, besides supplying the damsire, also accounts for Yoshida’s second dam. But that was presumably a marginal consideration in the choice of a stallion who could scarcely have been better adapted to the less insular perspectives we’re supposed to be exploring.

For in winning the GI Woodward Stakes on his dirt debut, as an elite scorer already on turf that year (also beaten barely a length at Royal Ascot), Yoshida had become just what the WinStar team must have sought from their bold venture to the big JRHA Sale. As we all know, buying a stallion’s pedigree at the yearling sales opens a long, fragile highwire, but even a sum converting to over $750,000 proved well spent. Yoshida paid it all back on the track, banking $2.5 million, and the ball was then in the court of Bluegrass breeders as to whether they wanted to buy into a more international future.

As a son of Heart’s Cry (Jpn), of course, Yoshida offered them an opportunity to repatriate the Sunday Silence bloodline, but there were home comforts to his dam Hilda’s Passion. True, her sire Canadian Frontier (a son of Gone West) faded dismally after a bright start at stud, but Hilda’s Passion had contributed lavishly to that in winning the GI Ballerina Stakes by nine lengths. Once a $4,200 RNA as a weanling, on retirement she was exported by Katsumi Yoshida for $1.225 million.

It did not take American commercial breeders long, however, once again to decide that they had little to learn from the fabulous rewards achieved by the truly global horizons of their Japanese counterparts.

War of Will | Claiborne Farm

WHERE THERE’S A WILL…

Let’s hope that War of Will gets less parochial treatment, as another horse that straddled dirt and turf after combining a familiar indigenous brand (War Front) with a top-class offering from an extraneous gene pool (Europe, this time, rather than Japan).

All the early signs, a cycle behind Yoshida’s failure to take root, are in auspicious contrast. Fully subscribed for a debut book that yielded 99 named foals, War of Will (sustained by excellent fertility) has a very similar second crop coming through. He made an excellent debut at the yearling sales, achieving an average $117,202 that comfortably took care of a $25,000 fee; and now his first crop is finding its feet on the track, too, fillies at Saratoga and Woodbine last weekend putting War of Will on seven from 29 starters to date.

Both these maiden winners represent the same connections as War of Will himself, and attest to the support Gary Barber gave the horse at the sales. At Keeneland last September he gave $160,000 for Saratoga debut scorer She’s Got Will, bred by Nicholas M. Lotz; while the previous November in the same ring Jeff Amorello signed a $165,000 docket for the weanling Ready to Battle, off the mark at Woodbine. Like War of Will, both are trained by Mark Casse, who has declared debut winner Will Reign–another Barber investment, for $85,000 last September–for the Catch A Glimpse Stakes at the same track on Friday.

Barber will know that the sire’s own template, from this stage, is all encouragement. War of Will was thrown in the deep end as a juvenile but kept rolling all the way through, proceeding to the Fair Grounds to win the GIII Lecomte and GII Risen Star Stakes. He was then showed up for all three Classics, winning the middle one; and regrouped in maturity to win a Grade I over a mile of turf.

She’s Got Will | Sarah Andrew

All that was underpinned by genes that will surely make his performance from here of particular interest to anyone who wouldn’t mind keeping a filly. Not just because of that maternal line, tracing to Best in Show (oh yes, her again!) as fifth dam via a lake of regal Niarchos blood. First and foremost, this horse is surely our last chance to compress so closely the two principal disseminators of Northern Dancer: by a son of Danzig out of a daughter of Sadler’s Wells.

That’s not a pedigree, that’s a time capsule!

SQUEEZE A REWARDING SEQUEL

When Fasig-Tipton cut the pack for the Saratoga catalogue, it fell open at C–meaning that the second yearling into the ring was one by Liam’s Map out of Callmethesqueeze (Awesome Again).

Presented by Eaton Sales, he was sold to St Elias Stables and Starlight Racing for $425,000–a great yield when you consider that the mare, then 14, was carrying this fellow when signed for by Athens Woods for just $50,000 at the 2022 Keeneland November Sale.

Already, in the few days since, all parties to the Saratoga transaction can look forward with heightened expectations after Power Squeeze (Union Rags), bred from the mare by her previous owners Forging Oaks Farm, added the GI Alabama Stakes to the wins (GII Gulfstream Park Oaks/GIII Delaware Oaks) that had already decorated her page.

Athens Woods, of course, is run parallel to Eaton Sales by Reiley McDonald–who had long assisted the late Jim Peyton in developing a successful commercial program at Forging Oaks. Peyton’s widow Gail enjoyed carrying forward the legacy for a time but began winding down the farm a couple of years ago, a process that included the sale of Callmethesqueeze.

Power Squeeze (outside) | Sarah Andrew

Bringing her into his home broodmare band is due reward for McDonald after helping the Peytons to such coups as buying a Pulpit mare named Shimmer for $140,000 and subsequently selling her son by Street Sense for $500,000 and a couple by Union Rags for $310,000 and $285,000. Forging Oaks also bred multiple graded stakes winner Consumer Spending (More Than Ready), a $200,000 yearling, from the Scat Daddy mare Siempre Mia (herself sold at the 2022 Keeneland January Sale for $390,000).

Callmethesqueeze’s sire has long contributed to the distaff influence achieved by sons of Deputy Minister. Awesome Again’s daughters having produced the likes of Accelerate and Keen Ice (both by sons of Smart Strike in Lookin At Lucky and Curlin). Get past Awesome Again, however, and the family has some pretty leftfield seeding, with the next three dams by Roanake, Honey Jay and Solo Landing. Nonetheless Callmethesqueeze has also produced the stakes winner Call on Mischief (Into Mischief), bred by Forging Oaks when the future champion sire was still only at $45,000 (made $250,000 as a yearling).

Speaking of broodmare sires, I am delighted to see Sky Mesa adding to his all-round resume as damsire of a couple of the faster juveniles of the summer: bargain Debutante Stakes winner Vodka With a Twist (Thousand Words) and now Bolton Landing Stakes winner Kimchi Cat (Twirling Cat). Bred the way he is, this perennially underrated stallion was always likely to percolate some quality through his daughters.