Choosing the leading freshman sire of 2001 is easy; being right is the tough part

Time to look silly. In other words, it is that time to pick the leading freshman sire of 2001.

Each February, we provide readers with the opinions of a panel of experts who choose the stallion they think will become the leading freshman sire for the current year. The selections of agents Reynolds Bell Jr. and Baden P. "Buzz" Chace and trainers D. Wayne Lukas and John Ward Jr. appear on page 27. Their consensus choice is Boston Harbor.

This is not an easy exercise or one without significant ramifications. From a practical standpoint, the fourth year for a stallion is a critical one. It is the hardest year for a stallion manager to fill a stallion's book because breeders must decide whether to send their mares to a fourth-year stallion before seeing how his progeny do on the racetrack.

For a commercial breeder, this is one of the biggest gambles in the game. The resultant foal will not be sold as a yearling for two years, and by that time the stallion may well be a certified failure. In fact, the odds suggest he will be.

So, as a new crop of stallions debuts as sires, stallion managers and breeders hold their collective breath and pray they bet on the right horse three years ago and into the future.

This year's freshman crop includes such sires as Alphabet Soup, Atticus, Benny the Dip, Boston Harbor, Captain Bodgit, Editor's Note, Gold Tribute, Halo's Image, Helmsman, Jules, Just a Cat, K. O. Punch, Langfuhr, Louis Quatorze, Marlin, Pulpit, Siphon (Brz), Smoke Glacken, Spinning World, Tejano Run, and Victory Speech.

As a group, they may collectively lack the depth and expectations of previous classes, such as last year's. But, on the other hand, none of last year's most highly touted sires-Forest Wildcat, Hennessy, and Unbridled's Song-led the freshman sire list. In fact, none of those three finished in the top five. The leading freshman sires for 2000 were Honour and Glory, Storm Creek, Friendly Lover, Lord Carson, and Afternoon Deelites.

Forest Wildcat, Hennessy, and Unbridled's Song all may turn out to be very good sires because one crop and one year does not a sire make. But it does illustrate the vagaries and uncertainties of trying to pick one stallion to be the leading sire in one racing year.

From the first-year class of 1997, for example, the leading sire was Gilded Time, who was correctly chosen by one of our panelists. Another panelist selected Kingmambo. Though Kingmambo finished 31st on the freshman sire list of 1997, he has been far and away the best sire from his class. Overall success is not based solely on how a sire's juveniles perform.

But that is all that matters when it comes to being leading freshman sire. To lead that list, a sire must get precocious progeny that excel at sprint distances.

With that in mind, from this year's group of sires, we are inclined to dismiss immediate first-season success from some of the more highly regarded sires, such as Spinning World, Alphabet Soup, Editor's Note, Louis Quatorze, Atticus, Benny the Dip, Marlin, Tejano Run, and Victory Speech.

To lead a juvenile list, we want to consider stallions from sire lines that are noted for producing precocious stock, plus those horses who were good juvenile runners themselves. That group figures to be led by sires such as Boston Harbor, Captain Bodgit, Gold Tribute, K. O. Punch, Langfuhr, Pulpit, Siphon, and Smoke Glacken.

From those sires, the pick here is Smoke Glacken. Champion sprinter of 1997 as a three-year-old, Smoke Glacken is a son of Two Punch and a grandson of Mr. Prospector. Smoke Glacken was a top two-year-old, winning the Hopeful Stakes (G1) among his three stakes victories in six starts, and he was assigned the fourth-highest weight on the Experimental Free Handicap. At three, he won six of eight starts, all in stakes. His yearling sales average of $60,321 last year was more than six times his stud fee, so buyers liked what they saw.

After Smoke Glacken, rounding out our trifecta are Pulpit second and Langfuhr third.

Now, the caveat: Last year, we selected Afternoon Deelites and the previous year Tabasco Cat.