Anne Peters

Anne Peters is a freelance bloodstock consultant and writer based in Kentucky. She was the stallion seasons and matings adviser at Three Chimneys Farm from 2004 to 2010 and is a frequent speaker on pedigree subjects around the country. She was previously the editor and a columnist for Owner-Breeder International as well as the pedigree columnist for Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred. Peters is a partner, with Patricia Erigero, on the popular website Thoroughbred Heritage, TBHeritage.com. She and Alan Porter are co-authors of Patterns of Greatness II: The Americans.

In the past, I’ve made freshman sire picks based on who I loved as a racehorse, or who I thought would be the best sire in the long run, but neither method has been a very good way to come up with a top first crop sire.

The freshman sire race is all about two-year-olds, so I fully expect a horse who was precocious and speedy to do well with his first crop, and if progeny of such a horse don’t do well, I’m going to wonder about the quality of the sire.

This year, there are a pair of two-year-old male champions on deck: Street Sense and Stevie Wonderboy, which could make for a hot competition, and a few others who were really good all throughout their juvenile campaigns like Scat Daddy and Stormello. For this job, I want a two-year-old who showed early speed and not one who needed a full 1 1/16 miles to get the job done.

Another thing I look for is genuine sprinting speed. If a horse wasn’t among the top two-year-olds, I still want that muscular phenotype, so I look at the stallions who were good three-year-old sprinter/milers.

The stallions also need to have reasonable-sized foal crops, to get the numbers working in their favor. This has become a basic concept of marketing a young stallion: get as many foals out there as possible for early exposure.

History has shown that they don’t have to be huge crops, though. Successful Appeal did it with just 43 foals in his first crop in 2004. A good stallion is going to get runners, and all he needs is one or two good stakes winners in his first crop to make that point.

So I’m going to go with Street Sense for his championship juvenile form, utter class, and speedy family. He is from the same female family as Mr. Greeley.

I can’t ignore Stevie Wonderboy for his juvenile form, his physique, and pedigree: he’s inbred to Weekend Surprise, who was a good two-year-old herself and is prevalent in many top sires’ pedigrees as the dam of A.P. Indy.

I have always loved Stormello for his impetuous speed and fighting spirit. Even if his first crop is not as large as most, hopefully his brilliance will come through in a dominant way.

Scat Daddy is hard to ignore as a very good juvenile who showed a lot of class taking the major Florida preps on the Triple Crown trail.

I’m also an admirer of Hard Spun, who was a good two-year-old, and earned a place near the top of one of the most competitive crops of three-year-olds in recent years.

Freshman Sire Contest selections:

Scat Daddy

Stevie Wonderboy

Stormello

Simon Pure

Attila’s Storm

Excellent Art

Matt Robison

Matt Robison is the assistant manager at Keene Ridge Farm in Lexington, and he put his cognitive powers regarding assessing two-year-old sires to good use in 2010 when winning a big-money fantasy game among Thoroughbred industry insiders picking the top freshman sires. Imagine winning a fantasy football contest against the likes of Phil Simms, Ron Jaworski, and other knowledgeable NFL players and analysts, and that is what Robison accomplished in his game. Robison first worked in Thoroughbred breeding as a yearling groom. He has a B.S. in agriculture and has worked in dairy nutrition.

Hard Spun: Like the looks of them. Plenty of scope, powerful shoulder, and a good hip. They all seem to be a bit precocious. He has one of the largest crops out there, and I expect to seem them by midsummer. They just have everything I want to see in a racehorse.

Discreet Cat: Loved the Discreet Cats! They look fast and early. Not quite the scope as say the Hard Spuns, but still decent sized. Expect to see these guys early in the year.

Stevie Wonderboy: Here is a nice horse with a powerful family top and bottom. The individuals I saw all looked the part, and I can’t wait to see them on the track.

Street Sense: I know I am leaning pretty hard on one farm [Darley, which also stands the aforementioned Hard Spun and Discreet Cat as well as another freshman sire in Any Given Saturday] in particular, but the results tend to make it tough not to look this way. Here is a great horse by a proven sire (Street Cry [Ire]). I loved his yearlings and apparently so did a lot of other people. They have the complete package—strong shoulder and a nice hip. I can’t see how you could go wrong with a horse like this one.

English Channel: I usually wouldn’t look to a turf horse for juveniles, but I guess I am just a little biased here [Keene Ridge bred the 2007 champion turf male]. Seriously, though, you wouldn’t know it by the auction results, but this little guy really threw some nice horses. A bit small perhaps but plenty of attitude to boot. They are compact with a gorgeous hip, and I think there will be a few early ones. I have to take him.

Freshman Sire Contest selections:

Hard Spun

Stevie Wonderboy

Stormello

Teuflesberg

Ecclesiastic

Dylan Thomas (Ire)

John P. Sparkman

John P. Sparkman is bloodstock editor of Thoroughbred Times, and he has long been hailed as an expert on pedigree and is an authoritative source on international bloodstock. John covered the inaugural Dubai World Cup and is author of Foundation Mares. John is a regular contributor to THOROUGHBRED TIMES TODAY and blogs at http://pedigreecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/.

Conventional wisdom says when predicting freshman sire success, one should pick sires who were precocious, speedy two-year-olds. Conventional wisdom is bunk.

Freshman sire titles, like juvenile sire titles, are almost always decided by the rich fall two-year-old races at a mile or more, particularly the Breeders' Cup Juvenile (G1), not early and mid-season races at shorter distances. Thus it makes more sense to look for those horses likely to sire juveniles that will be maturing into real racehorses when the big money is on the line.

This year's group of freshman sires is, in any case, notably short on the early-maturing speedster types, the type that often start their stud careers in Florida, leaving us with mostly two-turn horses to choose from.

At his best, Street Sense was the best racehorse in this group, bar Invasor (Arg), and his racing profile fits the mold. He made his first start in July of his juvenile season, broke his maiden in August, and won the Breeders' Cup Juvenile by a record margin. His pedigree is plenty good enough to make him a good sire, and his first crop of yearlings included a number of horses that really caught the eye. The biggest caveat is that Street Sense is a very big horse, standing about 16.3, and many of his yearlings were also very tall. If he passes on his own degree of precocity, that won't matter; if he doesn't, it will.

Corinthian's primary flaw as a racehorse was his volatile temperament, a trait that can be passed on, but he clearly had the ability, is an outstanding conformation horse, and has perhaps the best “sire's pedigree” of any horse in this group. Pulpit already has the successful Tapit, Sky Mesa, and Stroll at stud, and Corinthian is from the great “sire family” of Sadler's Wells, Nureyev, Fairy King, Topsider, Thatch, and Stormy Atlantic. Corinthian's book of mares would not have included as many top mares as those of Street Sense or Hard Spun, but he sired a number of very athletic looking yearlings.

Invasor's history is very similar to that of the hot young sire Candy Ride (Arg), except that Invasor lost a race and Candy Ride did not. Invasor started his career against weaker competition in Uruguay than Candy Ride did in Argentina, but his international career lasted longer. Invasor is not as good an individual as Candy Ride, but he got a lot of very racy, stylish looking yearlings, prettier horses than himself. Despite the strong prejudice against South American-bred horses, Invasor's pedigree is plenty good enough to make a stallion. Shadwell, on the other hand, does not take a commercial approach and has not yet stood a successful stallion in the U.S.

Any Given Saturday was somewhat overshadowed in his crop by Street Sense, Curlin, and Hard Spun, but he was a very good racehorse, with a very good pedigree, and is a very good-looking horse. Distorted Humor is one of the top two or three sires in the country, and his first son at stud, Sharp Humor, made a good start as a freshman last year. A.P. Indy is going to be the new Secretariat or Buckpasser as a broodmare sire of sires, and the female family is good enough. Any Given Saturday did not have as good a book as his Darley barn mates—Street Sense and Hard Spun—and his yearlings were more variable.

Hard Spun has been the wise guys choice as a stallion in this group right from the beginning, and it is easy to understand why. His sire, Danzig, is a great sire of sires, Hard Spun was a speed horse, and he was unbeaten at two. He is an atypical son of Danzig, however, who gets his very substantial size from his broodmare sire Turkoman, who is not exactly a hot name in pedigrees. Hard Spun's yearlings were rather more variable than those by Street Sense, and it will be interesting to see what that actually means to the racecourse test.

Freshman Sire Contest selections:

Street Sense

Stevie Wonderboy

High Cotton

Pavarotti

Ecclesiastic

Teofilo

Ric Waldman

Ric Waldman is an ideal candidate to assess the quality of a crop of two-year-olds thanks to his experience in managing the careers of Carson City and Storm Cat, the latter one of the most prolific sires not only of juveniles but also as a sire of sires of juveniles. Waldman also managed the careers of Deputy Minister and Silver Deputy and still works in the breeding industry as a stallion agent and bloodstock adviser.

The 2011 crop of two-year-olds marks the long-awaited unveiling of the results of the 2007 Darley offensive when buying three of the best from that very good crop—Street Sense, Hard Spun, and Any Given Saturday—plus the first crop of Discreet Cat, who Darley acquired in 2005.

Each was reportedly purchased for big bucks, and I mean big in any market!

All four stallions bred strong books, with Street Sense and Hard Spun breeding the two best, and all four stallions have a large representation of two-year-olds, with Any Given Saturday’s 87 registered two-year-olds the only crop of the four below 100.

All four stallions showed impressive two-year-old form as racehorses, and each come from sire lines that would allow any of the four to be the leading freshman sire.

So, why don’t I just pick the four and throw a dart down the list of the remaining freshmen sires to round out my starting five? Shoot, John Calipari is making a nice living signing the leading freshmen class of basketball players at the University of Kentucky virtually doing that very same thing!

Truth be told, there are some other very nice stallions with their first crops set to run this year as well: After Market, Bob and John, Corinthian, Half Ours, Invasor (Arg), Latent Heat, Lawyer Ron, Scat Daddy, and Stevie Wonderboy, to name a few.

This group of stallions has to be one of the strongest in recent memory. However, for these freshman sires to be competitive in two-year-old races, they will have to butt heads with runners by some very good proven stallions, who undoubtedly will have also bred strong books of mares.

In compiling my list of ‘draftees’, I have included two of Darley’s Fab Four: Hard Spun and Street Sense. I only had so many scholarships and thus not one for Any Given Saturday. My other three choices are After Market (his two-year-olds are reported to be impressing), Invasor (small but quality-laden crop, and he was a top racehorse), and Bob and John (other than low yearling sales, why not?). Of course, I would not be surprised if by year’s end, at least one or two of the top five freshman sires will not have been even mentioned by me anywhere above.

I consider many factors in evaluating sires for this type of selection. These are typically the same factors—race record, pedigree, stud fee, size of book, yearling average, looks of yearlings, strength of mares’ books, and farms where sires have stood—that others consider, but the weight that I put on these factors vary in degree from sire to sire.

I have excluded some stallions, who themselves were champion two-year-olds because I do not believe that their progeny will duplicate their sires’ successes at two. However, they may end up leading the entire group at three. If I were to make a second list of sires who I think will lead the list at the end of their first crop’s three-year-old year, it would not contain the same sires as my freshman choices.

I find it hard to select a sire who did not show much promise at two, and was by a sire who is not known for his two-year-olds. Yes, last year I would have omitted the greatest young stallion in America, Bernardini. The sire line means more to me than the female line, and as a result, I am omitting a candidate who was very promising as a two-year-old and is out of a very successful speed producing ‘blue hen’. Three of the sires that I picked were the top three by yearling average, but went well down that list to complete my starting five—with role players!

Freshman Sire Contest selections:

Hard Spun

After Market

Wilko

Will He Shine

Ecclesiastic

Dylan Thomas (Ire)