If Federico Tesio must be acclaimed the most dominant figure in a single country's history of Thoroughbred breeding, Edward Plunkett Taylor cannot be far behind. Taylor single-handedly grabbed the Canadian breeding industry by the scruff of the neck in the 1950s and deposited it center stage in the international spotlight by the mid-1960s.

Flaring Top
chestnut mare
Menow-Flaming Top, by Omaha

Foaled: 1947, Claiborne Farm, Kentucky
Bred by: Arthur B. Hancock Sr.
Raced by: E. P. Taylor
Owned at stud: E. P. Taylor
Line imported: *Torpenhow imported by Wickliffe Stud in 1915
Family: Bruce Lowe family number 8-f tracing to the Bustler mare

Born into a well-to-do family of Canadian brewers in 1901, Taylor expanded the basis of his fortune in the 1930s by buying up and consolidating many small breweries into one company, Cosgrave Breweries. By 1936, he had acquired enough disposable income and time to transform his lifelong hobby of gambling on horses into a racing stable he first named after his principal business.

Trainer Bert Alexandra claimed four horses with Taylor's small initial investment; one of them, Jack Patch, became his first stakes winner. Another, the Stimulus mare Nandi, produced the first Taylor-bred stakes winner, Windfields, by Bunty Lawless, in 1943 at his Windfields Farm in Willowdale, Ontario. In 1977, Nandi's fourth-generation tail-female descendant Right Chilly became the 193rd Taylor-bred stakes winner, breaking the record previously held by Harry Payne Whitney. To date, Windfields has bred a record 358 stakes winners, the vast majority of them in the name of E. P. Taylor.

Taylor began breeding Thoroughbreds in earnest after World War II and purchased Parkwood Stables near Oshawa, Ontario, in 1950, renaming it National Stud. As part of his campaign to build a world-class breeding establishment, he asked bloodstock agent George Blackwell to buy the best mare on offer at the 1952 Tattersalls December sale.

Blackwell paid the top price of the sale, about $30,000, for *Lady Angela, an exquisitely bred Hyperion mare in foal to Nearco, and negotiated a return to that great stallion in 1953. Imported to Canada after that covering, *Lady Angela arrived carrying 1958 Canadian Horse of the Year Nearctic in utero. Nearctic sired Northern Dancer, first Canadian-bred to win an international classic, the 1964 Kentucky Derby, carrying Taylor's silks. The horse that put Taylor's Windfields Farm at the pinnacle of the international commercial breeding industry was Northern Dancer's son Nijinsky II, winner of the English Triple Crown in 1970.

Nijinsky II was a second-generation offshoot of an earlier Taylor investment.

Taylor was the second-leading buyer at the 1948 Keeneland July sale, purchasing five horses for $95,200. Best of these was Bull Page, a $38,000 Bull Lea colt who became Canada's Horse of the Year in 1951, but the group also included 1949 Great American Stakes winner Navy Chief, by War Admiral.

Among those five yearlings of 1948 was Flaring Top, a Menow filly out of Flaming Top, by Omaha, bred by Arthur B. Hancock Sr., first master of Claiborne Farm. Purchased for $8,500, Flaring Top proved only a modest success on the racecourse, but she founded the most important of many good Windfields Farm families, establishing herself as a 20th-century Foundation Mare.

The Headley touch

Although Claiborne bred Flaring Top, her pedigree was more closely associated with Hal Price Headley's Beaumont Farm. Her sire, Menow, was perhaps the best horse bred by Headley in more than five highly successful decades as a Thoroughbred breeder. Flaring Top's dam, Flaming Top, was a granddaughter of Summit, by Ultimus, a mare Headley acquired in the 1930s to breed to his top stallion, *Pharamond II.

Summit's dam, *Torpenhow, by Torpoint, had been imported to the United States in 1915 by Elizabeth Daingerfield at Wickliffe Stud. *Torpenhow produced stakes winner How High to the cover of Ultimus's son High Time and, through her first foal, Herd Girl, by Colin, is also third dam of Foundation Mare Stolen Hour.

Summit finished second in maiden races three times and fourth in a minor stakes but never won in seven career starts. She produced 1936 champion two-year-old filly Apogee to the cover of *Pharamond II for Beaumont. Winner of the Fashion and Arlington Lassie Stakes, Apogee also was a highly successful broodmare, producing stakes winners Flood Town, Acoma, and Sofarsogood. Sofarsogood was dam of Group 1 winner Ace of Aces, by *Vaguely Noble.

The family member who undoubtedly attracted Hancock's attention, however, was Columbiana, a Petee-Wrack mare out of Firetop, a Man o' War half sister to Apogee, bred at Claiborne (by John R. Macomber) who won the 1937 Widener Challenge Cup Handicap, the predecessor of the Widener Handicap. Columbiana produced two good runners by *Blenheim II for Calumet Farm in Free America and Ocean Wave. Macomber also bred the 1941 Omaha filly Flaming Top out of Firetop, who was acquired by Hancock.

By breeding Flaming Top to Menow in 1946, Hancock was duplicating the pattern Headley used to produce Apogee ten years earlier, because Menow was *Pharamond II's best son. The cross also created a 4x4 inbreeding to Ultimus, who was one of the prime sources of pure speed in American pedigrees.

Bred by Headley in 1935, Menow staked his claim as champion two-year-old of 1937 with a track-record victory in the Futurity Stakes and a season-ending triumph in the Champagne Stakes. Although he did not stay the distance of the Kentucky Derby (fourth to Lawrin), Menow managed to finish third in the 1938 Preakness Stakes and then romped easily in the one-mile Withers Stakes. Menow scored his greatest victory, though, in the nine-furlong Massachusetts Handicap later that year, pinning an eight-length upset on a field headed by the great War Admiral, who endured a rare off day.

Menow was also quite a high-class sire, ranking third on the general sire list in 1951 when his best son, Tom Fool, was champion juvenile colt. That great colt was the Headley stallion's second all-around champion; he had sired 1949 Horse of the Year and champion three-year-old Capot in 1946. Menow also sired 1942 champion two-year-old filly Askmenow and 29 other stakes winners for a sparkling 11% ratio of stakes winners to foals.

The *Pharamond II horse sired only 291 foals in 18 crops, however, a small number of foals even in those ancient days of 40-mare books.

"I don't know if he was a shy breeder or not," said Alice Headley Chandler, daughter of Hal Price Headley, "but he was an awfully slow breeder. The old saying around town was, 'If you're going to breed at Beaumont, take your lunch.' He took forever."

Menow's best son, Tom Fool, was a progressively shy (and very slow) breeder at Greentree Stud, and Capot was almost sterile, siring only 13 foals.

Menow was an effective broodmare sire, too. His daughters produced 51 stakes winners, including champions Castle Forbes, Flaming Page, and High Voltage as well as the top-class racehorse and sire Red God.

Modest racer

Flaring Top began her racing career for Taylor and Alexandra on June 2, 1949, at Detroit Race Course, the closest American racecourse to Toronto. Lightly regarded at 46.70-to-1, she ran to those odds and finished ninth, beaten more than eight lengths in a five-furlong maiden race. That did not encourage bettors for her second start two weeks later, but she improved somewhat, beaten only two lengths in fifth place in a similar race, starting at 43.50-to-1.

Flaring Top showed a bit more early speed in her third attempt, another

Detroit maiden race nine days later, running fourth early, but she could not keep up and was beaten nine lengths, finishing sixth. A month later, Flaring Top made her final juve