Bloodlines

The winner of the listed Gravesend Handicap at Aqueduct on Dec. 30, Drafted (by Field Commission) has had the best season of his lengthy career that began with a debut victory as a 2-year-old at Keeneland in 2016 and now counts 10 victories from 33 starts for earnings of $1,157,443. Bred in Florida by John […]

The great proliferation of gray coloring in the Thoroughbred came through The Tetrarch, bred in Ireland by Edward Kennedy, who reportedly purchased Roi Herode because of a fascination with the Byerley Turk line through Herod. Although that color line has remained in racing and breeding at the highest level, the Herod male line is now […]

What difference a year makes! Or not. The Gun Runner Express keeps blazing along, and here at the tag end of 2022, the champion son of Candy Ride is the leading second-crop sire by a massive margin over his contemporaries: $14 million to $7 million , nearly double the earnings of the next-closest pair of […]

One inquiring mind asked, “Why do we have gray Thoroughbreds, and where do they come from?” Who can resist such a question? The first part is fairly easy. Gray Thoroughbreds are part of the breed because they have been here from the beginning, and the coat color is with us today because a gray parent […]

The historical record on different lines of descent in the Thoroughbred shows that the winnowing out of male lines has gone on from the beginnings of the breed. And the great majority of male lines disappeared in the first 75 to 100 years of the formation of the Thoroughbred. By the late 1700s, there were […]

Although there is still quite a bit of purse money to race for in the coming 30-odd days of 2022, the freshman sire list has firmed up considerably. Atop the rankings is the juvenile Grade 1 winner Bolt d’Oro (by Medaglia d’Oro). If the bay colt retains his position, he will become the first son […]

Most of the sources of information about the Thoroughbred declare that there are three founding fathers of the breed. These are the three lines that were still active when bloodstock writing became important toward the middle and end of the 19th century. There are actually quite a few more stallions who played a part in […]

The catlike power and bounding glory of Flightline graced our racetracks for the last time on Nov. 5, and one of the marks of highest merit for the bay son of Tapit (by Pulpit) is that he translated the exceptional speed and overpowering dominance he had shown while racing in California to tracks in New […]

“This colt was kinda small when I bought him,” said pinhooker and consignor G.W. Parrish when I was inspecting the gray colt that he had purchased out of the 2021 Keeneland September sale and had trained up to working a quarter-mile for the OBS March sale in :20 4/5. The colt had turned in a […]

The breeding and racing operation of Gary and Mary West combines racing and selling in a practical attempt to keep the stable on the profitable side of the ledger. That is a major undertaking in any business, but breeding Thoroughbreds adds a couple extra degrees of difficulty. Yet, when breeders keep and race a colt […]