TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2019 TAPIT MAINTAINS JOCKEY CLUB TO CONTINUE STUDYING PROPOSED MARE CAP RELENTLESS RHYTHM TO The Jockey Club is continuing its consideration of a rule to limit the annual breeding of individual stallions, the organization=s NEW MILESTONE board of stewards announced Monday. In a statement, The Jockey Club added, AWe are grateful for the many thoughtful comments in response to our September proposal. The stewards are considering those comments as we continue to study the cause and effects of decreasing diversity of the Thoroughbred gene pool and finalize a rule to protect the breed=s health and welfare.@ IN TDN EUROPE TODAY EDOUARD DE ROTHSCHILD RE-ELECTED AS FRANCE Lake Avenue winning the Demoiselle | Sarah Andrew GALOP PRESIDENT by Chris McGrath Edouard de Rothschild was re-elected as the France Galop President. Click or tap here to go straight to TDN Europe. It is the sheer consistency of his output that has sustained Tapit=s rise as a colossus of the modern breed: with his influence on the racetrack, first and foremost; with his corresponding impact in the sales ring (28 seven-figure yearlings); and next, judging from a promising start by several sons including star freshman Constitution, as a sire of sires. When Lake Avenue laid down her Oaks marker the other day, with a four-length success in the GII Demoiselle S. at Aqueduct, Gainesway=s multiple champion sire broke $150 million in lifetime progeny earnings. So while this is Tapit=s first year without a Grade I winner, it is still one in which only Into Mischief and Vino Rosso=s sire Curlin have accumulated more purse money. Still more instructively, TDN=s current table of North American sires by lifetime earnings shows not just that Tapit=s $150 million milestone leaves him $15 million clear of his nearest pursuer, Distorted Humor. It also confirms his supremacy by earnings per named foal at $115,721, with only Curlin otherwise breaking six figures (at $100,770, albeit Speightstown is just a few cents short). Cont. p3 BUYERS INCLUDED: Travis Durr Kenny McPeek Breeze Easy Alex & JoAnn Lieblong Mike Ryan Marette Farrell Liz Crow Jacob West Lauren Carlisle Keith Desormeaux Coffee Pot Stables Brick City Thoroughbreds SGV Thoroughbreds Pick View Gene Recio Jak Knelman Eddie Woods Mike Rutherford etc. PUBLISHER & CEO Sue Morris Finley @suefinley [email protected] SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT Gary King @garykingTDN [email protected] EDITORIAL [email protected] Editor-in-Chief Jessica Martini @JessMartiniTDN Managing Editor Tuesday, December 17, 2019 Alan Carasso @EquinealTDN Senior Editor Steve Sherack @SteveSherackTDN Racing Editor Brian DiDonato @BDiDonatoTDN Associate Editors Christie DeBernardis @CDeBernardisTDN Christina Bossinakis @CBossTDN Joe Bianca @JBiancaTDN News and Features Editor In Memoriam: Ben Massam (1988-2019) ADVERTISING [email protected] Director of Advertising Alycia Borer Advertising Manager Lia Best Advertising Designer Amanda Crelin Advertising Assistant/Dir. Of Distribution Rachel McCaffrey Advertising Assistant Amie Morosco Photographer/Photo Editor Sarah K. Andrew @SarahKAndrew [email protected] Social Media Strategist 2019 in Photos: June 8. Following a victory in the GI Manhattan S., exercise rider Justina Severni Daniel Bernardini gives Bricks and Mortar (Giant’s Causeway) a pat in the winner’s circle. | Sarah Andrew Director of Customer Service Vicki Forbes [email protected] BELL’S THE ONE BOUND FOR THE LA BREA 7 Marketing Manager Bell’s The One (Majesticperfection), who held her own against the Alayna Cullen @AlaynaCullen likes of likely champion Covfefe (Into Mischief) earlier this year, Director of IT/Accounting was en route to California Monday evening to continue her Ray Villa preparation for the GI La Brea S. at Santa Anita Dec. 26. “She’s as [email protected] good as she can be right now,” her trainer Neil Pessin reported. [email protected] WORLDWIDE INFORMATION CAFÉ PHAROAH WINS BIG IN JAPAN NAR International Editor It was a big weekend for American-bred gallopers at the various Kelsey Riley @kelseynrileyTDN tracks of the Japan Racing Association, headed by the debuting [email protected] Café Pharoah (American Pharoah), a fifth winner from seven European Editor Emma Berry Japanese starters for his sire. A full report in the North American [email protected] Racing section. Associate International Editor Heather Anderson @HLAndersonTDN Newmarket Bureau, Cafe Racing Sean Cronin & Tom Frary [email protected] 60 Broad Street, Suite 100 Red Bank, NJ 07701 732-747-8060 | 732-747-8955 (fax) www.TheTDN.com TDN HEADLINE NEWS • PAGE 3 OF 7 • THETDN.COM TUESDAY • DECEMBER 17, 2019 His 19.41% black-type horses to named foals, meanwhile, is a ratio matched only (in fact, almost precisely) by War Front-- whose books have, of course, been managed with wise conservatism. Antony Beck and his Gainesway team deserve equal credit for grasping that both the breed and an individual stallion benefit from restraint, in terms of mares= access. They confined Tapit to 111 mares this year, and 113 in 2018. Still pretty big numbers, of course, compared with the days of Mahmoud--whose portrait hangs adjacent to one of Tapit on Beck=s office wall, highlighting the physical echoes that have filtered between the two grays. For many years the fastest Epsom Derby winner, Mahmoud once stood at Gainesway himself. And while Tapit had to earn his stripes in his second Tapit | Horsephotos career--standing at $12,500 before launching his first runners-- he has given himself every chance of illuminating future By his 25 Grade I winners, putting him four ahead of War Front pedigrees with all the luster of his imported predecessor. and Medaglia d=Oro; by his 52 Grade I performers, against 44 for Beck plainly understands that your best chance of drawing Medaglia d=Oro; by his 78 graded stakes winners, outpunching repeatable assets from a pedigree is for its complex genetic Distorted Humor=s 62; and by his 154 graded stakes horses, with tissue to entwine as many strands of class as possible. It=s hard only Distorted Humor (119), Medaglia d=Oro (108) and Malibu enough to predict coat color, after all, never mind the Moon (105) otherwise in three figures. Nobody, it seems, recurrence of more elusive qualities. matches quality with quantity quite like Tapit. Cont. p4 TDN HEADLINE NEWS • PAGE 4 OF 7 • THETDN.COM TUESDAY • DECEMBER 17, 2019 Tapit=s Milestone cont. extends from top to bottom. Tapit=s first eight dams are gray, but the most conspicuous Besides Moon Glitter, Tapit=s other great-granddams include Aknot@ in his maternal line is his fourth dam Foggy Note. She was broodmares of historic importance in Weekend Surprise and by Mahmoud=s gray son The Axe, and dam of uniformly gray Narrate (both behind Tapit=s sire Pulpit). And the fourth is Gana foals. But she is also a vital Facil, who figures as dam of Tapit=s conduit of less superficial broodmare sire Unbridled but also attributes, as the dam of produced a GI Wood Memorial Relaunch and his winner (and leading regional sire) stakes-winning full sister in Cahill Road. Which is no less than Moon Glitter--whose you would expect, given her own daughter Ruby Slippers, in massively important family: Gana turn, produced Rubiano as Facil=s granddam Magic was a well as Tapit=s dam Tap Your half-sister (by a mighty broodmare Heels (Unbridled). Moon sire in Buckpasser) to Dr Fager and Glitter (In Reality) also Ta Wee. enabled the largely forgotten Ta Wee was by Intentionally and Dewan briefly to extend a no doubt that influenced the choice branch of Bold Ruler=s line as of his son In Reality as a partner for dam of Glitterman. Magic, producing Gana Facil=s dam Relaunch, Rubiano, Mahmoud & HH Aga Khan III | Getty Images Charedi. And Charedi puts yet Glitterman--one way or another stallion into Tapit=s another, Beck knew that the unfulfilled track potential of Tapit, background, her son Pentelicus having served Ocala Stud as a who made only half a dozen starts, was backed up by a family source of trademark Florida speed. that had produced sires. And that consolidation of genetic class Cont. p5 TDN HEADLINE NEWS • PAGE 5 OF 7 • THETDN.COM TUESDAY • DECEMBER 17, 2019 Charedi, incidentally, was by the same sire as Moon Glitter. of his own as Reynaldothewizard (Speightstown) in the 2013 And In Reality also happens to be sire of the graded-stakes Golden Shaheen. (Remarkably, he was still showing decent form winning fourth dam of Lake Avenue--a filly who certainly looks at Meydan last year, when twice Group-placed as a 12-year-old.) eligible to redress Tapit=s Grade I blank in 2019 as a sophomore Unfortunately Holiday Runner yielded limited returns for her next year. new owners, producing just a Lake Avenue=s family has couple of other subsequent enjoyed a transformation runners. But one of them, the through her granddam Grade II-placed American Story Holiday Runner (Ghostzapper), has contributed to (Meadowlake), a $20,000 the family=s bloom by giving Tapit=s weanling and $35,000 yearling son Concord Point his solitary who won two juvenile stakes Grade I winner, American Gal. and then made $2.15 million Her daughter=s success in the in 2009 after her first foal 2017 Test S. qualified American Seventh Street (Street Cry Story for a $2.2 million sale to Don {Ire}) won the GI Apple Alberto Corporation at Blossom H. and GI Go For Fasig-Tipton that November, with Wand H. a predictable Tapit covering; while Seventh Street had been a American Gal herself, having lucrative pinhook, sold to Tapit | Mathea Kelly added another Grade I in the Godolphin as a seven-figure Humana Distaff, made $3 million juvenile within six months of making $100,000 at Keeneland to Whisper Hill Farm at the equivalent sale last year.