Quote:
Originally Posted by Alabama Stakes
oh Lord, can you give a report about the Old Fashioned's you have seen ? Are they as stunning as He was ? How are they selling ?
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I thought the Old Fashioned 2 year olds looked pretty good. They were better than I was expecting. Unbridled's Song is obviously a really good sire but most of his sons have been a bit disappointing as sires. A few of them have been ok but I can't think of any of them off the top of my head that have been really good. Maybe Old Fashioned or Dunkirk will finally give him a son that turns out to be a good sire. Both Dunkirk and Old Fashioned had plenty of 2 year olds at the sales this year that looked like they could run.
This could be misleading though because sires will often times get really good support in their first year or two. Then nobody wants to breed to them in their 3rd and 4th year because people are afraid that the sire could turn out to be another Budha. Take Birdstone, for example. He got good support his first couple of years. His first year at stud was 2005. That means his first 2 year old crop was in 2008. Nobody is going to want to breed to him in 2007 or 2008 because you don't know how his offspring are going to do in 2008 and 2009. If you bred to him in 2007, you're going to have a yearling in 2009. If his offspring bomb on the track in 2008 and 2009, you're not going to be able to give away the yearling.
If you are a seller, there is actually far greater risk breeding to a 3rd or 4th year sire than a debut sire. With a debut sire, they haven't had a chance to bomb yet. For example, if you are a seller and you breed your mare to Union Rags this year, your yearling will probably sell fine if he looks good. Union Rags may be a terrible sire but when you get to the yearling sale, nobody will know that yet. So if you're a seller, there's actually way more risk breeding to a 3rd year sire than a debut sire. If you breed to race, that's a different story.
Going back to Birdstone, I don't think he was bred to more than about 30-40 mares in 2007, and the same in 2008. The main person breeding to him in those two years was Marylou Whitney. So he's obviously not going to have many 2 year olds in 2010 and 2011. He got a ton of mares in 2010 because of his two big winners in 2009. So he will have plenty of runners this year and next year. He actually wasn't bred to as many mares this year as I thought. I think he was only bred to about 50-60 mares this year. I thought he was pretty full this year but I was wrong.
Going back to Old Fashioned and Dunkirk, I am definitely encouraged by what I've seen so far, but I think it is still too early to make any type of strong prediction. I thought Value Plus had some decent looking 2 year olds in his first year, and he ended up totally bombing, so you never know.