If he wins, it will have very little effect. It may have an effect on small-time people who will be encouraged to take a chance and breed a cheap mare to a cheap stallion. But most of the big owners who spend a lot of money on well bred horses are not going to change what they do. Why should they? If you have a guy with a good eye that picks out your yearlings for you, you're going to have a 100x better chance of getting a good horse by buying a $300,000 yearling than by breeding a cheap mare to a $2,500 stallion. It worked in this case, but the other 99.999% of the time you are not going to get a good horse when you breed a cheap mare to a $2,500 stallion.
In reality, Lucky Pulpit is obviously not a $2,500 stallion. He is probably more like a $10,000 sire or possibly even better. But nobody knew that at the time. You could take shot and look for a $2,500 sire that you think will be the next big thing. Malibu Moon stood for only $5,000 at the beginning. You could take a chance and try to find the next Malibu Moon but I don't think most of the big owners are going to go that route. They can afford to buy expensive yearlings and breed to the expensive stallions.
With regard to how much CC is worth, I don't think he's worth nearly what most of you think, win or lose the Belmont. I'll Have Another won the Derby and Preakness and then got hurt and was retired. They couldn't get a decent stud deal for him because people didn't like his pedigree. I think the top offer they got in this country was about $5 million. They finally got a little better offer in Japan and sent him over there. I think they got about $8 million.
If CC doesn't win the Belmont, I don't know why he would be worth any more than I'll Have Another. If he wins the Belmont, that would be a different story but I'm still not sure that he would be worth all that much with his pedigree. I could be way off on this but I don't think he could be worth much more than $10-$12 million as a stallion. Win or lose, I don't think he will be retired after the race unless he gets hurt.
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