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Voracious Bit by Pensioning Bug
Original article written by Marzy Dotes posted 11 years 0 weeks agoI thought I had this breeding thing all figured out.
No, not the part about producing scary good gallopers who go out and win major races and score lot of purse money. But how to pick just the right time to send mares to a stallion before he checks out for good.
This season’s seen a tidal wave of pensioning across the globe which hasn’t favored one type of stallion over the next. Age itself is the criteria for kicking them out of the shed and sending them off to live the rest of their years in leisure. It’s left breeders trying to keep up each day with the latest round of them and trying to formulate or reformulate their strategies while there’s still time for each individual stallion once they hit those twilight years. Almost like there’s a checklist where you go through each aging stallion and pick a mare or two for them and then try to time it right, hoping you don’t screw up by waiting one day or even a minute too long.
Trafalgar, Astonishing, Ghostfreak, Little Feller, Ahead of the Game and very recently Red Pine and Piecemaker, none of them beat the pensioning gods this year. Hopefully most breeders managed to get their mares in just in time before the studs had their cards stamped.
Others might have missed the deadlines losing forever the chance to breed to that particular stallion. That happened to me this week with the addition of Voracious to the pensioning list.
I totally blew it with him waiting too long to send him a mare this year.
Voracious sees at least one filly or mare from my dirt miler string each season and so far those meetings have been productive. I had the mare all picked out this year, a nice pretty one but alas, fate intervened by striking him infertile. As a result, the two remained forever separated and that left me having to chalk it up to another missed opportunity.
Still I have a soft spot for the handsome guy and wish him well.
The stately bay stallion bred and owned by Eric Nalbone has the most perfect of names, as much a part of his signature as the star on his forehead. To be voracious is to have a healthy appetite or to throw one’s self into an activity quite eagerly. Voracious didn’t win all or even most of his races but what you find in the trackman’s comments afterward is that he gave them his very best efforts.
He’s by Horse of the Year Ghostzapper who sired a lot of future sires including sprinter No Tricks, miler Sonoran Desert and router Out of Kindness who sired mostly dirt milers. Broodmare Enjoy was a stakes winning daughter of Japanese Horse of the Year and multi-surface sire Zenno Rob Roy. She was one of those earlier runners who won everything from sprints to routes and captured stakes like the UAE Oaks and the Beldame Stakes.
Voracious would be the one of her ten offspring to become a millionaire.
He looked spritely on the racetrack as a young gun cracking 47 seconds in one of his workouts and when he hit the starting gate for real, he hoped for some success. It came slowly as he failed to win his first three starts finishing second each time to horses with names like Buckingham and Jester of Fools. He did break his maiden at his second attempt at the mile distance quite handily. Perhaps that emboldened him enough to capture three stakes in a row including the Desert Derby by an astonishing seven lengths.
The amazing part of that race was that it was at a route, and he scored his highest speed figure of 85. As it turned out, he’d score higher in some of his routes than his mile races. He captured stakes in both divisions which included the Indiana Derby, the Out of Kindness Stakes and the Negril Plate.
Not that everything turned out successfully he failed to hit the board in either the Louisville Derby or the Baltimore Crown but finished behind horses like Fire Added Starter, Buckingham and Fable who ironically would all turn out to be premier miler sires.
He went to stud with impressive earnings after winning his final start, the Brooklyn Mile and started his stud career. His numbers turned out pretty good with 61% of his runners being winners so far and 8.3% of them winning in stakes races.
Miler purses aren’t quite as high as those enjoyed in dirt routes but Voracious’ offspring still did quite well. He sired one millionaire so far in Soldier Boy Spy, a handsome son of the famed broodmare Soldiergirlsbeauty. When this horse retires, he’ll hopefully become a major stud for his daddy, who also has seen another son in Gluttony hit the shed this year. This black stakes winner is out of the stakes mare Losing Grip who’s by one of the hallmark miler sires, Original Tough Guy.
Though he sired some successful sons, Voracious became known also for his daughters through their accomplishments on the racetrack and in the shed. Voracious Wings, Hungry Girl and Light the Clouds lit up the racetrack and Covetous proved successful there and through offspring like Aqua Regia. He seems to mesh well with sires like Original Tough Guy and his sire Enforcer as well as others like Gothic Dream and Mighty Big. Others like his daughter Black Maria (who’s a half sister to recent Steward’s Cup Dirt Mile winner Lasher) will be interesting to watch as broodmares as well.
I first met him when I was looking for a stud for my mare Hafa Adai who’s a daughter of Original Tough Guy. Besides his name, what attracted me to him was his yen for Original Tough Guy’s girls and his pretty reasonable stud fee. The product was a filly I named Blue Jeans Baby who was my first thoroughbred “wow” galloper that I bred. She downgraded at two to a “winged” but still raced quite nicely winning two stakes and placing well in others.
Liza Doolittle liked her enough to rate her a “star” and I’ve noticed that Voracious mares tend to score very well on the bloodlines analyst’s scale. So far she’s produced a stakes winning daughter of Big Bucks and a first time winner for King of Kindness.
I picked up another daughter of Voracious named Kathy Girl who’s out of Commandment which makes her a half-sister to Groo Grux King and Desert Solitaire among others. Kathy Girl just broke her maiden on the racetrack but in the shed, she produced a future “star” broodmare by Desert Longshot. This daughter as well as the dam both produced “stakes” galloping yearlings this year. It’s proven rewarding so far to have dirt milers with Voracious in their pedigrees and I’m grateful to have a cluster of them in my stable.
They’re fun to breed because they look to enjoy different kinds of miler studs. The purer milers like King of Kindness, Liquid Gold and Big Bucks as well as those dirt routers turned miler sires like Desert Longshot who’s daughter Ardent turned in a very nice sub 46 seconds work as a yearling.
Breeding Voracious daughters with sons of Original Tough Guy, which is a reversal of sorts worked pretty well with Man in the Mask in at least three out of the four known cases. One example of that cross was Hope Bentley’s homebred Masked Angels who broke her maiden recently in very impressive fashion. This dark bay filly has a full sister named Moon Angels who’s a yearling and already looking promising in her speed training. I tried that with Kathy Girl and got a stakes galloper as well.
Voracious has about 64 broodmares out there including nine currently living with Alexandra Jaysman and likely will add more before he’s done on that end of his breeding career. Banana Boat Song is one of them that was green pastured and is out of an Original Tough Guy mare. She went to retirement with one win on her record and then produced foals including one by a sprinting sire.
Another, Strip Tease surprised me with her appearance on that list and she’s out of Original Tough Guy’s daughter Gaza Strip. That makes her a half-sister to Fire From Below who produced Fire the Trainer who hit the board in stakes races. Strip Tease was green pastured without ever being bred.
Although Voracious is no longer standing stud, he’ll still continue to influence the bloodlines of dirt milers for generations to come. Though there’s no more opportunities to breed to him as a stallion, there are plenty more of them when it comes to breeding his daughters to the different miler studs out there.
Still it’s important to take advantage of studs while they’re still fertile and not wait until it might be too late. Something to keep in mind as other dirt miler studs including Fire Added Starter are also facing potential pensioning before the end of the season that’s seen so many stallions drop like flies off of the stud rosters.