Star Signs: Writing His Legacy in the Steward's Cup

Original article written by Marzy Dotes posted 13 years 3 weeks ago

The signs were written in the stars, when it came to this year’s Steward’s Cup in terms of its ability to produce the future turf stars on its first day of thoroughbred action. That day honored the juvenile runners on both the dirt and the turf at different distances including the turf mile. A couple hot studs stuck out that day, one in particular.

That’d be Star Signs who boasted the winner and runner up who were Starspin and Winstar in the Juvenile Fillies Turf and the second placed horse, Got Talent in the Juvenile Turf.

Owned by Leonard Beagle, Star Signs at eight still has quite a few years left to sire future champions. He’s by two-time Japanese Horse of the Year Symboli Kris S who also sired European Champion Two Year Old Colt and top sire, Fleet Admiral. At 13, Fleet Admiral’s not go much time left at stud but so far, he’s sired the likes of North American Champion Male Turf Horse Offshore Excursion and a hot new stud in Afraid to Lead whose got mares rushing to his barn right now. Broodmare Starabovebybed never won a race and didn’t produce much that was successful beside Star Signs.

Beagle did awfully well in terms of his investment, purchasing him as a yearling for only $57,000 and watching as he retired with earnings of over $2.2 million. He started off promisingly enough winning two of his first three starts as a juvenile including the Coast to Coast Mile Stakes. After that, he finished fifth in a routing stakes a bit behind the winner, champion Dream In The Dark. But as soon as that experiment ended, he returned to being a turf miler right as rain and won two stakes in opposite sides of the world before placing second behind Iron in his first foray into the Steward’s Cup Turf Mile.

Oh, he wanted to win next time badly and the following year he won the Monaachi Mile and the Toronto Mile and finished second in two other stakes facing off with the likes of Menacing, Visine and Won’t Back Down. The latter horse vexed him giving him those two losses but Star Signs didn’t let that stop him as the two battling horses lined up for the Steward’s Cup Turf Mile together with a top flight field of entries. Offshore Excursion, a young buck back then and Test Your Soul also lined up to put some serious heat into the race. But in one of his finest races, Star Signs took advantage of some early dueling and swept into the stretch to run down Won’t Back Down and others to win that race by 1 ¼ lengths.

He came back to attempt to repeat his feat the following year, a very challenging task and he repeated in the Toronto Mile taking in a two horse winning streak to the race. However, he never really fired in that race, which was captured by Offshore Excursion who accomplished his own double.

Still for a hefty earner like him with lovely bloodlines to boot, there’s always stud and he took to that new career of his quite well. He loved mixing it up with daughters of former Japanese Champion Two Year Old Colt Tondeiru (by Deep Impact) who gave him three top earning winners as well as those by Acapulco and Star Studded. He’s put out some decent stats so far in the shed and has sired seven stakes winners. Not to mention he ranked fifth on the list (two behind Offshore Excursion) of second crop turf sires with 42 winners so far. With the showing of his juvenile offspring in the turf races at the Steward’s Cup, he’s bound to gain in popularity with breeders who will be looking forward to racing his offspring in upcoming years.

A fitting position for a horse whose own position seemed written in the stars, and it’s a pretty large sky left to fill.

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