Thou Art Here
Alc Shark On Fire - Mystic Mountains, by Mika
10: 4-3-1 $362,000
2yo Season
Won - G1 Oceanside Futurity
3rd - G1 Two Year Old Sprint Championship
3yo Season
I never thought I'd have 2 horses to write about, but here we are. It's another fun story, or at least in my opinion it is, because his dam has a similar backstory to my tale about Solarpunk.
Back in Y60 I was buying up just about every mare I could get my hands on in the Greener Pastures. It was Break and they were a whopping $100, so why not? It was then that I came across a mare named Mystic Mountains. Loved the name, and her pedigree had some nice inbreeding to Ominous Spiritus. Her sire was the good stallion Mika, and her dam-line was full of modest stakes winners and producers. Not the worst mare I would buy that season, but she was just a formidable. I sent her to the freshly retired Alc Shark On Fire because he was a horse that always tried hard and the price was fair. The resulting bay colt I left unnamed, but noted on his page that I bred him because of the novel pedigree. Indeed, he would be a nice outcross should he decide to hit the 350k mark.
Year 61 came and my attention was solely on Solarpunk who had galloped Freak and has his own page here. But when I galloped the rest, lo and behold this guy galloped Stakes Late Bloomer. I used up my reserved name "Thou Art Here" which I had planned on using for my first stakes horse, and well, he was close enough! He did pretty OK by himself in the timed workouts, but then my heart sank in Y62 when the gallop thresholds were changed. Allowance Late Bloomer. Well, you win some you lose some. I figured that in time he would bloom back into a stakes horse. What I never expected was that on gallop changes mid-season he would look Solarpunk in the eye, and walk right past him to the top spot in the barn. Freaky.
What I also never expected was that he would win my second Grade 1, and just a mere week after Solarpunk gave me my first. This also allowed me to win the only two Grade 1 races for DS colts before the big week 16 races. A feat only Xander Zone has accomplished (twice!), and one I doubt I will have the honor of repeating in the future. Lightning struck twice and I have been absolutely awestruck at my luck this year.
Fingers crossed this boy continues his upward momentum! I've been enjoying every second of this Y60 crop, and he has just risen to the top!