It’s hard to put a price on a stallion like this. Apart from all else, he is Danzig’s starting legacy – conceived when the Grand Patriarch was 26 – and his dam line brings a daughter of the war colt My Babu (Fr) as close as the third dam. True to that venerable seeding, his stock mimicked both class and build that supported his own commitment to speed on the race track. Although his career was cut short in barely a year, he not only “danced all the dances” but also turned the pages for the orchestra. And while he fell back to seven stages for his grade I, in the King’s Bishop he had held second place in the GI Kentucky Derby after setting a pace that summoned the winner and third from as far as 17th. and 14th to the third divide.

He just sired his 12th national Grade I winner, to be added to three in Australia, and appears to be booked for the top 10 of the overall bull list for the third year in a row. He was fourth in 2019, ninth last year and eighth this time around. To take an unmistakably high-end stallion as a benchmark, Uncle Mo was 13th in 2019, fourth last year and basking in the glow of his 10th year one winner Golden Pal – sits 10th as we head home. us in 2021. Uncle Mo duly stood at $ 175,000 this year and will trade at $ 160,000 next spring.

Still, Hard Spun remains at $ 35,000.

Is there better proven value anywhere in Kentucky? Okay, so the late blooming of her GI Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner Aloha West (unknown until four years old) confirms that stallion Jonabell’s foals will not always deliver what is perceived to be precocity ” commercial ”. But such brilliant acceleration in a dirt race around such a vertiginous track as Del Mar confirms that Hard Spun can get you any type.

To take a quick sample: Hard Spun’s first crop, which ultimately brought in a record 17 stake winners, had a juvenile Group 2 winner in Britain mid-summer. His biggest income is a grass sprinter in Australia; he had a Group 2 winner on downhill five at Goodwood; and also a GI Arlington Million winner on the grass. At the same time, he had dirt runners to pour over two laps, like Questing (GB) and Smooth Roller (another who only surfaced at four, but explosively). Spun To Run won their GI Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile from the front, Hard Not To Love shot them from behind in the GI La Brea S. But their father also had a double winner of the GII Marathon, briefly a Breeders’ Cup race, at 13 and 14 stages.

In addition, Hard Spun is already developing a slightly less diverse international profile as a broodmare sire, through Good Magic (Curlin) in the United States; Alcohol Free (Ire) (No Nay Never), winner of two miles of Group 1 in Great Britain this year; and elite Japanese sprinter Danon Smash (Jpn) (Lord Kanaloa {Jpn}).

The only thing he has yet to achieve, unlike another of Danzig’s last sons on the war front, is securing his own branch of the dynasty. Several of its best performers have been fillies and geldings. However, Spun to Run pulled off a solid 119-pound debut at Gainesway; and Silver State, as the winner of the GI Met Mile, goes to a corresponding resonance farm in Claiborne, once, of course, the house of Danzig itself. Now, Aloha West has come out of nowhere as another possible heir, so let’s take a quick look at her background.

Aloha West was bred in Maryland by stakes winner Robert T. Manfuso and Katharine M. Voss of the Island Bound (Speightstown) sprinter. Expectations for the mare seem to have worsened slightly lately: after having had several chances with stallions from Kentucky, she has won $ 5,000 in cover in Maryland in recent years. But her views might have to be reconsidered now, as she turned her record in 2021. At the start of the year, her sophomore daughter by Nyquist and 4-year-old son by Hard Spun had not both raced. . But Moquist is now unbeaten in four starts for coach Dale Capuano, Laurel’s last optional contender one week away from the Breeders’ Cup; and Aloha West, of course, has thrived for Wayne Catalano since the summer, scoring two wins at Saratoga before an unfortunate loss in an attempt at a Grade II at Keeneland. It emboldened a lean to the big in Del Mar and a spectacular rationale for local resident Aron Wellman of Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, who had moved to buy the horse privately after showing promises (won in his early days, messy start next time) in a late start his career for Gary and Mary West at Oaklawn last winter.

Now, no one needs to instruct the West on the ups and downs of this business. In fact, when they won one of their very first Grade Is almost 20 years ago, their second rider collapsed on the track due to heatstroke. (Fortunately, he was okay with fighting another day.) It was also the year they had the favorite breakup in Derby week. They’ve already seen it all, they trade to support their program, and one day everything will happen to remedy the maximum security disqualification (New Years Day). In the meantime, however, it is to be hoped that they are happy with the prices they took for the two 2021 Breeders’ Cup winners who left their property.

One of them was the devastating GI Dirt Mile winner, Life Is Good (Into Mischief), who won $ 525,000 as a yearling. Its dam is still only eight years old, so here’s a rising tide that floats all the boats. (Less fortunate will be the sellers of the second grade I dam at Keeneland in November two years ago, for just $ 15,000 – exactly one percent of her cost when she was carrying her first foal eight years ago! SF Bloodstock buyers clearly realized that his one-year-old grandson, bought in the same ring a few weeks before, was something special.)

Hopefully the Westes got a fair price for Aloha West in the spring as well. Their program is geared towards the Triple Crown and clearly that moment has passed. Either way, it turns out he was another typically shrewd find from Ben Glass. Their longtime manager bought Life Is Good’s dam as a yearling and picked Aloha West for $ 160,000 as Hip 1025 in Keeneland’s September sale.

The general pattern of the pedigree is in fact no different from that of Life Is Good: an upper line representing one of the fastest lines of Northern Dancer (Danzig in Aloha West, Storm Cat in Life Is Good); a roadblock by a grandson of Mr. Prospector (Speightstown in Aloha West, Distorted Humor in Life Is Good); and the second dams respectively by AP Indy (in the case of Aloha West) and his son Mineshaft (in the case of Life Is Good).

Aloha West’s grandmother was a three-time winner with a minor black guy, but Island Bound is the only accolade she’s achieved in what turned out to be a cut short herding career. There is, however, a real depth behind it.

The next dam, by Afleet, also showed talent and solidity (3 for 19) and produced two Ranked Stakes winners (and also a second in Grade II) including the third Rogue Romance of the GI Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (Smarty Jones). The unseen fourth mother was a half-sister from Manila to Ogygian, father-to-mother from Johannesburg; and the next dam is also a huge modern influence grandmother in Fappiano. And, above all, this means that she in turn is descended from the mare Cequillo (Princequillo) of the Tartan Farms foundation.

These aristocratic embers have now been fueled by Hard Spun, whose own background reflects the form of the Island Bound family. Both represent a dashing sire line, Hard Spun as son of Danzig; Island Bound as the daughter of Speightstown. And both complement that with solid influences sowing the bottom line. We saw that Island Bound was bred from an AP Indy mare, for example, while Hard Spun’s second dam was from Roberto and, moreover, shared a dam with Darby champion Dan Little Current (Sea-Bird { Fr}). This, in effect, becomes a very deep well of aristocratic Darby Dan blood on which Hard Spun can draw: his fourth dam is Banquet Bell (Polynesian), mother of two farm legends (both by Swaps) in Chateaugay and Primonetta.

Even the intervention of the imposing Turkoman, the pedestrian father of Hard Spun, did not dilute the power of this blood. Hard Spun’s half-sister by Stravinsky once again decorated the family as the second dam to the multiple Grade I winner Improbable (City Zip).

With these auspicious foundations, Aloha West has had the best possible start in life. Bob Manfuso has already bred a top runner at Chanceland Farm, which he co-owns with Voss, to Cathryn Sophia (Street Boss), winner of the GI Kentucky Oaks in 2016. And for the sale his breeders had the good sense to send this colt at Nursery Place, a privilege that no young Bluegrass horse can surpass.

So there have been many different contributors to Aloha West’s flowering, both genetically and in terms of riding. But he is certainly stamped with the Hard Spun brand, like a horse blossomed by maturity and touched by brilliance.

Imagine if Hard Spun himself had been allowed to stay in training at age four! As it stood, its new owner was then investing heavily in a reinitialization of its international stallion program. Of course, Darley is a global program and Hard Spun was sent to Japan for a year at a critical stage, in 2014. This hiatus, leaving him without young Americans in 2017 / second year in 2018, arguably earned his fees. to stabilize. at such an accessible level. Remember it was $ 60,000 before going to Japan, and $ 35,000 for his return, even though he had topped the table of fourth crop fathers the year he was gone, whether by winnings, winners or the success of the ranked bets, finishing ahead of no less than a trio than Street Sense (who had accompanied him to Hokkaido), English Channel and Scat Daddy.

I am often reprimanded, when I deplore the stampede for novice stallions who will rarely command such high fees again, that there is no alternative but to roll the dice; that the “proven” bulls have all put themselves out of reach. It is a free world, a free market, and we are all entitled to our opinions. But I would say here is a yardstick that makes that point of view, well, just a little hard to understand.