Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
In my March 28th blog, I said I would be making three major announcements this month with regards to Werk Thoroughbred Consultants and eNicks.com. Since then, I’ve announced strategic partnerships with TDN/Thoroughbred Daily News, and the Australian Bloodhorse Review & www.stallions.com.au. Now, number three:
I feel that the Thoroughbred Times online stallion directory is the most informative and user-friendly national (actually international) stallion register in the industry. Now it’s even better with an eNicks link for enrolled stallions. When viewing the Times online directory page for a stallion, breeders can now click the eNicks button and match their mares with the farms stallion, much the same way as they do now at the farm websites.
Conversely, when breeders retrieve the Werk Nick Rating for a prospective mating at www.enicks.com, a Thoroughbred Times link displays, allowing breeders to view the Times online directory page for that stallion.
I am particularly pleased to have formed these strategic partnerships with three such highly-respected industry organizations.
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Thursday, March 6th, 2008
The Thoroughbred Daily News and Werk Thoroughbred Consultants have added two new features to their respective websites.
WTC’s eNicks.com now displays a TDN Stallion Progeny PP’s link for eNick-enrolled stallions that are also enrolled in TDN’s Stallion Progeny and Sales PP’s. This allows breeders to get instant access to that stallion’s recent progeny performance stats including charts, video, etc. while doing prospective matings.
Conversely, an eNicks link is now included on TDN’s enrolled stallions Progeny PP’s pages allowing users to do prospective matings and view the Werk Nick Rating and 5-cross pedigree for them.
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Thursday, March 6th, 2008
The current list of leading sires of unrestricted SWs could be signaling a changing of the guard. Five of the top 10 stallions are under 13-year-old. Indian Charlie and Tribal Rule are 12, Giant’s Causeway and Malibu Moon are 11, and Johannesburg is just nine.
Two of these five, Ashford Stud’s Giant’s Causeway and Johannesburg, are tied for second place with four unrestricted SWs after coming off from big weekends. Giant’s Causeway’s son Heatseeker (Werk Nick Rating: A+) won the G1 Santa Anita Hcp., while Johannesburg was represented by two SWs – Ten Meropa (Werk Nick Rating: A), winner of the G3 Baldwin Stakes, and Gattopardo (Werk Nick Rating: A+), winner of the Miracle Wood Stakes.
To date, Giant’s Causeway is Storm Cat’s best son at stud. There are many ways to measure the success of a stallion. One of the factors I consider when evaluating higher-priced stallions is the number of G1 winners he’s sired. Giant’s Causeway’s star shines bright in this category. With four crops to race, he’s had seven G1 winners, or 1.75 per crop. Granted, he’s done this with very large crops. In fact, his first two crops totaled 303 foals, but he’s sired 10% SWs from those two crops, a remarkable percentage in this day and age. As Bill Oppenheim has pointed out several times in TDN, yesterday’s 10% SWs is today’s 6% SWs with the large foal crops. With these kind of numbers and two colts on the Derby Trail (undefeated Giant’s Moon and Tropical Park Derby winner Cowboy Cal), his $125,000 stud fee should look very, very attractive to breeders right now.
Johannesburg was a truly remarkable racehorse. He was a perfect seven for seven at two, while winning six stakes and named champion 2-year-old colt in England, Ireland, France, and the U.S. By recently-deceased Hennessy, another of Storm Cat’s best sons, and out of a strong Claiborne-family mare-line, he has the right ingredients to become a major stallion, and he’s showing all the rights signs from his first two crops to race. He was a very close second to Street Cry for leading freshman sire honors in 2006. He’s sired 11 first-crop SWs to date (from 143 foals), including G1 winner Scat Daddy and G2 winner Teuflesberg. His smaller second crop (114 foals) just turned three and includes four SWs. The star of the crop is G2 winner and Kentucky Derby candidate Eaton’s Gift. Another important factor is the class of the SWs a stallion produces. Johannesburg excels in this arena as 10 of 15 SWs are graded.
In the next few years it will be interesting to see which of the young lions replace the aging elite. I’m betting Ashford’s dynamic duo will be two of them!
NO. AMERICAN SIRES OF 2008 UNRESTRICTED SWS (Thru 3/2/08)
UNBRIDLED’S SONG (Unbridled) - KY - 6 SWs
GIANT’S CAUSEWAY (Storm Cat) – KY – 4 SWs
JOHANNESBURG (Hennessy) – KY – 4 SWs
A.P. INDY (Seattle Slew) – KY – 3 SWs
EL PRADO (Sadler’s Wells) – KY – 3 SWs
INDIAN CHARLIE (In Excess) – KY – 3 SWs
MALIBU MOON (A.P. Indy) – KY – 3 SWs
SMOKE GLACKEN (Two Punch) – KY – 3 SWs
TRIBAL RULE (Storm Cat) – CA – 3 SWs
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Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
I’m very pleased to announce that we’ve formed a partnership with Australia’s Andrew Reichard to offer our entire eNicks program to Australian and New Zealand breeders and stud farms. Reichard is the publisher of The Australian Bloodhorse Review, Australia’s No. 1 thoroughbred publication, and co-owner of www.stallions.com.au/ Australia’s No. 1 thoroughbred website. He also published
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Monday, March 3rd, 2008
For those readers of the industry’s premier daily, Thoroughbred Daily News, you probably noticed over the weekend that the Werk Nick Rating is now included with their listed stakes winner results, along with a link to each winner’s eNick report and 5-cross pedigree. Considering the popularity of the Werk Nick Rating among breeders and buyers, and phenomenal growth of www.enicks.com, TDN and WTC felt the time was right to make this information available to TDN readers. WTC will be making several more important announcements in March. Stay tuned!
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Jack Werk (1944-2010)
