Not This Time has two runners in this weekend’s Preakness Stakes.
The second leg of the Triple Crown means our second of the ‘Keeping it In The Family’ blogs. This time I dug a bit deeper not only into the bloodstock side of each entrant’s history but also looked at who is coming in fresh and who is coming in off that two week break between Derby and Preakness.
Sires
Only Not This Time has more than one runner in the 10 horse field as a sire (Epicenter and Simplification) with both his runners out of Candy Ride mares. Of the eight stallions with runners, one of them (Gun Runner) is a sire with first 3-year-olds and three others (Not This Time, Exaggerator, Arrogate) have second crop three years olds.
Candy Ride isn’t the only broodmare sire with two runners. Tapit is the broodmare sire of Creative Minister (Creative Cause) and Happy Jack (Oxbow). While Candy Ride’s two horses are directly linked to one sire (Not This Time), Tapit’s runners come from two different branches of the Northern Dancer sire line – Vice Regent (Oxbow) and Storm Bird (Creative Cause).
Ages
With so many first and second crop sires, it’s no surprise that the age of the stallions at conception averages at 7.75 years of age. That is nearly two years younger than the Kentucky Derby average when the stallions sat at 9.72 years old. The oldest of the stallions is Curlin, who was 14 when Fenwick was conceived. Not This Time is the youngest of the group with his two colts conceived when he was four.
The dams of the runners average eight years of age, close to the 8.23 years in the Derby. The majority of the mares were six or nine years of age with the youngest being the 5-year-old War Chant mare Twinkling (dam of Skippylongstocking) and the oldest being the duo of Silent Candy (Epicenter) and Abinthe Minded (Secret Oath).
As for the Preakness contenders’ ages, the oldest in the field is the January 29-born morning line favorite Epicenter. He’s nearly a month older than the other horses in the field with Simplification the next oldest with a birthday of February 28. Those are the only two born in the first two months of the year with three born in March (Early Voting on March 7, Happy Jack on March 17, Secret Oath on March 20), and three born in April (Skippylongstocking on April 2, Creative Minister on April 28 and Fenwick on April 30). The youngest of the group is the May 20-born Armagnac, whose late birthday didn’t harm his yearling price with the colt selling for $210,000 at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale.
Starts
This year’s Preakness Stakes sees three Kentucky Derby runners and the Kentucky Oaks winner entered but they aren’t the only ones coming in off two weeks rest. Armagnac has the least amount of rest of all the runners in the field – winning an Allowance Optional Claimer by 4 ¼ lengths the day after the Kentucky Derby. He also has the longest ship of any of the horses, winning that race at Santa Anita.
Three horses in the race have a little over a month’s rest coming into the Preakness with the second and third place finishers in the Wood Memorial (Early Voting and Skippylongstocking) making their start on April 9th in that race and Fenwick running in the Blue Grass the same day. Creative Minister didn’t run in the Kentucky Derby but he did run on the undercard, so he also comes in on two weeks’ rest.
Stud Fees
If you bred to the stallions with this year’s Preakness Stakes runners in 2018 you would have paid an average of $83,333. Four years on only one of those stallions isn’t available to North American breeders and the fees have jumped to an average of $101,666.
The most expensive of the stallions in 2018 was Curlin at $150,000. He is again the most expensive on this year’s advertised stud fees at $175,000. The least expensive in 2018 was Not This Time at $15,000 and he made a jump to $75,000 in 2022. Two others outside of Curlin and Not This Time saw their fee increase in the last four years – Gun Runner from $70,000 to $125,000 and Quality Road from $70,000 to $150,000. Exaggerator relocated to Louisiana and now stands for $5,000, down from the $30,000 he stood at in 2018. Both Oxbow and Creative Cause were $20,000 in 2018 and are at $7,500 now.
Gun Runner made one of the highest stud fee jumps of the group.
Sales Ring
Every horse in the field was entered for at least one sale and all but one of them went through the ring.
Skippylongstocking has the most ring experience of any horse in the field, selling for $15,000 at the Keeneland September Sale and $37,000 at OBS April last year. Happy Jack and Simplification both went through the ring as weanlings but RNAed (Happy Jack without a bid).
All six of the runners to go through the ring as yearlings (five at Keeneland September, one at Fasig-Tipton October) found new homes with the most expensive being Epicenter at $260,000. Skippylongstocking was the least expensive of the group at $15,000 with the yearling group averaging $152,833 and a median of $190,000. G1 Kentucky Oaks winner Secret Oath was entered in a sale but was declared an out before going through the ring.
Inbreeding
Every runner in the field has inbreeding in their first five generations with four of them seeing both inbreeding crosses in the fifth generation. Three horses have 3 x 4 crosses in their pedigrees, Early Voting is 3 x 4 to Storm Cat (5 x 5 to Fappiano and 5 x 5 Lyphard), Fenwick is 3 x 4 to Mr. Prospector (and has a third cross to that one’s sire Raise a Native in the fifth generation), and Secret Oath is 3 x 4 to Fappiano (also has one more cross to his sire in the fifth generation and has 5 x 5 to Rough N Tumble and Aspidistra)
Skippylongstocking is the only horse with one inbreeding cross, that being 4 x 5 to Mr. Prospector. It is worth noting that Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike had Mr. Prospector 3 x 4 and is by a son of Curlin just like Skippylongstocking.
