First Year Stallions

Stallions with great racing careers are almost always very popular in their first year at stud. Two horses with very similar pedigrees will no doubt be among the favourites this year. Muscle Hill in New Jersey and Federal Flex in Ontario will face a challenge, however, in finding their niche with regards to the right kind of mares.

Both are by Muscles Yankee which may be the key to their success or failure but more on that later. Both sires are from double Stars Pride dams, an unusual occurrence. Muscle Hill is American Winner - Hickory Pride maternally and Federal Flex has S Js Photo - Joie De Vie as the principal lines in his dam. They fall into a very small group of sires listed in the 2010 Stallion Finder with the following Profile as far as the preferred sire lines in the mares.

"Non Stars Pride line broodmares with a Speedy Crown line 1st, 2nd or 3rd dam except for broodmares with no Speedy Crown maternally"

Of their sire group in North America there are only a couple with progeny racing. Incredible Abe and Amigo Hall. The top two by Incredible Abe are from Noble Victory line mares that are inbred to Speedster or Speedy Crown maternally, as the profile expects. Amigo Hall has opted for the other part of the profile since his best is from a mare with no Speedy Crown maternally with 1st and 2nd dams through Noble Victory and Super Bowl respectively.

Diesel Don, the full brother to Muscle Hill, is standing in Sweden and has a 2008 crop of 9 two year olds that will be racing this year. The broodmare sires are, as you might expect, all over the map , with Pine Chip the only broodmare sire with more than one.

Giant Chill, with maternal lines of Super Bowl - Nevele Diamond, is also in Sweden and has had a successful career that began in Finland. Being a son of Speedy Crown you would expect that he would not get many Speedy Crown line mares and that is clearly the case for his top performers. In fact 14 of his top 16 have no Speedy Crown maternally. Among these there are 8 that are from Stars Pride line broodmares and in each of these mares there is a Noble Victory line 2nd or 3rd dam.

It would appear that the options for Muscle Hill and Federal Flex boil down to the following priorities:

1. Noble Victory line dams that have a double to Speedy Crown maternally.

I would classify this as a Scenario #2 match since it returns the principle lines of the dam of Muscles Yankee i.e. Speedy Crown and Noble Victory which brings us back to Muscles Yankee as perhaps being the key to success.

2. Stars Pride line dams with no Speedy Crown line but with a Noble Victory line maternally.

This is a Scenario #1 to the extent that you can find the same individuals, namely American Winner (Super Bowl) and Hickory Pride in mares for Muscle Hill, and S Js Photo and Joie De Vie (Super Bowl) in mares for Federal Flex.

If you have any first year sires you are intertested in I would be happy to look at them and see if we can figure them out.