Road to the Derby is Paved with Quality!

I made a $100 win bet on the Fountain of Youth Saturday and I won! That’s right; I loved Quality Road, a son of Elusive Quality out of the Strawberry Road mare Kobla. (Click here to see pedigree) Why? He was lightly raced, he had shown a lot in his first start, which he won at Aqueduct with an eye-catching 101 Beyer, and he was sired by Elusive Quality – one of the best values out there for $75,000 live foal at Darley – one of my favorite stallions.

The year that Elusive Quality went to stud, pedigree expert Sid Fernando and I had a small side bet: Who was the best sleeper or long shot from that crop? Sid picked Distorted Humor, standing for $12,500, a pretty astute choice at the time. I, of course, picked Elusive Quality, who also went to stud very cheap — $10,000.

As it turns out, we both picked wisely! The top two sires by progeny earnings through the first two months of 2009 are Distorted Humor and Elusive Quality, and both have sired a Kentucky Derby winner. For a while it looked like Sid’s pick was going to blow my choice away – Distorted Humor is one of the best stallions in the country and stands for $150,000 – but Elusive Quality has made a strong “stretch run” to narrow the gap, much like his son Raven’s Pass’s amazing move in the Breeders’ Cup Classic last fall.

Now, Elusive Quality has another chance to have a top 3-year-old this year in Kentucky Derby hopeful Quality Road!

One reason why I picked Elusive Quality back in 1999 was because he was a son of the Mr. Prospector stallion Gone West, a stallion who I liked as a sire and as a sire of sires. In fact, it was my mating recommendation to breeder Herman Sarkowsky that resulted in the 1992 foal by Gone West out of Long Legend that became Mr. Greeley.

The reason why I was high on Gone West as a sire and as a sire of sires was because, aside from all the obvious stuff – Mr. Prospector, race record, great female family …yaddayaddayadda – Gone West was out of a Secretariat mare. Take a look at two other stallions out of Secretariat mares: A.P. Indy and Storm Cat!!

At WTC, our internal research – much of it spearheaded by Roger Lyons – forecast that Secretariat had a high probability of becoming an excellent “broodmare sire of sires,” just as we’d forecast that Northern Dancer would not become a successful “broodmare sire of sires.” (Southern Halo is really the only top stallion out of a Northern Dancer mare, and he achieved his greatness in the Southern Hemisphere.)