Big weekend for sons of A.P. Indy: Pulpit, Malibu Moon, Indy King

By Sid Fernando

It was a big weekend for three sons of A.P. Indy, two of whom are household names in breeding circles: Pulpit and Malibu Moon. The third is Indy King, an unheralded stallion who stands in Indiana, where Cat Dreams, the Storm Cat sire of Caracortado also stands, though not at the same farm.

Pulpit is the sire of G1 Florida Derby winner Ice Box. Malibu Moon is the sire of G2 Bonnie Miss Stakes winner Devil May Care. And Indy King? He’s the sire of Pleasant Prince, who was 2nd by a nose to Ice Box in the Florida Derby, held Saturday at Gulfstream Park, along with the Bonnie Miss. Both Ice Box and Pleasant Prince are headed to the Derby, while the filly Devil May Care has the Kentucky Oaks noted on her dance card. But Malibu Moon also has a Derby contender in Odysseus, who won the Tampa Bay Derby the weekend before.

The three sons of A.P. Indy spanned the range of racing class but are similarly bred. Pulpit, the best runner of the three, was a G2 winner of the Blue Grass Stakes who won 4 of 6 starts and earned $728,200; Malibu Moon raced only at 2 and won 1 of his 2 starts, a maiden special; and Indy King was unraced, though he sold at a yearling sale for $2,200,000. Each is out of a Mr. Prospector mare.

Enough has been written about Pulpit and Malibu Moon—including an excellent piece in today’s TDN by Andrew Caulfield that compares the two sires—but Indy King is an unknown. He is owned by Frank Stronach’s Adena Springs (Stronach purchased the colt at auction) and began his career at Adena Springs South in Florida but is now standing at Eric and Leigh Ann Richwine’s eponymous Richwine Farm in East Anderson, Indiana. B. Wayne Hughes, the majority owner of Malibu Moon, also once stood Cat Dreams in California, as he had Malibu Moon in Maryland in that horse’s first years at stud, but Cat Dreams has since been sold to another farm in Indiana, which means that Indiana is the home to two well-bred stallions by Storm Cat and A.P. Indy with current 3yos on the Triple Crown trail.

Back to Indy King, he’s out of the grand racemare Queena, a winner of three G1 races and the dam of G1 winner Brahms and G3 winner La Reina (also by A.P. Indy), and he was bred by Emory A. Hamilton. This is the immediate family of Too Chic (the 2nd dam) and in tail-female traces to Monade, a tap-root mare for Ms. Hamilton’s family’s storied King Ranch. Too Chic, in fact, was bred by King Ranch but her daughter Queena was bred by Ms. Hamilton (then Emory Alexander; sister Helen’s Middlebrook Farm consigned Indy King to the September sale where Stronach bought him).

Pleasant Prince

Pleasant Prince and Ice Box both made strong late rallies in the Florida Derby and only a nose separated them at the finish. Both have the look of late-maturing runners so typical for the A.P. Indys. Pleasant Prince to date has won only 1 race from 7 starts, though he is now G1-placed and Derby bound. He did win a one-mile maiden special at 2 last year, and this year he’s been raced exclusively at 1 1/8 miles and has the racing style, pedigree, and feel of a stayer.

He’s out of the Pleasant Tap mare Archduchess and was bred by Adena Springs, which consigned him to the 2008 OBS August sale where his current owners, Ken and Sarah Ramsey, purchased him for $30,000. Adena had sold the colt’s dam, in foal to Milwaukee Brew, for $12,000 at the 2007 Keeneland November sale. The buyer was William Boorhem’s Foxwood Plantation in Belcher, Louisiana. Foxwood stands two leading state sires in Zarbyev and Run Production—whose sale to Foxwood was engineered by WTC founder Jack Werk.

Boorhem said Archduchess, a half-sister to G3 winner Mark One and Japanese SW Daiwa Carson, was bred to Run Production. “The guy who sold me the mare wants to buy her back,” the Foxwood Plantation owner said.