By Frances J. Karon
Sires of winners of last weekend’s 18 Graded stakes races in N.A. include horses whose names we’re accustomed to seeing in this type of race…Curlin and his sire Smart Strike, Uncle Mo, More Than Ready, Empire Maker and his son Pioneerof the Nile, Giant’s Causeway, Harlan’s Holiday, and Union Rags.
Not in that category are the sires of Mongolian Groom, winner of the G1 Awesome Again at Santa Anita, and Here’s Hannah, first in the G3 Ballerina at Hastings, each provided their sires, both of whom are representatives of the A.P. Indy male line, with their first career GSWs.
Numaany, who is responsible for Here’s Hannah, is a son of A.P. Indy and the stakes-winning Nijinsky II mare Munnaya, who’s also the dam of G1 Travers and Woodward winner Alpha (by Bernardini, by A.P. Indy), a Sequel Stallions New York stud. This is the family of Canadian champion Kamar (Numaany’s third dam), who produced Canadian champion Key to the Moon and G1SWs Gorgeous and Seaside Attraction (dam of sires Cape Town and Cape Canaveral). Kamar is also the granddam of G1SW/sire Fantastic Light.
Bred to be a good horse, Numaany wasn’t particularly special but did come out on top in nine of his 34 starts, with two wins in the U.S., seven in Canada, and his lone stakes-placing, third in the Listed Al Bastakiya at Nad al Sheba, as a 3yo in Dubai. He raced through the age of six before going to stud in British Columbia, Canada, first at Road’s End Farm and later at Canmor Farms. He covered 23 mares in 2018, but I’m not certain if he remains an active stallion.
Four-year-old Here’s Hannah is one of two SWs from Numaany’s 26 registered foals of racing age. She’s from his second crop (five foals), and she’s well known at her home track of Hastings in British Columbia, where she’s made all 14 of her starts. A homebred for B C Stables and trained by John Morrison, Here’s Hannah has 12 wins, a second, and a third in 14 starts, and she has earned a total of $388,694 (USD). The 2018 BC Horse of the Year, she was in the running for that year’s Sovereign Award for champion 3yo filly.
It’s fitting that her dam, the A Fleets Dancer mare Dreams Start Here, was bred to Numaany, a horse bred and raced by Shadwell, who also bred Here’s Hannah’s second dam I Timad, as well as that mare’s sire Kayrawan and dam Ra’a.
Here’s Hannah’s A.P. Indy/Afleet cross has yielded four SWs, including G3SW Suddenbreakingnews, a son of Mineshaft (by A.P. Indy).
Mineshaft is the sire of Hightail, whose 24 foals of racing age include Mongolian Groom, who was multiple G1 placed before his breakthrough win in the Awesome Again.
Hightail was a $110,000 Keeneland September yearling, sold to Cory Wagner by Greenfield Farm on the behalf of breeder Green Hills Farm, Inc., and a $345,000 OBS March 2yo, bought from the Wavertree Stables consignment by D. Wayne Lukas, acting for Brad Kelley’s Bluegrass Hall (now Calumet Farm). He only won a single race in 10 attempts — all at two — but it was a big one, the Listed $500,000 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Sprint. He was second once and twice third, earning nearly $360,000, before a fractured sesamoid forced retirement.
The three foals produced from his first crop include his only other stakes winner, Dynatail. Now five, she remains active and won the Salvatore M. Debunta PTHA President’s Cup, her fourth black-type win, at Parx in early September, and she’s earned over $520,000.
Mongolian Groom is one of Hightail’s two foals from his second crop, his last in Kentucky before he moved to Arkansas, where he stood the 2019 season for $2,500 at Trophy Club Training Center. Mongolian Groom’s sale for $11,000 from the Paramount Sales draft at the Fasig-Tipton October yearling sale suggests that he’s an attractive individual, although when he was spun around into a 2yo sale at OBS in April, Mongolian Stable bought him for only $12,000, a significant loss for his yearling buyer Calcutta Thoroughbreds.
Enebish Ganbat, formerly in the headlines as trainer of G1 Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint winner Mongolian Saturday, has sent the 4yo gelding out to win three of his 16 starts, with two seconds, three thirds, and just under $580,000.
Mongolian Groom shares several similarities with Dynatail: both are Calumet-breds sold as yearlings and produced from daughters of Dynaformer. Dynaformer has at least 10 SWs sired by sons or grandsons of A.P. Indy, but Mongolian Groom is the first G1SW in the U.S. bred on the cross.
On an unrelated note, it was good to see Empire Maker get his first SW, Eight Rings, from his first crop of 2yos since his return from Japan. Eight Rings (who like champions American Pharoah and Classic Empire is bred on the Empire Maker/Storm Cat cross) won the G1 American Pharoah, a race named for Empire Maker’s paternal grandson, defeating American Pharoah’s first-crop son American Theorem (second) in the process. Meanwhile, another new GSW of the weekend was G3 BC Premier’s Handicap winner Brave Nation, a son of Pioneerof the Nile — son of Empire Maker and sire of American Pharoah, so that’s three direct generations of one sireline with Graded stakes horses at the weekeend.