Racing Opportunity
Why We Bought This Horse
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This 2024 Wasabi Ventures Stables Homebred Weanling is offered as part of the 2024 - 2025 Weanling Program(read the addendum).
She is MD-bred, KY-Sired, and will soon spend 6 months in Virginia to become VA-certified. This filly went through the KEE Nov 2024 sale and we bought her back for $19,000.
Wasabi acquired the well-bred young Ghostzapper mare Giving Spirit at the 2024 Keeneland January Sale, and while much of our interest in her stemmed from the the fact that her 3YO half-brother Maycocks Bay showed stakes potential in his recent allowance win at Fair Grounds (where he earned a 95 Beyer), it certainly did not dissuade us that she was carrying her first foal on a March 7th cover to one of our favorite proven Kentucky sires in Midshipman.
A winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile-G1 and Eclipse Champion 2YO, Midshipman has carved out a successful stallion career at Darley by siring precocious and versatile runners like he was himself, with his best runners including the Chilean Triple Crown winner Fortino and G1W Royal Ship (also a graded winner in the USA), as well as graded stakes winners like Dearest, Lady Shipman (the dam of Golden Pal), Special Reserve, Princess Warrior, Fun and Feisty, etc. He is also the sire of 2023 juvenile stakes winners Amidst Waves and Ship Cadet. His 6% stakes winners/foals and 13% stakes horses/foals are both very strong numbers for a stallion that stands at the $20k or under level -- especially when you look at his 1.34 AEI to 1.17 CI ratio -- and he can get a solid sales horse as well.
As a stallion with plenty of size, bone and substance without being too large or coarse, he makes a great physical match for a young mare like Giving Spirit, and his proclivities should match up nicely with the precocity and surface versatility in her immediate family.
The cross of Unbridled's Song's sons with mares by Ghostzapper rates an "A+" on TrueNicks with a small sample size (two stakes winners from 20 runners overall, and Midshipman has just one runner out of a Ghostzapper mare so far), and Midshipman with Medaglia d'Oro mares (he being Giving Spirit's broodmare sire) has produced Grade 3 winner Naval Laughter and the black-type placed Doc Amster from six runners and four winners bred that way. (And Midshipman crossed with mares who have Medaglia d'Oro as their broodmare sire is two-for-two producing winners.)
