2025 Blofeld - Queen Ann Individual Foal

Why We Bought This Horse

• Queen Ann was covered on March 28, 2024, by Blofeld and checked in and confirmed in foal on April 9, 2024.   Our anticipation is that this foal will be Kentucky-bred.
• This is a 2024 Individual Foal Offering and is subject to the WVS Individual Foal Program Addendum to the Wasabi Ventures Stables Thoroughbred Management Agreement.   
•   Highlights of the program:
  • Fixed Price on the Offering - No Ongoing Bills
  • Limited Exposure - Like WVS Racing Programs, there is no chance for Future Expenses. If the Foal offering loses money, WVS absorbs those costs
  • Finite Time - The Foal Offering will be liquidated at the time of his/her weaning from the mare, so you know when an offering ends.  Because you are not buying the mare, you have a finite time period of commitment (e.g. 6 to 18 months)
  • Reduced Risk - WVS will only open a Foal Offering once a mare has checked in foal to the chosen stallion
  • Perpetual Breeders Bonuses - Even after the foal is sold, a Club member can continue to earn breeding bonuses for the racing life of the horse.
  • You can watch a video about this program by visiting here. 

The BASE PRICE of this foal is $31,267

• Mare Lease $2,667
• Stallion Fee - $4,000
• Vanning Expense - $2,000
• Boarding Fee Estimate - $19,000
• Vet Estimate - $3,000
• Registration Fees (Jockey Club and State Fees) - $600

The recently acquired broodmare prospect Queen Ann comes from a deep and active Claiborne Farm family tracing back through the champion- and classic-producer Alluvial to champion Bayou, a full-sister to Broodmare of the Year Levee and a half-sister to Broodmare of the Year Delta. As a daughter of the extremely promising young broodmare sire Blame (whose daughters have already produced Eclipse Champion Forte, plus other Graded Stakes Winners One Timer, Sacred and Danse Macabre, plus the Grade 1-placed young stallion Loggins and exciting Australian juvenile of '24 Switzerland), both sides of Queen Ann’s pedigree suggest that she has every right to be a successful producer herself, and for her first mating she will get a shot with the exciting up-and-coming Maryland stallion Blofeld.

If you’ve been reading our blog then you know how highly we think of Blofeld by now. With three crops totaling 74 foals so far of racing age, he has 44 winners from 55 to race, including 5 black-type winners (6.8% to foals, 9.1% to runners) and another 6 black-type placed offspring (for a total of 14.9% black-type earners/foals, and an astronomical 20% black-type earners/runners). His average starter earns north of $84,500 and his runners’ median earnings sits at over $63,000. He sports a fantastic 1.45 AEI/1.13 CI ratio – meaning he’s achieving these stats without significant help from his mates.  After his son Johnyz From Albany and daughter Chickieness swept the 2022 Maryland Million 2YO races, Blofeld picked up back-to-back winners of the Maryland Million Lassie when Miss Harriett scored a gutsy win in that race in ‘23, and then most recently his first-crop daughter Charming Way took the open company Nellie Morse Stakes going 1-1/16 miles as a 5YO. Off the strength of these racetrack results, Blofeld has covered more mares than any stallion in the state for the last two years.

That most recent stakes winner (and now his leading earner), Charming Way, is out of a mare by More Than Ready (a Hail To Reason-line stallion like Blame) from a dam by Seeking the Gold’s son Cape Town — the latter point being noteworthy given that Blame’s dam is a Seeking the Gold mare. So there is every reason to think that this cross should work well (TrueNicks rates the broad Elusive Quality/Kris S. cross as a “C” thanks to a Grade 3 winner and a pair of additional black-type winners bred this way).

When we look a little further back, Queen Ann’s own broodmare sire is the Danzig son War Front, and Blofeld has black-type winner Alpine Mist to his credit from a daughter of Danzig’s son Brahms, plus several additional winners out of Danzig-line mares (Blofeld’s sire Quality Road also has the black-type winner Ethereal Road out of a War Front mare). And then Queen Ann’s second dam, the black-type winner Cross, is a daughter of Mighty, by Lord At War, and the cross of Blofeld’s grandsire Elusive Quality with a Lord At War mare produced the multiple Grade/Group 1 winner Raven’s Pass.

So there is plenty on paper to recommend this match, and as you’ve heard us say before, we always prefer to start a young mare out with a proven mate when feasible. Blofeld certainly qualifies as such at the moment, given how well he’s done at getting winners and solid earners, and hopefully, he’ll help Queen Ann start her reproductive career off strongly.

These two also match up nicely on physical and proclivities. Blofeld was an undefeated, multiple Graded Stakes-winning 2YO and already has a trio of Maryland Million juvenile winners to his credit at stud, while Blame is the broodmare sire of Eclipse Champion 2YO Forte, War Front is a renowned juvenile influence (sire of 2YO G1Ws like Air Force Blue, US Navy Flag, Hit It a Bomb, Roly Poly, etc), and Queen Ann’s dam is a half to a pair of Grade 2-winning 2YO fillies.

Physically-speaking, Blofeld is a strong, lengthy, leggy horse much in the mold of his sire Quality Road, and he is a nice like-to-like match for the stoutly-made Queen Ann (who was good-looking enough to bring six-figures as a sale yearling). We can wait to see the beautiful and talented foal that this mating is bound to produce in 2025!