Considerations of a horse's potential at stud begins with its race record. Then you can spin the race record to explain why it might be more promising for a sire or dam than it appears at face value. When you see a horse with a 5 1 1 1, $32,230 line receiving a shot at stud, you're not thinking that one win came in a mile-and-a-quarter maiden special weight at Belmont Park, but that was the case with Untuttable. This seems like absolutely no qualification to be a stallion at all. It doesn't appear to be the case that Untuttable stayed with the man who raced him, who just had a soft spot for him, or an abiding belief in him, despite what he did in his races, either. I never knew Ned Evans to have Untuttables, and I know that Untuttable now stands at Gilbert Campbell's farm in Florida. Apparently, Campbell's first stallion was Shananie, and Untuttable is out of an In Reality mare. In Reality was the sire of Shananie, so that may be part of the appeal to Campbell. Untuttable's 3rd dam is also Gold Digger, dam of Mr. Prospector. His first two dams do not appear to be particularly impressive.
Another oddity with Untuttable is that his one really good offspring, This Ones for Phil is a pronounced sprinter on the dirt -- exactly the kind of profile that might enhance a stallion's race record, and the kind of horse one would fear Untuttable would never sire. I don't want to paint this post, though, as the unlikely story of Untuttable's success -- my impression is he's been given something of an opportunity, but has been quite a bad stallion, just as one would expect him to be.
It's not the case that he just happened to run and win in a 10-furlong maiden special weight on the turf, got hurt, and never got around to the more stallion-friendly races he might have handled as successfully as long races on the turf. He never ran under a mile, and in his two dirt races he finished 9th.
No comments:
Post a Comment