ANDREW CAULFIELD - EMPIRE MAKER ARTICLE
As a member of the Juddmonte team I may not be totally
impartial, but is there a better broodmare in America (or anywhere
else, for that matter) than Prince Khalid’s extraordinary
Toussaud?
When EMPIRE MAKER marched to the forefront of the Kentucky Derby
betting with his highly impressive display in the Florida Derby, he
improved Toussaud’s record with her six foals of racing age to four
GI winners (Chester House, Honest Lady, Chiselling and EMPIRE
MAKER) and a GII winner (Decarchy). Her record is all the more
remarkable because each of her five Graded winners is by a
different sire, as are her next two foals – a yearling filly by
Seeking The Gold and a filly foal by Kingmambo, which arrived on
the day of EMPIRE MAKER’s victory.
EMPIRE MAKER’s family was introduced to the Juddmonte broodmare
band with the purchase in 1987 of his second dam, Image of Reality.
The mare’s price of $500,000 reflected Image of Reality’s
achievements on the track, which included a victory over the
champion filly It’s In The Air in the GII Milady H. over 1 1/16
miles. Image of Reality’s solid record as a four-year-old earned
her a weight of 118 on the Blood-Horse Free Handicap for older
females, just 8lb below Glorious Song, the top dirt mare.
As a daughter of In Reality and a Cornish Prince mare, Image of
Reality also had the attraction of having a pedigree free of some
of the major sire lines, such as Northern Dancer and Raise A
Native, and she had a good bottom line, too, tracing to the Aga
Khan’s high-class staying filly Teresina.
Image of Reality was in foal to El Gran Senor at the time of her
purchase and she was returned to him in 1988, after foaling a filly
later named Navarra. But for the fertility problems which dogged El
Gran Senor’s career, this brilliant racehorse – a G1 winner from
seven furlongs to 1½ miles – would probably have proved every bit
as exceptional as a stallion. Although some breeders considered him
too big a risk for their best mares, El Gran Senor achieved 14 per
cent stakes winners among his foals, with a magnificent 8 per cent
winning at Group or Graded level to the end of last year. Few
stallions ever match that sort of strike rate.
Image of Reality’s second mating to El Gran Senor resulted in
Toussaud. Unfortunately the mare was to produce only two more live
foals, including the talented English colt Projection (by
Topsider), but she had already done more than enough to justify her
purchase. Navarra won the GIII Vineland H. over a mile and an
eighth after being sold, and has since produced the GIII winner
Indygo Shiner to A.P. Indy, who is scheduled to cover Toussaud
later this spring.
Toussaud began her career with John Gosden in England. Her
potential was pretty obvious from the moment she finished second of
21 in a maiden race on her only start at two and she duly developed
into a G3 winner at three, when she beat the colts in the Criterion
S. over seven furlongs, before returning to race nine times on turf
in her native America. Bobby Frankel sent her out to win the GII
Wilshire H., GI Gamely H. and GII American H., and she was also a
creditable fourth to Lure after a troubled passage in the 1993
Breeders’ Cup Mile. Her chart underlined that she possessed that
extremely valuable asset of being able to quicken significantly.
“Finished well,” “strong late rally,” “strong finish,” “closed with
rush,” and “quick gain between horses” were just some of the
assessments of her performances.
The other notable aspect of Toussaud as a racehorse was that –
in common with many other very talented performers – she showed
plenty of temperament, especially during her morning works and at
the starting gate. This quirkiness sometimes shows up in her
progeny, and EMPIRE MAKER wasn’t too keen to enter the gate at
Gulfstream. Remember, though, that this feistiness can be a plus
rather than a minus, as the Storm Cat clan has demonstrated.
Toussaud is a medium-sized, lengthy mare, with lengthy pasterns
and powerful, broad quarters. She shares these attributes with her
outstanding sire, who was probably also the source of her powers of
acceleration. She has even inherited El Gran Senor’s troublesome
feet, but fortunately hasn’t passed this on to any of her
progeny.
Toussaud stands 16 hands, and her first foal, the Arlington
Million hero Chester House, is a little taller, with plenty of
scope. However, the fact that both her grandsires, Northern Dancer
and In Reality, stood only 15.2 hands made it likely that some of
Toussaud’s offspring would lack size. Sure enough, the excellent
Honest Lady stands only 15.2 hands, despite being by Seattle Slew,
and she was followed by Decarchy and the Gone West colt
Civilisation, both of whom were small as yearlings. Size therefore
became an important consideration in selecting Toussaud’s 1999 mate
and Unbridled, a 16.3-hands son of a 16.3-hands stallion, became
first choice.
Unbridled also appealed strongly on several other scores. His
pasterns were rather upright, which was a bonus for a mare who had
passed on her weak pasterns to several of her foals, with the
exception of the well-conformed Chester House (who is by
Unbridled’s grandsire Mr Prospector). Another incentive was the
fact that mating Toussaud to Unbridled created the same 4 x 3
inbreeding to In Reality which appeared in the pedigree of
Unbridled’s outstanding daughter Banshee Breeze, a triple GI winner
in 1998. Supporting this was the 30-per-cent stakes winners that In
Reality mares had produced among their 20 foals by Fappiano, plus
the 1998 Kentucky Derby success of Real Quiet, who was sired by a
son of Fappiano from a grand-daughter of In Reality.
EMPIRE MAKER was a very attractive and very athletic from the
moment he was born, but he didn’t start to develop into the star of
Juddmonte’s 2000 American crop until the second half of 2001. He
than progressed to such an extent that he went into training with
Bobby Frankel with high hopes that his ambitious name would prove
to be entirely justified. Judging by the ease with which he
travelled throughout the Florida Derby, he could well become an
EMPIRE MAKER now that blinkers are helping him to concentrate. The
extra furlong of the Derby will be no problem to him and he must
have every chance of going one better than Juddmonte’s last
Kentucky Derby challenger, the 2000 runner-up Aptitude.
But, as everyone knows, the road to Churchill Downs is packed
with pitfalls and the next seven weeks are going to be enjoyably
nerve-racking for everyone involved with this exciting colt.
Article Published in the TDN on the 18th March.
Date: 19 March 2003