In-depth Analysis

by Andrew Caulfield

SIRE LINE:
As one of the definitions of the word aptitude is “natural ability,” the Juddmonte home-bred was very appropriately named. Natural ability helped Aptitude develop into an outstanding Gr.1 winner, in the process fulfilling the tremendous potential of his illustrious bloodlines.

Aptitude is a worthy representative of a flourishing male line. Both his grandsire Seattle Slew and his sire A.P. Indy earned the title of Horse of the Year at the age of three and Seattle Slew was also a champion at two and four. By the time the legendary “Slew” completed his tremendous Triple Crown sequence in 1977, his record stood at a perfect nine wins from nine starts and he finally retired as a winner of 14 of his 17 starts, with two of the defeats coming in very tight finishes.

Seattle Slew was also phenomenally successful as a stallion. Indeed, few stallions can ever have made such a big impact over so wide a time-scale. His first foals, born in 1980, helped him make a sensational start, with this crop of 30 named foals containing the champions Landaluce and Slew o’Gold and their fellow Gr.1 winners Slewpy and Adored. Remarkably, Seattle Slew went close to matching that feat with a crop born 18 years later, which was headed by the Gr.1 winners Flute, Fleet Renee and Scorpion. His final Gr.1 winner, the champion two-year-old colt Vindication, was conceived when Seattle Slew was 25 and the great stallion’s total of stakes winners stands at 114 – more than 10 per cent of his output.

Seattle Slew’s enormous charisma has ensured that plenty of his sons have been given their chance at stud, even if they weren’t major winners. A large number have repaid the faith shown in them, with many siring Graded Stakes winners. The title of Seattle Slew’s most successful stallion son – with an AEI of 3.22 - must go to Aptitude’s sire A.P. Indy, who consistently commands a fee of $300,000.

Fame beckoned for A.P. Indy from the moment he entered the Keeneland sales ring as a yearling in 1990. As a half-brother to the classic-winning Summer Squall, from the outstanding Gay Missile female line, this son of Seattle Slew had a magnificent pedigree. He also possessed impressive good looks, to the extent that he topped the sale, at $2,900,000.

A.P. Indy proved to be worth every cent. His four-race juvenile campaign ended with three victories, including one in the Gr.1 Hollywood Futurity, and A.P. Indy was rated inferior only to Bertrando among the American juveniles on the Experimental Free Handicap. The colt continued to strengthen his claims as the leading home-trained contender for the Kentucky Derby, taking both the Gr.2 San Rafael Stakes and the Gr.1 Santa Anita Derby, but he had to miss the Derby with a badly bruised foot. The setback proved short-lived and A.P. Indy was back on the track before the end of May, when he easily stretched his winning sequence to six in the Gr.2 Peter Pan Stakes. The winning run continued in the Belmont Stakes, when he followed Swale as the second son of Seattle Slew to emulate his sire’s victory in the last leg of the Triple Crown.

Even though a couple of defeats followed, A.P. Indy returned to his formidable best when he tackled the best of the older horses in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, winning by 2 lengths from Pleasant Tap. This victory helped clinch the titles of champion three-year-old and Horse of the Year, and he could also claim to be very versatile, having won Graded Stakes over eight, nine, ten and 12 furlongs as a three-year-old.

Like Seattle Slew and Slew o’Gold before him, A.P. Indy made a flying start to his stallion career, with a spectacular total of 13 stakes winners among the 45 named foals in his first crop. As many as ten members of this first crop became Graded Stakes winners, with three scoring at the top level. The Gr.1 winners have continued to flow, with at least one emerging from every one of A.P. Indy’s first 12 crops. His position as one of the highest-priced stallions in Kentucky reflects his ability to sire Graded winners in bulk, a good example being his 1999 crop which produced eight Graded winners headed by Horse of the Year Mineshaft, the champion two-year-old filly Tempera and the CCA Oaks winner Jilbab. The 2002 crop contained nine Graded winners and the 2003 and 2004 crops each contained a champion three-year-old, in Bernardini and Rags To Riches.

A.P. Indy’s sons are now busily carrying on the good work. The unproven Bernardini is the highest-priced, at $100,000, and Pulpit has done so well that he regularly commands a fee of $80,000, thanks to such as Corinthian, Purge, Sky Mesa, Stroll, Rutherienne and Tapit. The twice-raced Malibu Moon is now priced at $40,000, his main achievement being his champion son Declan’s Moon, the best juvenile male of 2004. The 2005 Eclipse Award for best juvenile male also went to a grandson of A.P. Indy, with the honor going to Stephen Got Even’s son Stevie Wonderboy. Three other sons, Aptitude, Golden Missile and the short-lived Old Trieste, have also sired Gr.1 winners, with Old Trieste supplying the winner of the Breeders’ Cup Sprint on the same day that Stephen Got Even supplied the winner of the Juvenile.

FEMALE LINE:
Aptitude’s family was introduced to the Juddmonte Farms’ broodmare band with the purchase of his dam, Dokki. This daughter of Northern Dancer was one of the most in-demand fillies at Keeneland’s 1987 Summer Sale, with her price of $950,000 reflecting the fact that her dam Alluvial had already produced two colts of the highest class. The first, Coastal, ranked second only to the great Spectacular Bid among the three-year-old colts of 1979, when he numbered the Belmont Stakes, Monmouth Invitational and Dwyer Handicap among his six victories. Alluvial’s Seattle Slew colt, Slew o’Gold, was even better. A winner of two of his three juvenile starts, Slew o’Gold went on to become the leader of his generation both at three and four years, building up a total of seven Gr.1 victories.

Dokki has now matched her dam’s feat of producing two Gr.1 winners. Sent to Seattle Slew, the sire of one of her distinguished half-brothers, she produced Sleep Easy, one of the best three-year-old fillies of 1995. Having made an impressive winning debut over 6½ furlongs, Sleep Easy was soon tackling stakes company, recording victories in the Gr.2 Railbird Stakes over 7 furlongs and the Gr.1 Hollywood Oaks over 1 1/8 miles. She then showed that she was equally at home on turf as on the main track, failing by only a nose to take the Gr.1 Del Mar Oaks prior to winning the Marie P. DeBartolo Memorial Oaks. Sleep Easy’s exploits in 1995 resulted in Dokki visiting Seattle Slew’s son A.P. Indy in 1996, with Aptitude the outcome.

Dokki’s success as a broodmare comes as absolutely no surprise because she is a member of the outstanding Bourtai family. Bourtai owes her position as one of the most significant broodmares of the last 50 years to her stakes-winning daughters Banta, Delta, Levee and Bayou, with each of these mares developing a flourishing branch of the family. Levee and Bayou were full-sisters. Both were very good, with Levee winning the CCA Oaks, Monmouth Oaks and Beldame Stakes, while Bayou secured the title of champion three-year-old filly with her successes in the Acorn Stakes, Delaware Oaks and Gazelle Handicap. Levee’s branch of the family has produced such standouts as Shuvee and Sacahuista, while the likes of War Pass, Batteur, Anifa, Slew’s Exceller, River Flyer and Victory Ride rank among Bayou’s Gr.1-winning descendants.

This family can produce top performers on dirt and turf and the Delta branch of the family has excelled in Europe, producing the major winners Playful Act, Croco Rouge, Sleepytime, Ali-Royal and Taipan in recent years.

PERFORMANCE:
Over the years, Andy Beyer’s Speed Figures have established themselves as a very accurate means of measuring a horse’s class and in 2001 they graphically charted Aptitude’s development into one of America’s most talented performers.

On July 1, in winning the Gr.1 Hollywood Gold Cup, Aptitude achieved the very respectable figure of 107. Then in August, while carrying top weight of 122 lb in the Gr.2 Saratoga Breeders’ Cup Handicap, Aptitude stepped up another notch, recording the excellent figure of 116 as he sprinted home more than four lengths clear. “He really accelerated turning for home and opened up pretty easily,” reported winning rider Jerry Bailey.

However, the true measure of Aptitude’s ability came on October 6, when Aptitude won the Gr.1 Jockey Club Gold Cup by 10 ¾ lengths, one of the largest winning margins in this prestigious race’s long history. This time Aptitude’s victory was awarded a Beyer Speed Figure of 123, the highest Beyer of any horse in training in 2001.

“Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, the race was over,” Steve Haskin reported in The Blood-Horse. “Aptitude just blew by Generous Rosi and Albert the Great and opened up a four-length lead in a matter of a few strides.”

“If anyone was brilliant, it was Aptitude,” was the assessment of winning rider Jerry Bailey. “I just went along for the ride.”

This sequence of increasingly outstanding performances earned Aptitude the position of favorite for the Breeders’ Cup Classic, even though the opposition featured the previous year’s winner Tiznow, the impressive Arc winner Sakhee and the dual Derby winner Galileo. Unfortunately, Bobby Frankel’s expectations suffered a serious blow when the draw for starting positions was made, with Aptitude drawing the 12th slot in a 13-horse field. “Terrible, just terrible,” was Frankel’s reaction, and his fears were realised when Aptitude, racing on the outside, was carried even wider while trying to accelerate on the final turn.

Aptitude had also ranked among the leaders of his generation as a three-year-old, to the extent that the compilers of the International Classifications rated him inferior only to Fusaichi Pegasus and Tiznow among the American performers.

Aptitude had started his career with two starts on turf as a juvenile, finishing well to be a half-length second at Hollywood Park in the second of them. It wasn’t until he switched to dirt, though, that he began to establish his classic claims. Aptitude broke his maiden on January 1 over 1 1/16 miles at Santa Anita, defeating the future Santa Anita Handicap third Tribunal. This effort earned Aptitude the right to tackle the best colts of his generation in Graded Stakes, starting with an unlucky second in the Gr.3 Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct. Let The Blood-Horse report tell the story:

“Aptitude, meanwhile, had moved up steadily along the inside, and when Brice Blanc eased him off the rail, he found himself behind the entire field, with nothing even resembling a hole in front of him. There was a brief thought of squeezing between Red Bullet and Performing Magic, but that didn’t last long. His only recourse was to grab hold of his colt, make a right-hand turn and steer him to the outside.” Red Bullet, in the meantime, had burst into a two-length lead. “But Aptitude was back in full stride and was flying out in the middle of the track. They had gone the three-quarters in a sharp 1:09.70, but both colts were running strongly, pulling away from the field. Red Bullet still held a clear lead and came home his final quarter in a sensational :24 flat, but Aptitude amazingly was closing in with every stride. Both colts were reaching down beautifully and showing no signs of slowing down. At the wire Red Bullet held on to win by a half-length. Aptitude, despite racing sideways for several strides and losing a good deal of ground, still managed to come home his final quarter in about :23 4/5.” Red Bullet, of course went on to win the Preakness Stakes.

Aptitude’s next step on the road to the Kentucky Derby came in the Gr.2 Wood Memorial Stakes, where his relative inexperience told against him. “Aptitude ran into trouble on the first turn, getting bumped and shuffled back, losing his position,” reported The Blood-Horse. Aptitude recovered well, coming with a long, sustained rally to finish third, behind Fusaichi Pegasus and Red Bullet.

With a clearer run, Aptitude showed his true worth in the Churchill Downs classic. Still only eighth after a mile, and forced wide into the stretch, he again produced a spectacular finishing effort to reduce Fusaichi Pegasus’ winning margin to 1½ lengths. He was at least four lengths clear of 17 others, including More Than Ready, Captain Steve, War Chant, Trippi, Anees, High Yield and Commendable.

Held up too far back off a slow pace in the Gr.1 Belmont Stakes, Aptitude again closed very well to be second. Rested for a while, he returned to win an allowance at Churchill Downs in October. Altogether, this quality colt established a record of five wins, four seconds and two thirds from 14 starts, for earnings of $1,845,410.

STALLION CAREER:
Even though he didn’t win at two and was at his best at four, Aptitude underlined his potential by siring 11 juvenile winners in his first crop and 14 in his second, including the Gr.1 Lane’s End Breeders’ Futurity winner Great Hunter. Predictably, many of his progeny have also continued to flourish in their second season – to the extent that he ended 2006 as the year’s leading second-crop sire, ahead of such as Broken Vow and El Corredor.

No fewer than six of Aptitude’s progeny performed strongly at Graded level in 2007, with Great Hunter leading the way with his victory in the Gr.2 Robert B. Lewis Stakes. Others to have performed creditably at Gr.2 level include Augment (a close second in the Del Mar Derby), Level Red (third in San Felipe Stakes) and Outperformance (third in the Dixie and Firecracker Handicaps). Aptitude’s daughter Dashes N Dots was third in the Gr.3 Regret Stakes, while Well Said took third in the Gr.3 Mineshaft Handicap. He was also ably represented in France by the three-year-old Cristobal, a winner of two Listed races.

There are plenty of turf performers among Aptitude’s best winners and this top-class dirt performer is another who looks well equipped to cope with any shift in emphasis as more tracks convert to synthetic surfaces. His sire A.P. Indy ranked among the leading synthetic sires of 2007 and Aptitude’s broodmare sire is the all-conquering Northern Dancer.