Monday, January 23, 2012

A brief on Lucky Pulpit

I've had the experience a couple of times of seeing that a horse had Pulpit in its name, thinking it was by Pulpit, and then being disappointed finding out that the sire was in fact Lucky Pulpit. My associations with Lucky Pulpit are few if not non-existent. When I came across not one Lucky Pulpit with Pulpit in the name winning at Santa Anita Saturday, but two, I figured it was time to learn more about him. I also know that his Rousing Sermon impressed the hell out of me when 2nd in the CashCall Futurity, so we may all be hearing a lot more about Lucky Pulpit soon.

A 3rd-crop sire, if you count the crop of 2010 as an active crop, Lucky Pulpit has had 50 foals in his first two crops, with 26 starters, and 20 winners. That he's making any noise at all with just 26 starters is notable. He's been outstanding in cumulative wins from starts, bordering on 22%.

You probably can't put too much stock in AEI and CI with such a low-sample-size sire, but his ratio there is impressive at 1.96 to 1.26. The 1.26 suggests that, while Harris Farms may be supporting him, the quality of his mares hasn't really belied his $2,500 stud fee. When I see the Lucky Pulpits succeeding, this isn't something I should have expected.

The people who raced him, Mr. and Mrs. Larry D. Williams, seem to be breeding and racing a lot of the better ones, by the way. Maybe they're breeding most of them, period, and that's why the good ones keep showing up under their name.

His two stakes winners are Rousing Sermon (Cal Cup Juvenile) and Luckarack. Luckarack's first try at a graded stake in the recent grade I Malibu exceeded expectations when he was 4th. He's won stakes at Pleasanton, Santa Rose, and Fairplex, but has also run in one maiden claimer and three claiming races, and they came at all different points of his career.

The Lucky Pulpit Woodman's Luck was 2nd in the Snow Chief. While a California-bred race, it's one of the better and richer California-bred races.

One of the Lucky Pulpits who broke his maiden Saturday, Pulpit's Express, did so in 1:08.62, which I estimate to be a 96 figure on my Beyer-scale figures. Pulpit's Express was only making his 2nd start and won by 7 1/2 lengths, but did win in a $30,000 maiden claiming race. He also has the Mike Mitchell factor going for him.

At first glance, Lucky Pulpit doesn't have the race record of a sire: he only won 3 of 22 starts. Not only did he not make it big, but he never really looked like he would. The successful stallions with modest race records horses are often phenoms who flamed out. Two of Lucky Pulpit's wins did come in his first three starts, though, and came before September of his 2-year-old year. He could run on dirt or turf, and short or middle-distance, but was best on the turf, and probably best sprinting on the turf. He showed good early speed in his races, and in fact I would guess that rankness was his downfall. He ran one race that really leaps out at me, a 2nd by 1 1/2 lengths to St Averil in the grade II Santa Catalina. He earned his ticket to the San Rafael and Santa Anita Derby with that. St Averil got a 102 Beyer in the race.

Being by Pulpit is obviously a plus for a potential stallion, both because he has been a very good sire, and because he has sired a superstar stallion like Tapit. Lucky Pulpit's dam and 2nd dam have mediocre records as stakes producers (as far as stallions go), but his dam is a 3/4 sister to the dam of Unbridled's Song. So maybe that's the effect that is driving Lucky Pulpit to be an early surprise.

I do stress "early"; even at this stage, the number of stallions who get my attention in a passing way include more who don't catch on than do.

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