Monday, January 23, 2012

Don't Trick Her and Another Vegetarian -- where's "it" coming from?

Include Me Out romped in Sunday's grade II La Canada stakes, procuring her first stakes win. She is out of Don't Trick Her, also the dam of grade I winner, Check the Label, as well as the very useful stakes winner, On the Menu. In other words, Don't Trick Her could perhaps be argued to be a blue hen.

6Her half sister, Another Vegetarian may be equally good as a producer. She's the dam of millionaire and grade I winner, Sweet Talker, as well as Silver Medallion, a 4-year-old who has won grade IIIs in his last two starts. It wouldn't surprise me if Silver Medallion attained the elite level and had one of those years, blossoming late in his career, like Pletcher's Life At Ten had a couple of years back.

It's hard not to draw some connection between the tremendous success of Don't Trick Her and Another Vegetarian. For one thing, they tend to get turf horses, consistent with being out of a Northjet mare. It must be something about that female line that is driving the success. Particularly when you consider that a) neither mare won a race b) neither mare is by a notable stallion c) neither mare has been bred to notable stallions (certainly not for their graded stakes winners, anyway). It is really the damndest thing.

They aren't by good stallions and weren't bred to good stallions because their dam didn't do anything amazing. According to pedigreequery, Lucy Sims' highest-earning horse was Tiffany Diamond, who won $269,000 in the mid 1990s.

We can use our imaginations, and label Don't Trick Her a talent on the track who got hurt and never got to show it. We can say that Another Vegetarian, 0 for 4 in her career, would have flourished on the turf. Their offspring are just doing what they would have done, if they'd had better luck. Or we can speculate that the sisters have something they pass on repeatedly, that for some reason hasn't come out in their family for generations. But really, it's the damndest thing.

No comments:

Post a Comment