Building Unicorns

This is the beginning of strategy #2. The basic concept is to recreate what Phyllis Mills Wyeth did when she bred Union Rags. Union Rags was a unicorn because he had the precocity to win the Saratoga Special and Champagne, but also the stamina to win the Belmont Stakes.

Strategy #1 was to breed classic stamina oriented sires with classically bred stamina oriented mares (or plodders to plodders in the eyes of many), and hope that you can get them cheap because they are not the popular horses at the sales. I still believe in this strategy, but it is difficult to execute because those horses are RNAed or mysteriously withdrawn at the sales. I am not giving up, I am just investigating an alternative.

Strategy #2 still involves stamina, it just tries to acquire it a little differently. I want to find a second dam that is a special distance oriented race horse that can pass along just enough of her characteristics to build a unicorn. In this strategy, the dam is often an underachiever or lightly raced horse.

Lets review what Mrs. Mills Wyeth did to create Union Rags. She had a mare named Tempo that had been bred by her mother (part of the duPont family). Tempo ran three times for Bill Mott. Her last race was a solid 94 Equibase fig finish second in an allowance race at Aqueduct going a mile. Tempo was special because her mother was Terpsichorist, an 11 for 28 long distance stakes horse for Woody Stephens. Terpsichorist was also regally bred, sired by Nijinsky out of a British Champion mare named Glad Rags.

Union Rag’s second dam was a very special horse, and is the key to strategy #2, now called the unicorn strategy. Tempo was the result of breeding Terpsichorist with Gone West, not a classic horse, but more of a miler. In my unicorn strategy the dam sire is often a miler. Mrs. Mills Wyeth tried Tempo with many different sires, but succeeded with Dixie Union. Dixie Union was a precocious speed horse that could stretch out.

Union Rags was 3/4 precocious “miler maybe more” big solid Mr. Prospector, Danzig, Storm Cat type of horse, mixed with 1/4 of special Euro-oriented long distance pedigree.

This is the magic used to build unicorns in strategy #2. The hope is these horses will actually sell at a sale, not dangled out there only to lost to RNAs and withdrawals.