Coolmore Hype

- Hi, and welcome to the 3,052,088th most trafficked website in the world. With your continued loyalty and word of mouth (and a few more links from Equidaily), I think I can crack the 3,052,000 mark some time in 2008.

Coolmore is making a big push on Scat Daddy; he's the cover boy of their annual advertising supplement, which is actually a whole separate magazine mailed to Bloodhorse subscribers. He'll debut for $30,000 in 2008, which seems pretty high when you see it next to other, established Coolmore America sires such as Thunder Gulch ($20,000), Grand Slam ($35,000), or Royal Academy ($15,000).

Scat is the technique perfected in American jazz of singing without words, and presumably the Daddy was rather good at it [oh man.. - ed. note] Scat Daddy boasts everything an American pedigere should offer, and a race record to match.

With all due respect to a horse who won four graded stakes (two Grade 1's), I think Scat Daddy's record looks better on paper than it really was. He's a horse who didn't leave much of an impression in my opinion. He wasn't particularly fast early; nor did he have a dynamic finishing kick. Even when he closed to win the Champagne and the Fountain of Youth, it was more a case of him grinding down tiring leaders. His two big prep wins in Florida were accomplished against fields of Triple Crown flops, and he never ran faster than a 98 Beyer.

Scat Daddy is out of a Mr. Prospector mare, making him inbred to that one 4x2; and he's inbred to Northern Dancer as well. Whether he'll succeed at stud is anyone's guess, but Coolmore will do everything they can to see that he does, especially since they also stand his sire Johannesburg (for $65,000). (Remember that they lost the latter's sire, Hennessy, to a heart attack earlier this year.)

Johannesburg is getting a huge promotional push too; his $65,000 fee is second only to Giant's Causeway at $125,000 at Coolmore's Ashford Farm in Kentucky. In addition to the ten stakes winner from his first crop (three year olds this year), he has A Serious Second Crop, their ad tells us. But the best they can do as far as U.S. runners goes is a couple of maiden winners; he has one stakes winner from crop #2, that in Ireland. Johannesburg's U.S. stakes winners in addition to Scat Daddy - Teuflesberg, La Traviata, Marcavelly, and Baroness Thacher - are sprinters to milers. With his brilliance on the race track still relatively fresh in peoples' minds, Coolmore is clearly trying to get all it can out of Johannesburg right now; he was bred to 195 mares this year; and Equiline has his current two-year crop at 221, is that even possible?? Building up his son Scat Daddy is no doubt part of the strategy. Seems to me there's a lot of hype built into those stud fees, and neither seems like a bargain to me.