OBS April 2024 Pedigree Selections

A few highlights from the OBS April 2024 catalog

The OBS Spring Sale begins tomorrow, with around 1,000 horses scheduled to go through the ring in Ocala. As per usual, I’ve been poring over the catalog and have put together a shortlist of horses with intriguing pedigrees that I found worth discussing here.

Hip 643 - f. Bolt d’Oro x Sky o’ Blue (Henny Hughes)

Bolt d’Oro is a stallion I’ve been high on throughout his career, and there’s plenty to like about this filly, who has gotten a nice page update, as her half-sister Blue Squall, by Tapwrit, has been twice stakes placed at Oaklawn since the printing of the catalog.

This filly is bred on the same Bolt d’Oro/Henny Hughes cross as G1 winner Tamara, and while Sky o’ Blue was not a mare of Beholder’s quality, she was a useful allowance horse at Remington Park and Prairie Meadows, and has produced three winners from three foals of racing age, including that stakes placed runner by Tapwrit. With no disrespect to Tapwrit, Anchor Down, or Wicked Strong, the sires of Sky o’ Blue’s three foals, Bolt d’Oro is a massive upgrade for this mare, and he fits her well in other ways besides the direct sire/damsire cross.

Aside from that G1 winner out of a Henny Hughes mare, Bolt d’Oro has stakes winner Boppy O out of a mare by Scat Daddy, whose grandsire is Hennessy, the sire of Henny Hughes, in 11 starters on the cross (18.2%). The broader Medaglia d’Oro/Hennessy cross has produced 6% stakes winners in 84 starters, with three additional stakes winners on the cross. This is a slight improvement on the 5.6% stakes winners from all starters by stallions carrying Medagalia d’Oro.

Though this filly is an outcross in five generations, a relative rarity in today’s breed, she comes from the same female family 13c as her sire, who himself carries additional strains of that family via Bailjumper, the damsire of Medaglia d’Oro, and Seattle Slew, the sire of Bolt d’Oro’s damsire A.P. Indy. Bolt d’Oro has produced stakes winner Mounsieur Coco and stakes placed Fulmineo from his own family 13c, and while they are from more distant relations, they still share the same “I2a1” mitochondrial haplotype.