OBS April: The Legacy of Lady Be Good

This taproot mare's influence is strong in multiple OBS April entrants

The OBS Spring sale will take place April 16th through April 19th this year, and while I’ll be giving my selections for this year’s edition on the 15th, I wanted to tie the sale into my recent series of posts on elite sire families. You can read part one here and part two here. For today’s post, I’d like to discuss the family of the brilliant mare Lady Be Good, whose daughters Discipline, Impish, and Bold Example are each the taproot mares of elite sire families, and who has multiple descendants entered in the upcoming OBS sale.

Lady Be Good was a homebred for Wheatley Stable and was a precocious runner who won the Colleen and National Stallion Stakes as a two-year-old. She started twelve times as a two-year-old, but raced only once at three before retirement. A daughter of the stallion Better Self, himself a product of the potent cross of War Admiral with La Troienne, she was a full sister to the multiple stakes winner Time Tested. Better Self’s sire, Bimelech, was a son of La Troienne, who has five tail-female descendants in this study, and was out of a mare by War Admiral. She was linebred to family 11g via War Admiral and her damsire Eight Thirty, who shared their third dam, Bathing Girl (a different branch of family 11g is represented in this study by Bebopper). These two stallions also created inbreeding to Man O’ War in the pedigree of Lady Be Good, as War Admiral was a son and Eight Thirty’s second dam was a daughter of Man O’ War.

As a broodmare, Lady Be Good produced nine winners from eleven starts, including three stakes winners and a stakes placed runner. Her best son was the talented stakes winner Disciplinarian, by Bold Ruler, whose victories included the 1967 Swaps Handicap and who was the sire of two stakes winners. Also by Bold Ruler, she got stakes winner Full of Hope, who finished second in the 1973 Test Stakes, and graded stakes winner In Hot Pursuit.

Lady Be Good produced Bold Example by Bold Ruler’s son Bold Lad, and while her best performances were a pair of stakes placings, her greatest contribution to the breed has been as a broodmare. She’s a designated Reine-de-Course, with G1 winning descendants such as Polish Precedent, a three-time G1 winner in France, including the 1989 Prix Du Moulin De Longchamp; Culture Vulture, a three-time G1 winner in Europe whose top wins include the 1991 Fillies Mile; Zilzal, a two-time G1 winner of races such as the 1989 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes; Australian G1 winner Fifty Stars, 2020 Australian Cup victor; G1 Matriarch Stakes winner Fifty Stars; Brazilian G1 winner Olympic Jolteon; and G1 Alcibiades Stakes winner Negligee. She is the tail-female ancestor of six unique stakes producing sires, including Polish Precedent and Zilzal, both G1-producing sires, and G1-producing sire Intikhab.

In 1962, Lady Be Good produced a bay filly by Princequillo named Discipline. Discipline was a talented racehorse, with wins in the 1964 Demoiselle Stakes, a division of the 1965 Test Stakes, and the 1966 Molly Pitcher Handicap and multiple stakes placings in races such as the Alabama Stakes and Delaware Handicap. As a broodmare, she produced G1 Sorority Stakes winner Squander (by Buckpasser, a great-grandson of Bimelech’s dam La Troienne) and multiple graded stakes winner Duty Dance (by Nijinsky), as well as black type placed winner Probation (by Bold Ruler - making her bred on the same Bold Ruler/Princequillo cross as Secretariat). Discipline’s branch of the Lady Be Good clan has produced the most individual stakes producing stallions, with ten, including four G1 sires. She’s the fourth dam of Japanese G1 winner King Halo, the sire of two G1 winners among his 16 stakes winners; the fourth dam of graded stakes winner Sightseeing, the sire of G1 Spinaway Stakes winner So Many Ways and two other stakes winners; the third dam of Burning Roma, a 12-time stakes winner who got a G1 win in the 2000 Futurity Stakes and was the sire of three-time G1 winner Sheer Drama and four other stakes winners; and the second dam of stakes winner Russian Roubles, the sire of Japanese G1 winner Yu Yu Sunboy (notably out of a mare by Personality, a member of La Troienne’s family 1x) and three other stakes winners.

Before getting to the final daughter of Lady Be Good who qualified for this sample, I’d like to briefly mention Uncommitted, a daughter of Buckpasser who, though she has only two stakes producing sire descendants and thus didn’t make the cut to be considered the foundation mare of an elite sire family, was the dam of the excellent sire Wavering Monarch and the third dam of Motivator, the sire of 35 stakes winners including the legendary two-time Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Treve.

The final daughter of Lady Be Good who qualified for this sample is Impish, whose descendants have seen the most success on the racetrack in recent years. Impish was a daughter of Majestic Prince, and is prominently represented in this country by Maclean’s Music, whom she is the fifth dam of. Maclean’s Music also brings in the elite sire families of Incantation and Tamerett via his first two damsires, Unbridled’s Song and Gone West (his sire, Distorted Humor, comes from family 9f, which boasts five members in this group of mares). In addition to Maclean’s Music, Impish is the second dam of Mining, the sire of two-time G1 winner Roaming Rachel; the fifth dam of Invader, a G1-producing sire in Australia; the second dam of Trappe Shot, a graded stakes winner and sire of 12 stakes winners. She is the tail-female ancestor of 45 stakes winners, and 34 of the 315 starters from the family since January of 2011 have been stakes winners (10.8%).

The influence of Lady Be Good in this year’s OBS April sale is noteworthy. In addition to the 33 sons or daughters of Maclean’s Music cataloged, there are five two-year-olds out of mares by Trappe Shot (including one by a son of Maclean’s Music), and multiple entrants from the direct female family of Lady Be Good. This family continues to produce racehorses into the modern era, with 85 stakes winners in the 1,523 starters (5.6%) since January of 2011, according to G1 Goldmine. Here is a trio of horses that I believe have the potential to add to the legacy of this elite family:

Hip 381 - c. Authentic x Munnings’ Finest (Munnings)

This colt from the first crop of Horse of the Year Authentic is a fascinating prospect with plenty of elite sire families contributing to his pedigree. He comes from the Impish branch of the Lady Be Good family, and his third dam, Defer West, was the dam of Forest Music, a stakes winner who produced three stakes winners plus Maclean’s Music. That mare was out of a daughter of Damascus, who traced tail-female to Lady Be Good’s fifth dam Caithness.

This colt’s sire, Authentic, is a son of Into Mischief, who needs no introduction but is notably from the family of Patelin that includes nine other stakes producing sires. Into Mischief’s damsire, Tricky Creek, is a grandson of Far Beyond, whose family is responsible for seven total stakes producing sires, and his second damsire, Stop the Music, is out of Bebopper, the tail-female ancestor of six stakes producing sires. As a reminder, Lady Be Good was linebred to Stop the Music’s family 11g via War Admiral and Eight Thirty. Into Mischief is the sire of G1 winner Played Hard from a different branch of this female family 8h, and he has stakes winner Shoplifted in four starters from the Impish branch of this family. Authentic had four two-year-olds sell at OBS March for an average of $480,000 and median of $380,000.

This colt is out of an unraced daughter of Munnings, a member of the Priceless Gem sire family that has produced nine stakes sires, including seven G1 producers. This is the same family 1x of La Troienne that combined with Lady Be Good to produce G1 winners Squander and Yu Yu Sunboy, as well as Uncommitted, as well as Lady Be Good herself. Munnings’ sire, Speightstown, comes from the elite sire family of Copper Canyon that is also responsible for G1 sire Star Dabbler and four other stakes producing stallions.

In addition to the female family influences in this pedigree, there’s plenty of precedent for the sire line nick as well, as this is an example of the potent Into Mischief/Speightstown cross that has produced 14.9% stakes winners in 74 starters, including G1 winners Mia Mischief and Mischevious Alex. However, I do think there are reasons to have slight reservations about Authentic’s ability to continue this sire line trend, as he is out of a mare by Mr. Greeley, who, like Speightstown, is a son of Gone West. The cross of Mr. Greeley over Gone West has produced only three stakes winners in 112 starters (2.7%), and all inbreeding to Gone West has produced 4% stakes winners in 1,701 starters, a slight decrease on the 4.6% stakes winners from all starters with Gone West in the top half of the pedigree. Having said that, the cross of stallions carrying Gone West over mares carrying Speightstown has shown excellent success to date, with ten stakes winners in 78 starters (12.8%), so it’s possible that this iteration of the cross will see success, especially when considering the affinity Authentic’s sire has shown for Speightstown mares. The Mr. Greeley/Speightstown cross has only been tried twice, so while there’s some reason for caution, this is not a cross that has been proven not to work by any stretch.

The cross of Into Mischief over this colt’s second damsire Awesome Again has been a bit on the weak side when you consider that 7.9% of all starters with Into Mischief in the top half of the pedigree are stakes winners, but has still produced two stakes winners in 38 starters (5.3%).

Overall, I think this is a very promising colt from the first crop of a very exciting stallion, and will be very interested in seeing if how he moves lines up with his outstanding pedigree influences.

Hip 1006 - c. Vekoma x Blakely’s Smile (Wildcat Heir)

This Florida-bred colt from the Impish branch of the Lady Be Good family is from another very promising first-crop sire in Vekoma, whose fourth dam Lianga is the tail-female ancestor of heavy-hitting sires Danehill Dancer, Street Sense, and Mr. Greeley. Vekoma was a brilliantly fast son of Candy Ride out of the G1 winning Speightstown mare Mona De Momma, and his first two-year-olds were very well-received at the OBS March sale, with nine foals selling for an average of $115,333 and median of $120,000.

This colt is out of a Wildcat Heir mare who has produced a winner by Cairo Prince in two starters, although her three-year-old by Bolt d’Oro has put together three consecutive runner-up finishes in maiden special weights at Fair Grounds to start the year, including a nose defeat on March 9th, so it seems like it’s only a matter of time before that one breaks through with a victory.

His second dam, Shopping, is a daughter of Private Account, a son of Numbered Account, who is the tail-female ancestor of 10 G1 sires and 22 total stakes producing stallions. This mare, who produced four stakes winners including G1 winner Miss Shop and graded stakes winner Trappe Shot, is another example of a successful crossing of family 1x with Lady Be Good’s branch of family 8h. Private Account was by Damascus, who, as mentioned, shares this female family 8h.

The cross of Vekoma’s sire Candy Ride over Wildcat Heir’s sire Forest Wildcat has produced nine stakes winners in 98 starters (9.8%), while the Candy Ride/Private Account cross has been a bit weaker with just 3.9% stakes winners in 128 starters. However, Vekoma’s damsire Speightstown shows the opposite effect, with a single stakes winner in 49 starters out of mares carrying Forest Wildcat (2%), but 11 stakes winners in 147 starters out of mares carrying Private Account (7.5%), so I’m hopeful that these influences will balance out nicely in this colt.

Hip 642 - c. Street Sense x Skylar’s Pass (The Factor)

This son of Street Sense - whose third dam Long Legend is also the dam of Mr. Greeley and the third dam of Vekoma - is out of a mare who was unplaced in two starts and has not been a particularly prolific producer, but I think this colt is still worth discussing. Skylar’s Pass has produced winners by Quality Road and West Coast, and a full brother to this colt who was unplaced in his only career start.

Unlike the other two highlighted here, this colt is from the Discipline branch of the family, with Duty Dance being his third dam. His second dam, Procession, was a daughter of the Private Account stallion Private Terms, who was out of Laughter, a daughter of the elite mare Shenanigans, the tail-female ancestor of ten stakes producing sires, including four G1 sires. Skylar’s Pass is inbred 5x4 to this elite mare via Icecapade, the second damsire of her sire The Factor.

Although the cross of Street Sense over The Factor’s sire War Front has yet to produce a stakes winner in eight starters, and the Street Cry/War Front cross has produced only a single stakes winner in 20 starters (5%), Street Sense has done very well with mares carrying Private Account. He has gotten four stakes winners in 38 starters (10.5%) out of mares carrying that stallion. Street Sense is the sire of the Chilean graded stakes winner Australia Mia in ten starters tracing to Lady Be Good, and the Impish branch of the family has stakes winner Quality Boone by the stallion Daniel Boone, who is out of a Street Cry mare.

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Thank you for your continued support! I will be available for pedigree analysis for the upcoming OBS Spring sale, so please feel free to reach out to me at jessica.rae.tugwell@gmail.com if you’re interested in how I can help you evaluate the pedigree side of these two-year-old prospects.