Stallion Analysis: Bucchero

This stallion gets real racehorses and is headed to New York for 2024

Bucchero entered stud in 2019 at Pleasant Acres Stallions in Florida for a $5,000 fee, but he’ll be moving to McMahon of Saratoga Thoroughbreds in New York for the 2024 season after proving that he’s passing on the consistency, class, and ability that he showed on the racetrack to his offspring. Physically, he’s very solidly-built without being bulky, and he’s a nice medium size at 16hh, allowing him to cross well with mares of various types.

As a racehorse, Bucchero was a winner every year from ages two through six, with black type all five seasons and stakes wins from three to six. Despite his graded stakes wins coming at five and six, he was second on debut in an Indiana-bred stakes and broke his maiden second time out in a Parx maiden special weight. He was a stakes winning sprinter on both dirt and turf, but was also a two-time winner of the Indiana-bred To Much Coffee Stakes going a mile and a sixteenth on the dirt. He won over a third of his 31 lifetime starts, with over 70% of those starts coming in black type company.

As a sire, Bucchero has produced three black type winners on three different surfaces and over 10% black type horses from his 85 starters to date. This year, his son Shards was beaten just 2 1/4 lengths in the G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint, and he’s also gotten the likes of multiple stakes winning two-year-old Book’em Danno and stakes winner Mattingly.

Among the top 20 second-crop sires of 2023 (excluding Accelerate, who will not stand at stud in 2024), Bucchero has the third-highest percentage of winners with 61.2% winners from starters - lower than only Girvin and Army Mule. He is ranked third behind those same two by percentage of in-the-money finishes by his offspring, and fourth behind Army Mule, Girvin, and Justify by percentage of wins from starts. His 10% black type runners is better than contemporaries such as Oscar Performance, Mo Town, and Mendelssohn.

Bucchero has clearly proven his value as a sire. His foals have been precocious, with 18% winners from two-year-old starters and 14% debut winners; versatile, with 14% turf winners, 15% dirt winners, and 19% synthetic winners; and durable, with an average of 5.7 starts per starter. He has 52 yearlings on the ground and bred 55 mares this year. Today, I want to dive a little deeper and see what pedigree patterns we might find among Bucchero’s most successful offspring.