first samurai
 

don't know if anyone saw this, but claiborne announced that his stud fee will be 40k this coming season. best of luck to this youngster!!! claiborne would be my first choice if i ever had the opportunity to choose a farm for a stallion.

Hope I can own a mare someday and talk Lans into some sort of discount if he still has some say left with the farm....I can dream.

Someone help he out with this because I am certainly not the most knowledgable person in the way of breeding.

Do they really think he will sell at 40k? Im sure they know but i cant understand why people would send their mares to FS at that price.

He was talented but had serious soundness issues.

brilliant 2YO season by a leading sire who stands for 300K last I looked...coupled with his very attractive conformation...his book will be full.

He did not have major soundness issues. He had some minor back end problems and a broken rib, things that can happen to any horse through racing wear. The decision was made to retire him because by the time he was straightened out it would have been too late to get him to any races that mattered this year that it was conceivable he could win. Once it was apparent he couldnt make the King's Bishop, that was the end. Since you appear to have the "inside track" on what his issues were, perhaps you could tell us what those issues were.
He was the first son of the very coveted sire Giants Causeway to win a grade one on dirt, and perhaps the speediest son of Ginats Causeway ever.
His mare is from a family that all were very fast as well, as well as stakes winners.
Its VERY rare to find a precocious and speedy son of Giants Causeway.

Book will be full quite soon I suspect.

agreed...be interesting to see some of the names he gets...I like it when the farm publishes those

He is my pick for first year sire. Lots of potential in that pedigree and I think he could sire a variety of runners just like his sire. Darn good crop of 3 year olds this year, too bad he didn't get back on the track.

Claiborne may have slipped in the hierarchy as of late in their stallion roster not being what it once was, but they still have tremendous clout and connections as far as making a stallion.
Just about every brrodmare they own has black type in every generation, every friggin one. You ever look at the female family extended pedigree of one of their mares? Geez.
In addition people like the Phipps often board or send mares to Claiborne to be bred.
Its much easier to make a stallion the way they do it, which is the proper way, than it is to make one at a fledgling operation, no matter how much cash is behind it.
Its hard to make a stallion at a place that is relatively new because they usually lack sufficient brodmares to gurantee that the horse will have a nice book through and though. Broodmares are more valuable than sires as a whole right now because of the tremendous amount of mares that have been purchased by Coolmore, the Japanese, and the Sheikhs who are now permanently the property of those operations.
When you have a farm that has the ammo to stand a horse and get him to good mares to start him off right, it gives you a big edge.

Drove past Claiborne on Saturday, what a beautiful drive, if I was a horse I would want to be there...Saw many young ones running around in the fields...

Who said anything about having an "inside track" numb nutz? I was asking a question and you so graciously answered it. Thanks.

for 40k, he will get some good mares at that price, given the crazy upside he has. You put speed on the bottom of his pedigree and you will get a sprinter, you put stamina down there and you will get a stayer, and what is even better is that his should run the same on both surfaces, if not better on the lawn

he also may ultimately benefit from the godolphin coolmore feud...the sheiks won't go to GC or buy his offspring but I bet they still want some of his blood...if so 1st Sam's babies could bring $$$$

You didn't ask a question, you made a statement, and an incorrect one at that. I felt the need to admonish it.
Major soundness issues would be attributed to horses who have chronic shins, ankles, knees, etc.
First Sam was a very big and heavy horse when he first started out.
After breaking his maiden at CD in July, he then ran in an allowance race and the Hopeful in about a 20 day span. He then won the Champagne and ran back in the BC only 3 weeks later suffering his first loss. He ran only three times at age 3, but those starts were fairly close together in a time period. He never missed a scheduled start, not one, and his only layoff ever was his last one. The broken rib was obviously a freak thing, and breeders don't worry about horses who had broken ribs, lol.
His last start was with teh broken rib and very often a horse running an entire race with a problem will cause himself damage because hes not running straight and true, he or she is running in a very choppy manner to try and "get away from" or compensate for the pain.
Horses often emerge from these races with a variety of problems, many of them muscular(which was the case here, no fractures or chips) from running in such an awkward manner.
By the time they got a timetable on how long it would take to straighten him out, they realized that it was impossible to have him ready to run in any races of consequence at the end of the year. So they retired him. Contrary to popular belief there wasn't any pressure on the owners to retire him. They did not sell the horse before the Blue Grass, only 25% of the breeding rights. They retained the other 75% to sell at a later date or keep a percentage of as they saw fit. Claiborne was never calling the shots on this horse, the owners were.

Bingo!!!
Breeders know that they can't hit a home run with Giant offspring with the sheikhs, but may hit one with one of his sons standing someplace else.

Does Lbig have any mares that would make a good match. From what I here he is not into the breeding end of it except for providing the stud and I dont know what % he retained. In my opinion the 40k will be a good investment, Look for it to jump dramaticaly. So versital Speed, Probably the main atribute for a goos 2y old year,well within TC contintion, grass posibilities, and never showing any soundness problems.One of his seldom mentioned qualitieswas his trainablity. Simply put Versatility and quality.

Hes got some mares, but will need more.
Hes quite enjoying watching the few he has bred run so far. Bad Boy Rising is a homebred whos been 2nd twice(one in a stakes race) and won a race in three starts.
He also had a horse break his maiden at Arlington this past summer who ran back off the board in the ARl Wash futurity that he also bred.
He really seems to LOVE watching these homebreds perform more than the ones hes bought.
Message Red produced a lovely Forest Wildcat this past spring, and she went to Offlee Wild this past year.
I know he has a full brother yearling to Bad Boy Rising as well.
Hes a remarkable businessman, and I think that he, like many others, have realized that trying to buy yearlings at the Sheikh-Coolmore domnated sales is a real uphill battle and an expensive one to wage.
More and more owners are looking to breed their own horses and buy fewer yearlings or two year olds in training.

I'm not sure but if I had to guess I would say sons of coolmore stallions may be "off limits" too. Ol Sheikh Mo is still pretty pissed off.

You may be right but they laid out fair amount for HH last year so who's to say they won't pursue some offspring of the best sons of coolmore's boys?

I obviously know near nothing about breeding, so can someone explain to me why you'd take a mare to FS for 40G when you could have Medaglia d'Oro for the same price. MD was a Triple Crown runner, sound, won GI races at 3 and 4, and is by another proven sire?