We are a society of wannabees.

Guys want to be like Cristiano Ronaldo. Girls want to be like Kim Kardashian, unless said girl is from Portland, then she probably wants to be more like Mindy Kaling or Tina Fey.  Jockeys want to be horsemen and horsemen think they could make great jockeys. I am no different from any of these people. I have always been a wannabee horse breeder. I have always wanted to unleash my inner Federico Tesio and see what would happen. So, I will try to put together the five crosses that I think could produce the next great American racehorse.

If you are an avid reader of this blog, you have probably figured out by now that this blog is the culmination of the previous two blog entries. I spent several weeks trying to figure out which sire has the best chance of siring a racehorse that could rival Frankel, Lure and even Secretariat. No matter how I sliced and diced the numbers, I kept coming back to one horse, War Front. He is as good as advertised; when trying to figure out how to build a champion, all roads inevitably lead back to him. So, rule number one is any great cross should have War Front on the top.

War Front X Roy:

I chose this one because the resulting foal would have Mr. Prospector on both sides of his pedigree as well as two strains of Nasrullah thanks to Roy. I’m not obsessed with nicking theories, but I do believe that War Front does his best work when paired up with sturdier broodmare sires and Roy can supply some sturdiness.  What really sold me on this pairing is that War Front usually supplies the speed and doesn’t interfere with stamina. Roy usually brings the stamina and rarely interferes with speed.

War Front x Lord at War:

I did not choose this mating for comedic purposes. I chose it because of the inbreeding to Hyperion. When breeding to War Front, it’s always a good idea to go away from Northern Dancer and towards Hyperian. The best part of this pairing is that most of the inbreeding is further back where it will be most effective. The second best part of this pairing is Ribot.

War Front x Lemon Drop Kid

Yes, I am trying to get away from Northern Dancer; no, it is not easy. I was going to initially choose Kingmambo, but that is too close to Northern Dancer, so I decided to choose his most exciting son. I honestly don’t believe that the next great racehorse will not be heavily inbred within the first four generations. Keeping Northern Dancer further back while introducing Buckpasser gives us some much needed stamina influence.

War Front x Acatenango

Do you see what I’m doing here? Once again, I’ve been able to get away from Northern Dancer while stocking up on Hyperion.  It is probably Hyperion’s influence that made Animal Kingdom one of the greatest horses of the decade. Inbreeding to Hyperion through his best sire influence-War Front and his best broodmare sire influence-Acatenango gets us four strains of Hyperion all buried far enough in his pedigree that no one would think to call this inbreeding-and maybe it isn’t who knows?

War Front x A.P. Indy

I’m going to be honest and say that I never thought this cross would work as well as it has. Without starting a flame war, the best War Front horse to date has been bred on this cross, and while you don’t see this cross too often, it never produces a bad runner. I’m not clever enough to figure why it works, I just know that it does. It is probably War Front’s best nick so hopefully it catches on.

There you have it. These are the five crosses that I think will give us a fighting chance of ever producing something like a Secretariat, Frankel or Lure. Sure, I could’ve included sires other than War Front, but I didn’t even want to waste time pretending that there is another sire that could realistically deliver truly special horses on a regular basis. There is no cheesy sports analogy that could describe the ever-widening chasm between War Front and every other stallion on the market.

Sure, the next great racehorse could come from Wiseman’s Ferry, but as a betting man, I’m doubling down on War Front.

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