b4breeding

Continuing my look at some of the new damsires in the yearling sales catalogue for 2012:

Lot 14 and 101, Karaka – Courage Under Fire mares from same family, both bred to Jereme’s Jet

These yearling colts are bred by David Phillips – and he’s saved me investigating why by writing an extremely detailed advertisement in the Feb 9 Harness Weekly: “Jereme’s Jet: the Golden Cross”.

These are the only Courage Under Fire mares with yearlings in the catalogue this year, although there were three last year and I would expect more to start turning up in coming years.  If David Phillips is right, they will be lining up at the door of Jereme’s Jet! However I reckon Courage Under Fire mares will be well positioned to go to a range of quality sires.

The advert is typically idiosyncratic, but it is refreshing to see a breeder openly explaining to anyone who wants to read the small print exactly why he has bred along these lines. David lists “the wonderful reverse sex of Sampson Hanover…in mid pedigree, the fact that JJ and Vance Hanover (sire of dam of CUF) are from the same dam’s family; the relationship of Adios Butler and his sister, and Light Brigade and his sister; the reverse sexed Albatross; and more.”

Phew! On the catalogue page none of them show up – and that’s to do with the limitations of space because most of the double ups or brother/sister connections in the yearlings’ pedigree are 6 or more generations back. So I guess he’s saying that the nature of these double-genetic double-ups and the positions they are in will result in a higher likelihood of genetic excellence in the yearling colts, even though they are relatively far back in the current yearling’s pedigree.

I’m not a fan of double-ups for their own sake, but good on him for making a call on the Jereme’s Jet x Courage Under Fire cross and putting it out there in print for all to witness. It’s refreshing to see someone committing to that, and being very open about their breeding decisions. Whether we agree or not is up to us. Some buyers and trainers will ignore it and simply like Jereme’s Jet as a potential ‘early’ sire, and see a Courage Under Fire mare as adding potential “gait speed” and “heart” to the equation. Either way, the combination might work well.

I’ll be interested to see the colts themselves at the yearling sales auction. Jereme’s Jet is an exciting sire, with a slightly different twist on pedigree which is great,  and he is a very muscular horse.

What David Phillips doesn’t mention in the advert is the maternal family of both these mares – the genetic match is almost entirely about the Courage Under Fire aspect of their pedigree rather than their maternal family, i.e. the recent entrance of Courage into the mix which he has obviously done with purpose. Both mares were lightly raced and indicated some speed. It’s an interesting maternal line, coming from a full sister to Soky’s Atom (Jef’s Galleria). More recently there have been ups and downs getting Red Electric Moon in foal. It would be great to see Courage Under Fire and then Jereme’s Jet injecting a real revival into the family fortunes.