Juddmonte's Garrett O'Rourke tells us about the brilliant breeding of Tacitus

Exactly 54 years and one day ago, a chestnut filly was born in Kentucky and took her first wobbly steps on the way to founding one of the world’s most influential female families, with her eventual descendants including American, European and Japanese champions.

Daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters of this filly, the ideally named Best in Show, have been gathered up in the ensuing decades by esteemed breeders such as Coolmore, the Niarchos family, Shadwell, and Katsumi Yoshida.

This week, Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte Farms will try to win the Kentucky Derby with Best In Show’s fifth generation scion Tacitus, who, if successful at Churchill Downs or in a subsequent Classic or major Grade 1 event, could ignite a powerful new phase in this enduring saga.

By Tapit and the first foal out of Juddmonte’s homebred champion Close Hatches, Tacitus has won three of his four starts to date, including the Grade 2 Wood Memorial Stakes and Tampa Bay Derby, for Racing Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott, who, like Juddmonte, is seeking his initial Derby triumph.

The imposing grey colt has already shown he can turn the spotlight on his extraordinary female family again with tactical speed and a strong closing kick, and Juddmonte is poised to capitalise on any success he enjoys with a bevy of close relatives harboured in its Kentucky broodmare band.

Garrett O’Rourke, who manages Juddmonte’s bloodstock in America, noted that Prince Khalid has developed Tacitus’s branch of the Best In Show dynasty for four generations that so far have been capped by Close Hatches and her full-sister by First Defence, Lockdown, a stakes winner who finished third in the 2017 Kentucky Oaks and placed in two other Grade 1 events.

Garrett O'Rourke: Best In Show's legacy is 'pretty amazing'Credit: Fasig-Tipton Photos

“When I was just a child and really getting into pedigrees, Best in Show and that family were just coming into prominence, and I don’t think her family has ever gone dormant. There are different branches in different top breeders’ possession and they’ve all been productive,” O’Rourke said of the mare sired by Hyperion’s grandson Traffic Judge, a winner of major races on dirt and turf in the United States. “It really is pretty amazing.”

Prince Khalid privately acquired Tacitus’s fourth dam, Monroe, a daughter of Sir Ivor and Best in Show. An Irish Group 3 winner and second in the Group 1 Phoenix Stakes, Monroe was bred, like most of Best in Show’s 18 foals, by Darrell and Lendy Brown of Stonereath Farm near Paris, Kentucky.

Monroe’s six full-siblings included Irish champion Malinowski, Champagne Stakes winner Gielgud and stakes-placed filly Minnie Hauk, who produced Phoenix winner Aviance to the cover of Northfields. In turn, Aviance delivered the Niarchos family’s multiple Group 1 winner and champion Chimes of Freedom, multiple American Grade 1 winner Denon and Imperfect Circle, the dam of multiple Grade/Group 1 winner and sire Spinning World.

One of the most impressive aspects to this story is that there is another Kentucky Derby contender, War Of Will, from the same family who will challenge Tacitus and try to move his own sector of the fabled clan to the forefront.

Spinning World’s half-sister, the Sadler’s Wells mare Visions Of Clarity, produced War Front’s son War Of Will, a Grade 2 winner bred by the Niarchos family who races for Gary Barber and trainer Mark Casse after being sold for €250,000 at the 2018 Arqana breeze-up sale to Casse’s brother, Justin.

Tacitus (left) accompanied by Bill Mott on his pony in Sunday's training at Churchill DownsCredit: Michele MacDonald

While it seems impossible to recap all of the laurels in Best In Show’s prodigious family in anything much less than book-length format, two of her daughters are particularly significant in terms of long-range impact on the breed.

Blush With Pride, a Kentucky Oaks winner by Blushing Groom, delivered 15 offspring and became the granddam of Coolmore’s American champion filly Rags To Riches as well as Shadwell’s Belmont Stakes winner Jazil and Coolmore’s European champion Peeping Fawn and Group 1 winner Theywayyouare.

Best in Show’s first offspring, Sex Appeal, a filly by Buckpasser, produced 16 foals led by British and Irish champions and sires El Gran Senor and Try My Best, both by Northern Dancer.

Sex Appeal’s next-to-last foal, the 1992 Nureyev filly Lotta Lace, was unraced but produced Japanese Group 1 winner Fusaichi Pandora, by Sunday Silence, for Yoshida’s Northern Farm in 2003. Today, Fusaichi Pandora is best known as the dam of Almond Eye, the 2018 Japanese filly Triple Crown winner who broke the world record for 12 furlongs while defeating older males in last year’s Japan Cup to earn the Japanese Horse of the Year title.

Clearly, this thriving family, which has exponentially multiplied through fertile female members who have continued to grace their offspring with high quality, is poised to remain a global force for years to come.

Close Hatches with Garrett O'Rourke (right) after the mare won the Ogden Phipps StakesCredit: Michele MacDonald

Juddmonte appears to hold one of the strongest current positions when it comes to breeding top prospects from the family as the farm is maintaining seven immediate female relatives of Tacitus with the potential of more to come in the future.

O’Rourke said Close Hatches was mated with Tapit initially because the champion mare, who won five Grade 1 races on dirt and earned over $2.7 million, deserved the best dirt-oriented sire and Tapit fit that bill. As a big, robust mare, she was also a good physical match for him.

“She's a lovely, lovely mare. If you were to design the perfect model of a dirt mare, I think she’d fit right into that. She’s correct, she’s got great bone, she’s got great muscle, and she has a lovely temperament as well.

"She was a very competitive mare, and obviously she had plenty of speed, and tactical speed, when she raced, and she was very sound. You couldn’t write it up any better,” O’Rourke said.

While offspring of Tapit can be known for their fiery demeanours, Tacitus has inherited his dam’s calmer approach to life as well as her powerful frame and bone.

“So far, Tacitus has been pretty bomb-proof. He walks around the shedrow and out on to the track as cool as a cucumber. Hopefully that will be to his benefit,” O’Rourke said, noting the difficult conditions of the Kentucky Derby.

On paper, the mating of Tapit with Close Hatches resulted in a quintessential Classic confection. Tacitus has Triple Crown winners Seattle Slew and Secretariat both top and bottom in his pedigree, joining the great Northern Dancer and influential Unbridled in similar placings.

Close Hatches, now nine, was recently confirmed in foal to Tapit again after her mating this season and she also has a yearling Tapit colt. Her other foals are a juvenile Malibu Moon filly named Atheer and a Curlin colt born on February 21.

“So far, she’s doing what you hope a mare of her calibre would do in throwing good-lookers. Even the young Curlin colt has all the power and strength you’d expect of a mating like that. Hopefully, if they all run like they look, she’ll become a special broodmare, as special as she was a racemare,” O’Rourke said.

Close Hatches’ five-year-old sister Lockdown is similarly a big, strong mare. She delivered her first foal, a Curlin filly, in January and is back in foal to Medaglia D’Oro.

Their dam, the Storm Cat mare Rising Tornado, is now 14 and on April 6 she delivered a colt by Juddmonte champion Arrogate that O’Rourke described as “beautiful.”

Rising Tornado’s first foal was Close Hatches, and, in addition to Lockdown, she has given Juddmonte four other daughters: unraced eight-year-old Seismology, by Candy Ride; seven-year-old Skywarn, a winner by Congrats; four-year-old stakes-placed winner Hail, by Tapit, and two-year-old Financial One, by Malibu Moon.

Seismology and Skywarn are both in production, with the former currently in foal to Orb after producing a three-year-old filly by First Defence named Oscillation, a two-year-old gelding by Noble Mission named Tropical Tornado and a yearling filly by Malibu Moon.

Skywarn has a juvenile colt by First Defence named Red Horizon and a yearling Pioneerof The Nile filly; unfortunately, her 2019 foal by Arrogate was reported by The Jockey Club to have been stillborn.

One of the hallmarks of the distinguished Best In Show family has been versatility, with its members including brilliant juveniles, Classic winners and distance specialists, O’Rourke observed, as well as dirt and turf stars.

Beginning with Monroe, Juddmonte has enjoyed a significant portion of that productivity as she delivered 18 foals including European champion juvenile Xaar and French Group stakes winners Masterclass and Diese. Other descendants include Grade 1 winner Senure, Group 1 winner Cityscape and current Banstead Manor stallion Bated Breath.

Xaar’s sister, French stakes-placed Silver Star, began her broodmare career for Juddmonte in America before shifting to Europe; eventually she was sold and became a Coolmore producer, but she did not leave Prince Khalid’s band until after producing Rising Tornado.

“Most of Prince Khalid’s top families have been a bit more of the grass types and this is definitely the one branch of an elite Juddmonte family that definitely seems to be very capable of producing top-class dirt horses,” O’Rourke said.

If Tacitus can rise to the high standards set by some of his ancestors and achieve Classic glory, then the legacy of Best In Show will have reached yet another climax in a wave that continues to rise more than five decades after the birth of its matriarch.

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