Kitten's soaring talents highlighted by Hawkbill's Eclipse win

By the end of 2013, Kitten’s Joy was firmly established among North America’s elite stallions. He had successfully fended off Speightstown to become that year’s leading North American sire, and in doing so, had struck a blow for the turf orientated sires of America, so often the poorer relation of their dirt counterparts. In fact, he absolutely dominated America’s turf division that year, siring 19 stakes winners on the surface including Admiral Kitten, Big Blue Kitten and Real Solution, who swept three of America’s top Grade 1 events, the Secretariat Stakes, Sword Dancer Invitational and Arlington Million, during one memorable August afternoon.

Each carried the colours of Ken and Sarah Ramsey, the owners and breeders of Kitten’s Joy who have been the masterminds behind his stud career. Make no mistake, Kitten’s Joy’s elevated position within America is the work of one man and those who are associated with his Ramsey Farm in Kentucky. Consider this; they bred each of his first 16 stakes winners and so far, 54 of the stallion’s 68 stakes winners overall.

When I met Ramsey in the autumn of 2013, he was basking in the stallion’s success and the joy that it was giving to his wife Sarah, whose life had been turned upside down by a stroke several years before. But Ramsey was also looking ahead to the time that Kitten’s Joy, a grandson of Sadler’s Wells, would prove himself in Europe, and was in no doubt that it would one day happen.