Ghostzapper hits century mark
Kentucky Derby hopeful Stronghold is the 100th stakes winner for his sire
By Frances J. Karon
Hall of Famer Ghostzapper, the Eclipse champion older male and Horse of the Year in 2004, earned his 100th stakes winner as a sire when his three-year-old son Stronghold ran out a 2 1/2-length winner of the G3 Sunland Park Derby on Sunday. Ghostzapper is one of just eight active stallions in N. America to have accrued at least 100 black-type winners.
The 24-year-old stallion by Awesome Again is the sire of seven N. American champions, most recently 2022-2023 champion female sprinter and dual Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint winner Goodnight Olive, whose retirement was announced earlier this month. Ghostzapper has 55 Graded/Group stakes winners and stands at Hill ‘n’ Dale for $75,000.
GHOSTZAPPER (2000 Awesome Again – Baby Zip, by Relaunch)
B: Adena Springs
O: Stronach Stables
T: Bobby Frankel
Record: 11-9-0-1, $3,446,120
Highest achievement: U.S. Horse of the Year and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner
Stronghold, making his seasonal debut in the Sunland Park Derby, was coming off consecutive second-place efforts to Bob Baffert trainees Wynstock (Solomini) in the G2 Los Alamitos Futurity at Los Al and undefeated Nysos (Nyquist) – whose three career starts have all resulted in scintillating open-length wins – in the G3 Bob Hope at Del Mar. He’d broken his maiden at Churchill Downs in October, his second start, and after giving Ghostzapper his milestone 100th black-type winner, he currently sits fourth on the Derby points list with 25.
It turns out that he won a high-caliber maiden race, as Track Phantom (Quality Road), who ran third behind Stronghold that afternoon, is likewise now a Grade 3 winner and was runner-up in Saturday’s G2 Risen Star, and he’s second on the Derby leaderboard with 55 points.
STRONGHOLD (2021 Ghostzapper – Spectator, by Jimmy Creed)
B: Eric and Sharon Waller
O: Eric and Sharon Waller
T: Phil D’Amato
Record: 5-2-3-0, $377,200
Highest achievement: Grade 3 winner
Stronghold’s owner/breeders Eric and Sharon Waller also bred and raced his Grade 2-winning dam Spectator; her unraced dam Diva’s Tribute (Henny Hughes); and the next dam, Grade 2-placed winner Swiss Diva (Swiss Yodeler), whose only foal was Spectator. Trained by Phil D’Amato, Spectator won the G2 Sorrento and ran third in the G1 Del Mar Debutante as a two-year-old and second in the G1 Santa Anita Oaks at three in 2018. She died from foaling complications during Stronghold’s birth, as had happened with granddam Swiss Diva when foaling Diva’s Tribute.
The Wallers sold Diva’s Tribute when Spectator was a weanling, but last year, they bought the mare’s Improbable filly, now a two-year-old named Pristine, for $200,000 at the Fasig-Tipton California fall sale. They also still own Diva’s Tribute’s daughter Tenacious Heart (Into Mischief), who was unraced and is a minor black-type producer. Tenacious Heart is the dam of Dirty Words, a two-year-old retained by the Wallers from the first crop of Thousand Words.
Stronghold is Ghostzapper’s only foal produced from a mare by Jimmy Creed (Distorted Humor), mimicking the successful Ghostzapper/Forty Niner nick that has yielded eight other Graded stakes winners. These include Grade 1 winners Guarana and Molly Morgan, both through the Distorted Humor branch, too. This is Jimmy Creed’s first stakes winner as a broodmare sire, from just 34 daughters with foals of racing age.
It is about darn time we get an heir to this titan of all Beyers