Good Magic and Justify dust contemporaries
They have sired three Classic winners among them in two crops of 3-year-olds
By Sid Fernando
At the end of 2022, Spendthrift’s Bolt d’Oro (Medaglia d’Oro) led all first-crop sires by progeny earnings from runner-up Good Magic (Curlin) at Hill ‘n’ Dale and Coolmore America’s Justify (Scat Daddy) in third place. Behind them were good names like Army Mule, Mendelssohn, Girvin, Mo Town, City of Light, and Oscar Performance, among others.
Since then, however, Good Magic and Justify have conspicuously left their contemporaries behind by collectively siring the winners of the Kentucky Derby, Epsom Derby, and Belmont Stakes from two crops of 3-year-olds. It’s one thing to get early maturing 2-year-olds and batches of stakes winners to stay visible until the next breeding season (that’s the Darwinian reality for stallion existence these days), but it’s quite another thing to sire Classic winners—a benchmark that separates hype from substance early in a horse’s career and marks him as a leader of his age group.
Good Magic’s Dornoch won the 10-furlong Belmont at Saratoga yesterday, making it two Classic winners from two crops following Mage’s success at Churchill Downs last year. Mage and Dornoch also happen to be full brothers—both are from the Big Brown mare Puca—but are dissimilar in other ways. Mage is smaller than his brother and didn’t race at two, while Dornoch was a graded winner at two and is substantially bigger. But differences aside, they share a genetic predisposition for class and distance that their sire is routinely imparting to his progeny.
What’s forgotten about Good Magic under the glare of the two Classic-winning brothers is that his son Blazing Sevens lost the Preakness last year by a head to National Treasure, and this year his Grade 1 winner Muth was the favorite for the Preakness before a fever knocked him out of the race. Imagine, just for a second, if Blazing Sevens and Muth had won consecutive Preaknesses, giving their sire four Classic winners from two crops? Preposterous as it sounds, it was a possibility, and that possibility for Classic success has made Good Magic very much a chip off the block of his sire Curlin as a highly desirable source of Classic potential.
In fact, Good Magic, who stood for $125,000 this year, is the sire of 17 black-type winners, and almost all of them—in a decided sex bias—are colts.
Until Justify’s City of Troy won the Epsom Derby a week before the Belmont, the whispers got louder that the Triple Crown winner’s outstanding juveniles couldn’t train on. It had reached a fever pitch after City of Troy shockingly flopped in the 2000 Guineas last month.
After City of Troy’s brilliant showing in the Derby, Justify not only got his first Classic winner—from his second crop—but also established himself as one of the world’s most sought-after stallions for Classics everywhere. Those high-class 2-year-olds he sires all over the world are potential Classics prospects for real now and not just on potential—an irony, because it’s the opposite of his own racing profile, of not racing at two but exploding in the Classics at three.
By getting an Epsom Derby winner, Justify has also become elite in another way, because he’s the first N. American-based stallion to do that since Kris S. got the 2003 Epsom Derby winner Kris Kin.
This puts Justify in position now to emulate the great Nijinsky as a sire of the winners of both the Epsom Derby and the Kentucky Derby—one of the rarest of feats in racing and long considered an achievement that would never be seen again.
Now, the possibility exists, just as it does that Justify can potentially sire Classic winners over any distance and surface in any country.
When a stallion breaks through the Classics barrier, particularly early in his career, the possibilities are endless, and it’s those types that breeders and auction buyers chase, because the Classics, all said and done, are what racing has been about since the beginning.