Sons of Candy Ride firing on all cylinders
Gun Runner is established, while Vekoma and Game Winner have first-crop 3-year-olds
By Frances J. Karon
Candy Ride’s reputation as a sire maker has been on the rise, and he got a boost over the weekend when his flagship son Gun Runner was joined by second-crop sons Vekoma and Game Winner as the sires of notable graded stakes winners.
Three Chimneys-based Horse of the Year Gun Runner is already well-established as a leading sire, with a $250,000 stud fee—higher than 26-year-old Candy Ride’s current $75,000, which peaked at $100,000 in 2020—and that comes with an expectation to see his name regularly associated with graded winners, as it was with Locked, whose win in the G1 Santa Anita H. on Saturday was an 8 1/2-length tour de force. Four-year-old Locked is now a dual Grade 1 winner, after the Claiborne Breeders’ Futurity at Keeneland in 2023. An 11-month break from the races was good for the Todd Pletcher trainee, whose only loss in four starts since his October return was a second in the G1 Pegasus World Cup in January.
Grade 1 winner Vekoma—a graded stakes winner at two, three, and four—closed out 2024 as the leading freshman sire in N. America, but he’s not stopped to rest on his laurels: already in 2025, he has four individual stakes winners—double the amount of the next-leading second-crop sires in the Northern Hemisphere—and eight total stakes winners lifetime. At Gulfstream on Saturday, his daughter Vixen won the second stakes race—and first graded stakes—of her career in the G3 Herecomesthebride, an hour and a half before son Mi Bago won the listed Colonel Liam S. on the same card. Both performed on the turf, a surface their sire never tried. These wins came a week after Golden Vekoma won the G3 Saudi Derby, his second graded win on the dirt. Vekoma stands at Spendthrift for $35,000…not that you can get anywhere near him for that price now with the demand for his services. By the way, Vekoma is not Candy Ride’s first son to earn the leading freshman sire title. The first? Gun Runner in 2021.
Meanwhile, in California on Sunday, Maysam became the second graded stakes winner from the first crop of Candy Ride’s champion 2-year-old Game Winner—who stands for $20,000 at Lane’s End alongside Candy Ride—when she won the G3 Santa Ynez at Santa Anita. She’s trained by Bob Baffert, who also trained Game Winner as well as Game Winner’s other graded stakes winner, Gaming, a Grade 1 winner at two last year. (Sid Fernando wrote about Gaming and Maysam here a year ago.)
Candy Ride has eight sons who have sired at least one graded stakes winner in the Northern Hemisphere. Twirling Candy (also standing at Lane’s End) remains Candy Ride’s leading son by number of stakes winners, and he’s his second-best son at stud after Gun Runner; last month, Taking Candy became his 57th stakes winner when he won the G3 Fair Grounds S., one of 23 graded stakes winners for the sire. Inexpensive Candy Ride sons Clubhouse Ride (standing at Legacy in California) and Valiant Minister (Bridlewood in Florida) have sired graded stakes winners, too, as has Mastery, who is now in Japan.
Odds and ends: The Candy Ride/In Excess cross is going strong. There are four graded stakes winners on the cross to date by Candy Ride (two, including Grade 1 winner Geaux Rocket Ride), Gun Runner, and Vekoma, and In Excess’s son Indian Charlie sired the second dam of Game Winner. Two of Vekoma’s eight stakes winners are out of Indian Charlie mares, led by Grade 3 winner Jonathan’s Way…Maysam is the second stakes winner out of an American Pharoah mare, and Bob Baffert, who trained the Triple Crown winner, trains both of them; the other is 3-year-old Barnes (Into Mischief), a Grade 2 winner on the Triple Crown trail…Champion Midshipman (Unbridled’s Song) achieved a milestone 75th stakes winner when Navy Seal won the Nodouble Breeders’ S. at Oaklawn on Sunday. He’s a home-breeder friendly stallion capable of hitting a good ROI on yearling sales prices, standing at Darley America for $15,000…War Front’s influence was strongly felt at Gulfstream on Saturday, when son Fort Washington won the G3 Canadian Turf; granddaughter Beach Bomb, by son Lancaster Bomber, won the G3 The Very One; and grandson Capture the Flag (Quality Road), out of War Front’s Grade 1-winning daughter War Flag, won the G2 Mac Diarmida. On the other side of the U.S., War Front was represented by Santa Anita Grade 2 winner Liguria in the Buena Vista on Saturday…The Very One winner, South African-bred Beach Bomb, is the first Northern Hemisphere stakes winner for Lancaster Bomber, a 10-furlong Group 1-winning son of War Front who stood at Drakenstein Stud in South Africa until his death in 2021. He sired six stakes winners, of which Beach Bomb is one of four at Grade 1 level…A horse with the unusual “(Spa)” country code and a familiar female family earned black type at Meydan in Dubai over the weekend, where Octans (The Grey Gatsby) was second in the listed Jumeirah 1000 Guineas. Octans was Spain’s champion 2-year-old filly last year but this was her first-ever line of black type, as Spain is a Part III country with no black-type races recognized by the International Cataloguing Standards. The third dam of Octans is dual-Classic winner East of the Moon (Private Account), a half-sister to Classic winner Kingmambo (Mr. Prospector) and a daughter of French, English, and American champion Miesque (Nureyev). Octans is 5x4 to Miesque (through Kingmambo and East of the Moon), as well as 4x3 to Sadler’s Wells, 5x4 to Danzig, and 5x5 to Lyphard. Sadler’s Wells, Danzig, and Lyphard are all sons of Northern Dancer, who’s also the sire of Miesque’s sire Nureyev…