Two unlikely Medaglia d’Oro sons strike in BC
Fast Anna and Atreides, sires of Thorpedo Anna and Soul of an Angel, respectively, entered stud inexpensively
By Frances J. Karon
Around this time of year as stallion deal announcements trickle in, armchair breeders on social media roll their eyes and complain about horses they deem unworthy of going to stud.
My old boss Johnny T.L. Jones of Walmac Int’l used to say that there are three things a person should never do:
Never insult a man’s wife;
Never insult a man’s dog;
And most importantly, never insult a man’s horse.
This advice, given in relation to having to deal with clients submitting their mares, sometimes with four or more blank dams, to breed at Walmac has been on my mind this afternoon as I digest the results of some of the Breeders’ Cup races. Namely, Thorpedo Anna’s win in the Distaff and Soul of an Angel’s win in the Filly & Mare Sprint, because these two fillies are by stallions, both sons of Medaglia d’Oro, that people might well have taken to Twitter/X to belittle for not belonging in the gene pool. The essence of Johnny’s advice was that not everyone can afford to be in at the top end, but everyone deserves to have a dream.
Thorpedo Anna and Soul of an Angel’s sires—Fast Anna and Atreides—were from Medaglia d’Oro’s 2011 crop, and both raced as homebreds for their breeders, Frank Calabrese and Stonestreet, respectively, but neither accomplished what their pedigrees suggested they were capable of.
Fast Anna, the sire of Thorpedo Anna, was unraced at two before winning three of nine starts at three and four. He was not a black-type winner, although he did place second in the G1 King’s Bishop and G3 Gallant Bob at three, and third in two minor stakes races as a 4-year-old. His dam was champion 2-year-old filly Dreaming of Anna (Rahy), so despite his race record not putting him in high demand, Fast Anna got his chance at stud. He stood at Three Chimneys for $7,500 for his first three years, $10,000 his fourth, and was due to stand for $5,000 in his fifth year (2021) had he not died from laminitis that February, aged 10.
Thorpedo Anna’s only loss this year in seven starts was a head second in the G1 Travers against males, and she will, or should, be the unanimous choice for champion 3-year-old filly. With five Grade 1s in 2024, she’s very realistically in the running for Horse of the Year, too. She was conceived on an advertised stud fee of $7,500 and is by a stallion who never won a stakes race, and her Uncle Mo dam Sataves was unraced, as was her second dam Pacific Sky (Stormy Atlantic). Thorpedo Anna outsold her pedigree by far when she brought $40,000 as a yearling, although breeder Judy Hicks stayed in for a piece of her.
THORPEDO ANNA (2021 Fast Anna – Sataves, by Uncle Mo)
B: Judy Hicks
O: Brookdale Racing Inc., Mark Edwards, Judy B. Hicks, and Magdalena Racing
T: Kenny McPeek
Record: 10-8-2-0, $3,843,663
Highest achievement: Grade 1 winner
Last Auction Price: $40,000 Fasig-Tipton October
Soul of an Angel’s sire, Atreides, raced only as a 3-year-old, with four wins in five starts from July to December. He won one black-type race, the Monarchos S. at Gulfstream by 17 1/2 lengths, and was unplaced in his only try at graded level. As a son of Grade 1 winner Dream Rush and a half-brother to Grade 1 winner Dreaming of Julia (A.P. Indy)—no relation to Fast Anna’s dam Dreaming of Anna—he’d shown enough promise that Stonestreet wanted to give it a whirl. He retired to Hill ‘n’ Dale for $5,000, his advertised stud fee for the duration of his stay at the Central Kentucky farm before he moved to Oklahoma in 2020.
SOUL OF AN ANGEL (2019 Atreides – Factor One, by The Factor)
B: Westbook Stables, LLC
O: C2 Racing Stable LLC, Agave Racing Stable, and Ken T. Reimer
T: Saffie Joseph Jr.
Record: 41-6-7-5, $1,192,675
Highest achievement: Grade 1 winner
Last Auction Price: $3,000 Fasig-Tipton October RNA
In the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint, Soul of an Angel, a daughter of a stallion who raced five times, was making her 41st lifetime start, and she has won or placed in 18 of those races. Moreover, her dam, Factor One (The Factor), was unplaced in six starts at three and four, though Factor One is a half-sister to Grade 1 winner Homeboykris (Roman Ruler), who won 14 races from two to nine. Soul of an Angel was led out of the sale ring unsold at $3,000.
Neither Fast Anna nor Atreides retired to stud with the attributes that make a stallion commercial from the start, but with the support of their owner/breeders, each got a chance at a major breeding farm. The appeal of stallions like them is that they serve a purpose by enabling people who can’t afford to breed to, say, Medaglia d’Oro to access his sire line. While they weren’t resounding successes in the big picture—each stallion only has one graded stakes winner—their Breeders’ Cup winners aside, they were still capable of producing useful horses that are the bread and butter of the small breeder. Without the small breeder, what do we have left?
Here’s the thing: People who don’t approve of a horse going to stud don’t have to breed to him or buy his progeny. It’s that simple. Judy Hicks had a dream and bred her unraced mare to an inexpensive, non-commercial stallion, producing a foal with two blank dams, and that foal is now a five-time Grade 1 winner, soon-to-be champion, and undoubtedly a future Hall of Famer.