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Though we tend to be more pedigree-centric in our mating recommendations, we do always take the physical match into consideration. And on rare occasions, such as with Frame of Mind visiting Nashville in 2024, a pairing strikes us as such a no-brainer on physical that those considerations will dominate our reasoning.
A $460k yearling purchase by the team at WinStar, Nashville has to be one of the best-looking stallions in Kentucky. We clearly aren’t the only ones enamored with him, given that he covered 204 mares during his first season at stud in ‘23 and the buzz continues to build as he approaches his second year in the breeding shed. We expect him to be very popular again, especially if his first foals look anything like he does.
Nashville is a son of the Champion Sprinter and leading sire Speightstown, who has also established himself as a sire-of-sires through the exploits of his sons Munnings and Central Banker (with Charlatan and Olympiad starting off at strong stud fees recently, too). Whereas Speightstown’s offspring have run the gamut from 2YO through older horses, on turf and dirt, sprinting and going the classic American distance of 10 furlongs, Nashville followed in his sire’s footsteps and excelled exclusively as a dirt sprinter. He won his first 3 races by open margins, including the Perryville Stakes at Keeneland on the Breeders’ Cup undercard in which his final time of 1:07.89 was a new track record, and significantly faster than Whitmore ran in winning the G1 BC Sprint later in the day. Nashville’s wicked sprinting speed was somewhat surprising given that he’s out of a mare by Mizzen Mast (a G1W at 7 furlongs, but also as far as 10 furlongs) and whose own dam is a full-sister to Kentucky Derby winner Giacomo — but we think that bodes well for his chances of being a versatile sire, much in the mold of Speightstown.
In Frame of Mind, he’s getting a big, imposing young mate from a top class and very active Godolphin family who should match up very well physically — if there’s any knock on Nashville, maybe he’s a little average-sized for some, and Frame of Mind has all the leg and scope you could want (which she comes by honestly as a daughter of Hard Spun from an Elusive Quality mare). Her family has also tended more towards two-turn types of races, and an injection of speed and brilliance from Nashville would not be unwelcome at all.
Speightstown-line stallions have done well enough with Hard Spun mares for an “A” rating on TrueNicks (25 winners from 38 runners and 49 foals bred this way, led by G3Ws Forza Di Oro and Munny Spunt, plus two other stakes winners and the 2023 G3P Undervalued Asset) — so this mating does make sense from a pedigree perspective in addition to our liking the blend of physicals (and indeed, Frame of Mind’s full-sister has a Speightstown filly of 2021 to her credit, though she’s yet to run).
We also like that this foal will have 3×4 inbreeding to Gone West, who has been a positive influence to the tune of 74 stakes winners (2.9% to foals) inbred to him in the 3rd and/or 4th removes — that’s stronger than the breed average, from a pretty substantial sample size.
All of which, we hope, will produce a foal in 2025 that proves to be a productive runner when the time comes!