When we were asked to suggest mating recommendations for Misty Sky, the first thing that jumped off her page was the fact that she’s from the immediate female family of Gun Runner. And with that stallion’s amazing early success and the proliferation of his young sons at stud, there are several options for designing a mating with Rasmussen Factor inbreeding. The one ultimately selected is the precocious and gorgeous first-year stallion Pappacap at Walmac Farm.
After breaking his maiden wire-to-wire first-time out going 5 furlongs at Gulfstream, Pappacap shipped cross country and won the G2 Best Pal Stakes in his second start by almost five lengths. Subsequently 4th in the G1 Del Mar Futurity, he was then 2nd in both the G1 American Pharoah and the G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile to close out his 2YO campaign. He returned at 3YO when his best finishes included 2nd-place efforts in both the G1 Woody Stephens and the G2 Pat Day Mile, plus a 3rd in the G3 Lecomte.
A member of Gun Runner’s historic first crop, Pappacap is out of a G3-placed Scat Daddy mare, and his younger half-brother Boppy O was a Grade 3-winning juvenile himself. As such, this means that Pappacap is wide open for AP Indy-line mares such as Misty Sky, which is a cross that has worked incredibly well for Gun Runner himself, having produced the likes of Grade 1 winners Taiba, Society and Locked, plus eight additional Graded winners (including current Kentucky Derby favorite Sierra Leone), and another four black-type winners from just 77 starters bred this way.
Because Misty Sky is a daughter of Mineshaft and out of a Quiet American mare, she is quite similarly-bred to many of these mares that have already worked with Gun Runner: Mineshaft is by AP Indy out of a Mr. Prospector mare just like Flatter, Malibu Moon and Pulpit (all broodmare sires of stakes winners by Gun Runner), while Bernardini (broodmare sire of a Grade 2 winner by Gun Runner) is by AP Indy and out of a Quiet American mare, and Tapit (broodmare sire of a Grade 1 winner, a Grade 2 winner, three Grade 3 winners and two additional stakes winners by Gun Runner) is by the aforementioned Pulpit and out of a mare by Unbridled (who is a son of Fappiano just like Quiet American).
So we like this cross a lot before we even get to Misty Sky’s own family. But then when you notice that her own dam is a full-sister to Quiet Dance, in turn the dam of Horse of the Year Saint Liam, Grade 1 winner Fantastic, and Grade 2 winner Quiet Giant — this last-named mare also being the dam of Gun Runner — this match makes even more sense. As mentioned above, it will create Rasmussen Factor inbreeding with the full-sisters Quiet Dance and Misty American appearing 4×2 in the foal’s pedigree, and we love to achieve a Rasmussen Factor pattern when possible. In this case, there is as yet a single runner (who is a winner of over $77k) inbred within the first four generations to the dam of Quiet Dance and Misty American, but given the number and quality of the black-type horses tracing to Misty Dancer, we have every confidence that this can be a successful tactic, both for Misty Sky with Pappacap, and in general!