From very limited opportunities thus far (his three crops of racing age total just 74 foals), Maryland stallion Blofeld continues to put up results that identify him as a future leading sire in the state. Blofeld currently has 39 winners from 48 to race, including 4 black-type winners (5.4% to foals, 8.3% to runners) and another 6 black-type placed offspring (for a total of 13.5% black-type earners/foals, and an astronomical 20.8% black-type earners/runners). His average starter earns north of $79,000, and he sports a fantastic 1.44 AEI/1.14 CI ratio – meaning he’s achieving these stats without significant help from his mates.
After his son Johnyz From Albany and daughter Chickieness swept the 2022 Maryland Million 2YO races, Blofeld picked up back-to-back winners of the Maryland Million Lassie when Miss Harriett scored a gutsy win in that race in ‘23.
This precocity tracks with Blofeld’s own race record, as he was a juvenile winner first-time out at Saratoga and added scores in the G2 Futurity and G2 Nashua Stakes to complete an unbeaten 2YO season.
For her part, Buff’s In Love was also a debut-winning 2YO who went on to place in a pair of stakes races later that season (the Small Wonder at Delaware, and the black-type Maryland Million Lassie).
Both Blofeld and Buff’s In Love went on to campaign successfully as older horses, as well, but with this pairing we’re hoping to achieve a precocious, Maryland-bred runner who should be perfectly suited to those Maryland Million juvenile races.
The pair match very well on pedigree as well as on proclivities: Blofeld’s aforementioned stakes winner Johnyz From Albany is out of a mare by the AP Indy-line stallion Oratory, and Buff’s In Love’s sire Buffum is also a grandson of that former HOTY and leading sire. TrueNicks rates this mating an “A++” given the success of Quality Road and his sons with Bernardini-line mares, which includes G1Ws Emblem Road and Dunbar Road.
And Buff’s In Love’s female family has had success with Blofeld’s sire-line: she is a half-sister to the impressive winner Spicy Meatball (by the Gone West grandson Munnings — Gone West also being the grandsire of Quality Road), while Buff’s In Love’s dam is a half-sister to the stakes winner Who’s In Town (also DQ’ed from a G2 victory at 2YO) who was sired by Munnings’s sire Speightstown. Further back on the page is another Maryland Million Lassie place-getter in Stickingtogether, who is sired by Great Notion — like Quality Road, a son of Elusive Quality.
Physically, this matchup works well, too. While Buff’s In Love is a sturdy-bodied but short-legged mare, Blofeld has plenty of leg and length to him, and should help stretch their foal out.
All of which we hope points to a successful and precocious foal from this pairing in 2025!