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We recently acquired the black-type placed mare Faze the Nation with an eye to breeding her back to Blofeld this spring — but also appealing was that she’s carrying a foal by the veteran Maryland stallion Friesan Fire which will be inbred 2x4x4 to A.P. Indy.
A son of that former Horse of the Year and leading sire A.P. Indy, Grade 2-placed at 2YO, Friesan Fire ripped off consecutive wins in the Lecomte-G3, Risen Star-G3 and Louisiana Derby-G2 at 3YO on his way to being the morning-line favorite for the Kentucky Derby, and he came back at 4 to take the Louisiana Handicap for trainer Larry Jones. As a sire, he has gotten the likes of unbeaten Grade 1 winner Army Mule (an $825,000 2YO in-training purchase, and now an exciting first-year sire), Grade 2-winning 2YO Call Paul, brilliant turf sprinter Fiya, and Maryland Million Classic winners Saratoga Bob and Forest Fire among his 8 lifetime stakes winners. Not the most consistent of stallions, he is nevertheless capable of getting a big-time runner, and we think the match with Faze the Nation is a solid one.
As a daughter of Cal Nation, her foal will be bred on the A.P. Indy/Distorted Humor cross that has produced G1 winners Art Collector and Takaful, plus G2 winners Stanford and Harvey Wallbanger (good for a “B” TrueNicks rating). But most interestingly, the foal from this mating will carry 2x4x4 that inbreeding to A.P. Indy — a level of inbreeding that is quite intense for modern breeders, but one which we think carries the potential to produce a classy runner.
So far, there are 67 stakes winners inbred to A.P. Indy between the 2nd and 4th generations, which is good for 2.5% of foals aged 3 & up, including G1 winners Americanrevolution and Sweet Loretta in the Northern Hemisphere, and four G1 winners in the Southern Hemisphere. Among the latter group is Olympic Hanoi, by a son of A.P. Indy out of a mare by Any Given Saturday (a son of Distorted Humor out of an A.P. Indy mare, like Cal Nation), who is thus 2×4 to A.P. Indy. Other graded winners with close inbreeding are American Anthem (4×2), Coal Front (3×3) and Boardroom (2×3), and six more stakes winners inbred to A.P. Indy with his appearance as close as the 2nd generation on one side or the other.
And while A.P. Indy was himself a significant classic influence, some of those inbred stakes winners have been pretty quick (American Anthem and Coal Front among them), while both Friesan Fire and Faze the Nation bring plenty of speed to the equation. Friesan Fire himself was a two-turn type, but Army Mule earned his 114 Beyer Speed Figure at 7 furlongs, and Call Paul, Fiya, Morning Fire and Fire Key were all at their best sprinting. Faze the Nation, meanwhile, had all of her success sprinting, as did her own sire and dam — and she’s built like a pure sprinter, too.
All of which leads us to hope that the foal due imminently out of Faze the Nation could be a top-class Maryland-bred sprinter when it reaches the races.