Welcome to the first Housatonic Recommended Mating for 2025! This is our favorite time of year, and we look forward to sharing our write-ups with you each week between now and the end of breeding season. For those of you who are new to our Substack, we have plenty more information on our website, www.housatonicbloodstock.com. We also post regularly on our Facebook page (HousatonicBloodstock), including lots of photos that we’ve taken of stallions and our clients’ foals, and you can now find us on Bluesky too (@HousatonicGWA4), though we are no longer on Twitter.
If you’re interested in a mating recommendation for your own mare, you can reach out to us at [email protected].
Thanks for reading!
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We were recently tasked by a new client with helping to build a predominantly breed-to-race broodmare band to be based in New York. Among our purchases on behalf of CJT Stables at the recent Keeneland November Sale was the Grade 3-winning Saratoga 2YO Brazen Persuasion, the dam of five runners from five foals to race. We have recommended that Brazen Persuasion visit Bucchero at Ironhorse Stallions at Questroyal North.
Bucchero was a winner and black-type performer each year from 2YO through 6YO; on dirt, turf and synthetic; and from 5 furlongs to 1-1/16 miles. He scored his biggest victories when going back-to-back in Keeneland’s Woodford Stakes-G2 at 5YO and 6YO at 5-1/2 furlongs on turf. That status as predominantly a turf sprinter, when combined with being a son of Kantharos, meant that he started his stallion career in Florida rather than Kentucky. But the unwavering and vocal support of his ownership group meant that he got every chance in Florida, covering 471 mares in his five years there.
His oldest runners are 4YOs in 2024, and from 213 foals of racing age he has sired 146 runners, 95 of which have won a race. Most impressively, his runners have finished in the top three in 49% of their races, which is an astronomical figure for a sire’s runners.
Bucchero has so far sired five black-type winners, including 2024 Grade 1 winner Book’em Danno, and another ten of his offspring have earned black-type (which equates to 15 black-type horses from 146 runners, a very strong 10.3%). He has a higher AEI than CI, which is a ratio that we put a lot of stock in, and his runners have shown the same surface versatility as Bucchero himself did (Book’em Danno is a G1W on dirt, Beauty of the Sea is a black-type winner on turf, and Bucaro is a black-type winner on all-weather).
This proven consistency and versatility make Bucchero exactly the type of stallion that’s perfect for a breed-to-race program, especially one in New York where the installation of a synthetic surface is imminent, and where breeder bonuses for state-sired runners are twice what the bonus would be for an out of state (i.e., Kentucky)-sired runner. Not to mention a program where state-bred restricted races have purse parity with their open-company equivalents.
Bucchero works very well for Brazen Persuasion specifically, as well — in addition to just being the best stallion in the New York market generally. She is a half-sister to a pair of winners by Storm Cat-line stallions (namely Into Mischief and Mitole), and her dam is a half to two more winners by Storm Cat’s son Stormy Atlantic (who is out of a Seattle Slew mare, making him similarly-bred to Bucchero, who is a Storm Cat-line stallion out of a mare by Seattle Slew’s son General Meeting). Brazen Persuasion herself is out of a mare by Storm Cat’s son Cat Thief, meaning this foal will be inbred 5×4 to that former Overbrook Farm legend. But two of Bucchero’s black-type winners also have additional crosses of Storm Cat, including Buccherino, who has Storm Cat in exactly the same locations in his pedigree as this foal will have.
Furthermore, although TrueNicks has “No Rating” for this matchup, a closer look at the cross reveals that it has actually been quite successful. Brazen Persuasion is a daughter of the brilliant Indian Charlie, and Bucchero’s sole foal thus far out of an Indian Charlie mare is a winner of $152k. Meanwhile, Bucchero’s sire Kantharos has gotten 15 foals out of Indian Charlie mares, which have resulted in 12 runners, all of which have won, for average earnings of over $120k. And although none of those foals have won a stakes race, no fewer than four of them (meaning one-third) have placed in black-type races.
So to us, this is a cross that has already worked and is bound to receive a good rating sooner rather than later.
Physically, Brazen Persuasion is a strong, stout mare who should be a nice case of like-to-like for Bucchero — and we have no problem envisioning a quick, early and durable foal from this mating to run on all three surfaces in New York for a very long time!