When possible, we always attempt to give a young mare a chance or two with proven stallions in her first few breeding years, in order to give a breeder the best sense of what that mare is capable of. One of the few proven, reliable stallions in Kentucky with some commercial upside who fits this bill without breaking the bank is the Claiborne stalwart Blame. He’s a perfect pick to send Croquembouche in her second trip to the breeding shed, given that she went to an unproven, first-year stallion for her first mating.
Blame — a winner of the G1 Breeders’ Cup Classic (over Zenyatta), the G1 Whitney (over Quality Road) and the G1 Stephen Foster as a Claiborne/Dilschneider homebred during his own racing career — is now up to 54 black-type winners at stud, which is good for 8% of his runners, led by the likes of G1 winners Wet Paint, Nadal, Marley’s Freedom, Senga, and ‘25 G1 victor Sibayan. Those five alone demonstrate the breadth of Blame’s versatility, given their mix of highest-level wins on dirt going short and long in the U.S., and in Europe. Blame is also one of the most highly-regarded young broodmare sires in the country, too, and we will certainly be hoping for a filly out of Croquembouche in light of this.
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Blame is one of the few remaining successful stallions from the Roberto/Hail To Reason sire-line (at least in the U.S. — Sunday Silence’s line is omnipresent in Japan, and he also traces to Hail to Reason through his sire Halo), being as he is a son of an earlier successful Claiborne stallion in Arch. Blame is from one of the deepest and most successful stallion families in the stud book on his bottom side, tracing as he does to Special, who is also the ancestress of Nureyev and Sadler’s Wells, among others.
Although TrueNicks calls this a “No Rating” mating, Blame’s only runner out of a Twirling Candy mare like Croquembouche is a winner of $236k, and he also has another winner out of a mare by Candy Ride. So we think that bodes well.
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Meanwhile, Croquembouche’s female family has had repeated success with Blame and Arch, as her dam is a half-sister to Blame’s three-time G3 winner Officiating, and further back on the page is Arch’s G1 winner Hymn Book and the black-type placed Wiki. Plus, while she was only a winner on the racetrack, the Arch mare Remarqued — under Croquembouche’s third dam — is the dam of ‘25 G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint winner Cy Fair.
So there are plenty of reasons to like this pairing, including the physical matchup: Blame is a big, strong, not-quite-coarse horse, and Croquembouche also has plenty of size and substance but is significantly more elegant, and they should produce a big, pretty, successful racehorse together!