Housatonic Meanderings — Ready..or not.

One of the things that a bloodstock agent who specializes in helping to plan matings must do at this time of year is keep tabs on the first-year sire race so as to have a sense of who might be out-performing expectations and thus offer value the following spring.

In going over this year’s group, one of the stallions that jumped out to us as doing surprisingly well is Title Ready. Though he only has two winners to his credit, both Title Worthy and Titan Ready have won races with six-figure purses on major circuits: Title Worthy’s wins have come at Ellis and Churchill for Dallas Stewart (and he’s entered in this weekend’s G1 Breeders’ Futurity), and Titan Ready won at Belmont for Brad Cox after placing in black-type races at Woodbine and Saratoga on either side of a private purchase by Qatar Racing. With only 13 first-crop juveniles to work with, Title Ready’s results become even more noteworthy.

Add to that the fact that Title Ready — a Grade 3-winning son of More Than Ready — didn’t win that G3, nor a stakes of any kind, until he was a 6YO, and Title Ready surely fits the profile of a stallion that might be worth following off of these early results.

Unfortunately, it turns out that Title Ready passed away recently in Indiana where he had stood lately for his owner/breeder Chuck Fipke, after starting out at Darby Dan Farm in Kentucky. So while we won’t be able to recommend any mares head his way in 2027, Title Ready did lead us to delve more deeply into Fipke’s remarkably unique breeding operation and serves as a useful jumping-off point to discuss that Canadian diamond prospector’s program.1

We should first note that aside from Title Ready, Fipke has made numerous successful stallions, including:

• Perfect Soul was a homebred G1 winner and sired Fipke’s homebred G1 winners Seeking the Soul (also subsequently a Fipke stallion) and Perfect Shirl (the dam of current young Fipke stallion Shirl’s Speight, also a homebred G1 winner).
• Jersey Town was a homebred G1 winner and sired Fipke’s homebred G1 winner Bee Jersey (a current Fipke stallion at Darby Dan).
• Tale of Ekati was a homebred G1 winner and sired G1 winner Girvin (a successful stallion until his recent passing, though not one that Fipke stood), plus G3 winner Tale of Silence (a current Fipke stallion).
• Not Impossible, an unraced homebred full-brother to Perfect Soul sired Fipke’s Canadian homebred classic winner Not Bourbon.

And Fipke has achieved success with his stallions despite a lack of significant support from outside breeders. For Fipke does not breed for the commercial market at all, but mates his mares based on theories that he believes in — and we all know that the greatest irony of the Thoroughbred breeding and racing industry is that we breed first-and-foremost for the commercial market, rather than with the goal of racing a successful runner. So a stallion owner that breeds “off brand” mares to those stallions, and eschews the requirement that a mare be bred only to stallions of commensurate value, is not one whose foals are going to maximize his commercial profile in the sales ring.

But Title Worthy and Titan Ready both demonstrate that Fipke knows what he’s doing, commercial market be damned.

Both colts were bred by Fipke and sold as yearlings, the former for $30,000, the latter for just $12,000.

Title Worthy’s dam, Maresias, was not bred by Fipke but purchased after she had delivered her first foal (by his stallion Seeking the Soul). Maresias is a half-sister to G1 winner Arabian Lion out of a granddaughter of Personal Ensign. Since Title Ready was out of Fipke’s $1.7 million acquisition Title Seeker, a daughter of Personal Ensign, this makes Title Worthy inbred 3×4 to that unbeaten Phipps Hall of Famer and Broodmare of the Year, in a Rasmussen Factor “Formula One” pattern. Title Seeker’s G3-winning daughter Seeking the Title produced Fipke’s aforementioned G1 winner Seeking the Soul when bred to Fipke’s Perfect Soul, and Fipke has mated mares from this family to Seeking the Soul to create similar RF inbreeding.

Titan Ready, meanwhile, is out of the Fipke homebred Speighty Shirl, a Speightstown daughter of the Fipke homebred Shirl’s Soul. Shirl’s Soul, in turn, is an unraced full-sister to Fipke’s homebred G1 winner Perfect Shirl by his G1 winner Perfect Soul, with both Shirl’s Soul and Perfect Shirl being out of G1 winner Lady Shirl, who Fipke acquired as an 18YO for $485,000. Other Fipke homebreds descending from Lady Shirl include her G2-winning daughter Lady Shakespeare (in utero when Fipke purchased Lady Shirl) and that one’s G1-winning daughter Lady Speightspeare; G3 winner Ready For the Lady (by More Than Ready and out of a Perfect Soul half to Lady Speightspeare); plus Perfect Shirl’s G1-winning son Shirl’s Speight (by Speightstown) and Canadian champion daughter Ready for Shirl (by More Than Ready).

The Lady Shirl family is probably the one most associated with Fipke, and demonstrates his enduring belief in the strength of his families, and his stallions, for that matter.

That list of black-type winners also demonstrates Fipke’s reliance on the veterans Speightstown and More Than Ready when he did breed to stallions that were not his own (although with both of them having now passed, names like Into Mischief, Gun Runner and Flightline do feature among recent mates for Fipke mares).

Although Fipke does have a tendency to offer a plethora of his homebred yearlings by his homebred stallions for sale each year (the recently-concluded Keeneland September Sale featured offerings from his program by Bee Jersey, Seeking the Soul, Tale of Silence and Title Ready which brought between $3,000 and $70,000), he does still race plenty as well. And, in fact, his racing stable has been on a bit of a roll lately.

Since July 1st, Fipke homebreds have carried his silks 17 times, winning seven of those races with a pair of 2nds and a 3rd. Each of those seven winners is out of a Fipke homebred dam from a noteworthy female family:

• Northwest Tale (2023 f. Twirling Candy – Northwest Tale, Tale of Ekati)
  • $135,000 RNA as a yearling, traces tail female to Winning Colors.
• Shirl’s Soul Town (2022 c. Speightstown – Shirl’s Soul, Perfect Soul)
  • A full-brother in-blood to G1 winner and current Fipke stallion Shirl’s Speight, from the Lady Shirl family.
• Justify Perfection (2021 m. Justify – Silent Perfection, Perfect Soul)
  • Traces tail female to Maplejinsky.
• More Galilady (2022 f. More Than Ready – Galileo’s Lady, Galileo)
  • Lady Shirl family.
• Ready Munny (2023 f. More Than Ready – Munnings Sister, Speightstown)
  • Unsurprisingly, dam is a full-sister to leading sire Munnings.
• Ready Comete (2023 f. More Than Ready – Speight’s Comete, Speightstown)
  • A full-sister in-blood to Ready Munny, as their dams are full-sisters.
• Ready For a Title (2023 f. More Than Ready – Soul Title, Perfect Soul)
  • A 3/4-sister to Title Ready, who is a half-brother to her dam.

So while the industry is recently — and generally — focused on more commercially-successful stallions and breeding programs, Chuck Fipke keeps churning out successful racehorses and stallions. And while Title Ready’s early success and early passing mean that he’ll be sorely missed, it seems unlikely to be long before Fipke comes up with another successful homebred stallion.