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If you’ve been reading our blog then you know how highly we think of Blofeld by now. With three crops totaling 74 foals so far of racing age, he has 44 winners from 55 to race, including 5 black-type winners (6.8% to foals, 9.1% to runners) and another 6 black-type placed offspring (for a total of 14.9% black-type earners/foals, and an astronomical 20% black-type earners/runners). His average starter earns north of $83,000, and he sports a fantastic 1.44 AEI/1.13 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, and he’s covered more mares than any stallion in the state for the last two years.
These stats make him pretty thoroughly proven at this point, and we believe it’s only a matter of time before he heads the Maryland state sire list (and stays there for a long time). As the best stallion in the state (arguably other than Great Notion, whose limited availability makes him tough to recommend for outside mares these days), Blofeld is going to fit plenty of mares. And one of those that he should fit very nicely indeed is the multiple stakes-placed, six-figure earner Cascabella.
Among Blofeld’s 17 individual six-figure earners is Brooklyn Girl, and she is thus far his only runner out of a mare by the Preakness and Belmont winner Afleet Alex — who is also the sire of Cascabella. So that’s a strong start for this specific cross, which rates an “A+” from TrueNicks thanks to a Grade 3 winner and another black-type winner from just 20 runners by Elusive Quality-line stallions out of Afleet-line mares.
Cascabella has been bred to stallions from a wide range of sire-lines thus far (and produced a total of five winners), but none from Mr. Prospector’s Gone West branch, so this will be something new for her. However, there is a black-type placed, six-figure earner by El Corredor on Cascabella’s page, and numerous black-type winners and placed runners from the Storm Cat sire-line (two of Cascabella’s own winning offspring are by stallions from this sire-line, too) — Storm Cat being Blofeld’s broodmare sire. So we don’t expect that will hurt.
Physically, Blofeld should suit Cascabella quite well: she’s a good-sized, strongly-made mare with plenty of substance to her, and he might stretch her out just a tad. But overall it’s pretty much a case of like-to-like, and we can’t wait to see the powerful foal that this match produces in 2025!