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The Irish-bred filly Coffee Pond has a European pedigree through-and-through, and has so far been bred to unproven stallions with similar backgrounds. While she has produced very attractive foals by these young stallions, and ones which show plenty of potential, we believe that the time has come to give her a shot with a proven commodity in 2024. As such, she’ll head to Spendthrift Farm and a date with the veteran Temple City this spring.
A son of Dynaformer and from the immediate family of leading sire Malibu Moon, Temple City himself was a G3W on all-weather and G1-placed on turf during his racing career. As a stallion, and despite having always stood for a bargain-type stud fee, Temple City has sired no fewer than 30 black-type winners, including G1Ws Miss Temple City, Bolo and Annals of Time, as well as G2Ws Startup Nation, Du Jour, Kimbear, etc. He has predominantly been a turf influence, and while he can get a distance-lover, he’s also gotten some very talented milers, and is generally a very useful stallion who provides excellent value to breeders.
Although TrueNicks gives this pairing a “D”, it looks at the very broad Roberto/Galileo cross (those two appearing in the 3rd and 4th generations of the pedigree of the foal from this pairing), and we see some positive signs that we believe to be more relevant. First and foremost are Temple City’s general abilities outlined above. Additionally, when Temple City himself has been bred to mares by Galileo or other sons or grandsons of Sadler’s Wells, he has sired 15 foals, of which 13 have run and ten are winners — which are not shabby stats.
And then looking at Coffee Pond’s female family — and acknowledging that they appear a bit removed — we see the champion Trillion by Hail to Reason (grandsire of Dynaformer), and a pair of black-type winners and a couple of additional black-type placed runners by Hail to Reason-line stallions Sunday Silence and Brian’s Time (obviously from a branch of this family that wound up in Japan).
Physically, Coffee Pond is a well-balanced mare of average size, much in the traditional European/Galileo mold, but has tended to throw to the stallion thus far with her foals — so hopefully that will continue in this case and we’ll get a foal with some of the size and substance that Temple City adds to the equation.
But at the end of the day, regardless of what it looks like, we’re confident that we’ll get a solid turf runner from this pairing!