|
|
|
Tacitus comes from one of the deepest and most current families in the stud book, as he’s out of the Eclipse Champion Older Mare Close Hatches, who is also a full-sister to the stakes-winning dam of 2023 Eclipse Champion Older Mare Idiomatic. These Juddmonte homebreds all hail from the direct female family of Blue Hen Best in Show (Tacitus’s 5th dam), who is also the ancestress of 2023 Eclipse Champion 3YO colt Arcangelo, plus other Belmont Stakes winners Rags to Riches and Jazil, and the promising young stallion Greatest Honour (like Tacitus, a son of Tapit).
Tacitus’s broodmare sire is another Juddmonte homebred, namely First Defence, who is a son of G1 Honest Lady, she in turn a daughter of the Juddmonte Blue Hen Toussaud (dam also of Empire Maker, Chester House, Chiselling, etc). So this is a pedigree replete with the highest class of runners and producers, and Tacitus did his best to live up to his illustrious lineage, taking the G2 Tampa Bay Derby (in stakes record time) and G2 Wood Memorial, as well as the G2 Suburban, and placing in no fewer than 5 G1s, including a pair of classics.
A tall, balanced, strongly-made horse, Tacitus is a horse that we have high hopes for and have used regularly since his retirement to stud.
He makes a very intriguing match for Seville’s Princess, given that her female family has produced the top class A.P. Indy-line G1W Cavorting, plus a couple other black-type placed runners in Provincial, My Blue Sky and Saucy Lady T.
The Tapit/Galileo cross which this mating represents has only produced 36 runners so far, but among those are a trio of Southern Hemisphere black-type winners (two of them G1Ws), plus the well thought-of Christophermarlowe in Europe. (TrueNicks gives it a “B+”.)
We also like this match very much on physicals: as mentioned, Tacitus is a big, strong type with plenty of substance, which is just what Seville’s Princess needs and has done well with in the past to complement her leggy but feminine build.
Hopefully they produce a big, strong foal that inherits some of their families’ racing class!