We’ve recommended numerous mares to Bucchero in New York this year, and you’ll be familiar by now with our general reasoning for supporting him:
Bucchero’s proven consistency and versatility (which he demonstrated on the racetrack and is now passing along at stud) make him exactly the type of stallion that’s perfect for the New York-bred market, where the installation of a synthetic surface is imminent at Belmont, and where breeder bonuses for state-sired runners are twice what the bonus would be for an out of state (i.e., Kentucky)-sired runner. Not to mention a program where state-bred restricted races have purse parity with their open-company equivalents.
Bucchero was a winner and black-type performer each year from 2YO through 6YO; on dirt, turf and synthetic; and from 5 furlongs to 1-1/16 miles. He scored his biggest victories when going back-to-back in Keeneland’s Woodford Stakes-G2 at 5YO and 6YO at 5-1/2 furlongs on turf. That status as predominantly a turf sprinter, when combined with being a son of Kantharos, meant that he started his stallion career in Florida rather than Kentucky. But the unwavering and vocal support of his ownership group meant that he got every chance in Florida, covering 471 mares in his five years there.
His oldest runners are 5YOs in 2025, and from 214 foals of racing age he has sired 164 runners, 117 of which have won a race. Most impressively, his runners have finished in the top three in 48% of their races, which is an astronomical figure for a sire’s runners.
Bucchero has so far sired eight black-type winners, including 2024 Grade 1 winner Book’em Danno and 2025 Grade 3 winner Queen Maxima, and another eight of his offspring have earned black-type (which equates to 16 black-type horses from 164 runners, a very strong 10%). He has a higher AEI than CI, which is a ratio that we put a lot of stock in, and his runners have shown the same surface versatility as Bucchero himself did (Book’em Danno is a G1W on dirt, Queen Maxima is a G3W on turf, and Bucaro is a black-type winner on all-weather). Most interestingly, though, with Belmont Park adding a synthetic surface shortly (as mentioned above), Bucchero is the leading US synthetic sire already, despite all of his foals of racing age having been conceived in Florida where purses are significantly lower than what they are in Kentucky and what they will be for his state-sired runners in New York.
Pivotal Woman, meanwhile, is a French-bred daughter of that country’s top stallion Siyouni, who was a G1-winning 2YO and has sired of the likes of G1 winners St. Mark’s Basilica, Sottsass, Paddington, Tahiyra, Laurens, Ervedya, Etoile, Dream and Do, etc. Although Siyouni is a relatively young stallion for broodmare sire purposes, his daughters have already produced the likes of graded winners Erevann, Fairy Godmother, Dr Zempf, etc.
Pivotal Woman’s dam Candinie is a winning daughter of the hugely-influential young broodmare sire Bernardini, and Pivotal Woman is a half-sister to four winners, and a full-sister to a fifth, from five siblings. (She herself was a maiden winner at Presque Isle.) One of her half-sisters, Candie, is the dam of 2024 black-type winner Cambronne, who has won/placed in four black-type events and earned the equivalent of over $260k.
Pivotal Woman’s second dam, Candlelight (by Kingmambo), produced three winners across two hemispheres, and is a half-sister to the multiple G1 winner and sire Grand Slam, to the multiple black-type winner and sire Leestown, and to the black-type placed winners Miner’s Lamp (G3P), Gold Market (a leading sire in Trinidad & Tobago) and Dodie Mae (dam of black-type winner Lancelot Du Lac and G1-placed Watching You, the latter, in turn, the granddam of black-type winner Honolulu).
The dam of Candlelight, Grand Slam, Leestown, et al, is the multiple black-type winner Bright Candles (by El Gran Senor), who placed in the Kentucky Oaks-G1, Santa Anita Oaks-G1, Las Virgenes-G1, etc. Bright Candles is half to the G3 winner Christmas Gift (dam of G1 winner Christmas Kid).
So this is a deep, high-class female family with some excellent broodmare sires involved, even if the last couple of generations have been a tad light on black-type. Its runners have succeeded on a variety of surfaces, which complement Bucchero’s contribution nicely.
And although Bucchero has no foals from this broodmare sire-line (indeed, TrueNicks calls the much broader Lion Heart/Polar Falcon cross a “No Rating,” although there are a black-type winner, a G3-placed runner, and two winners from six to race on this cross in Turkey and Australia), black-type winner Cambronne, out of Pivotal Woman’s half-sister, is sired by a stallion named Alex the Great. And Alex the Great, a full-brother to the G1 winner Bluegrass Cat, is bred on a similar Storm Cat/Seattle Slew cross as Bucchero — so we don’t hate that for this pairing (the aforementioned black-type winner Lancelot Du Lac from this family is also by a Storm Cat-line stallion).
Pivotal Woman herself sold as a yearling for the equivalent of $143k at Arqana in France, and is a very well-made, pretty mare, if not the biggest. But she’ll match well with the lengthy, powerful Bucchero, and we can’t wait to see the NY-bred foal from this pairing and watch it rack up Breeder Bonuses for a long time on all three surfaces at NYRA!