Wasabi’s young broodmare Queen Ann comes from a deep and successful Claiborne family tracing to her 4th dam, Northabout, a half-sister to the Champion Slew o’ Gold and to the classic winner Coastal. In between, the page features the likes of Graded winners Vexed, Sign and Lattice, plus Queen Ann’s black-type winning 2nd dam Cross. Though she herself never raced, Queen Ann has as good a pedigree as you could ask for, being by the excellent young broodmare sire Blame and out of a War Front dam from that aforementioned family, and she and her siblings have sold accordingly at auction as young stock. All of this gives Queen Ann the right to be an excellent producer herself, and we are very excited to send her to the equally well-bred young stallion Tacitus in 2025.
Tacitus, too, 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 a full-sister to the black-type winning dam of 2023 & ‘24 Eclipse Champion Older Mare Idiomatic. These Juddmonte homebreds all hail from the direct female family of Blue Hen broodmare 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. His first yearlings were very well-received at the sales in ‘24, with 77 of them averaging over $63k (off a $10,000 stud fee), with individuals bringing $300k, $260k, $230k, $225k, $220k, etc.
A tall, well-balanced, strongly-made horse, Tacitus is a stallion that we have high hopes for and have used regularly since his retirement to stud. He and Queen Ann are a very nice like-to-like matchup physically, as she is a big, stout mare, and he’ll also suit her very well on paper.
We say that because Queen Ann’s dam, Gibbet, is a half-sister to the G2-winning 2YO filly Sign, by Pulpit — and Pulpit is, of course, the sire of Tacitus’s own sire Tapit. Another half-sister to Gibbet is the G2-winning 2YO filly Vexed, whose best runner that she’s produced is sired by Flatter, who is bred on the identical A.P. Indy/Mr. Prospector cross as Pulpit. Further back on the page, Champion Slew o’ Gold is sired by Seattle Slew, who is A.P. Indy’s sire.
So this sire-line has crossed successfully with this female family on numerous occasions, and while the TrueNicks rating is a “D” (looking at the Tapit/Arch cross), if you look at just what sons of Tapit have accomplished when crossed with daughters of Blame, you find G2 winner One Timer from just ten runners bred this way — so that’s significantly more promising than a “D”, especially when you note that Tapit over War Front mares (he being Queen Ann’s own broodmare sire) rates an “A”.
So lots to like in this matchup all around, and we think it has every chance to produce an excellent runner!