Horse Racing Forum - USA Thoroughbred Races

With the retirement of Corfu I thought of the many recent stallions that were trained by Pletcher that have been added to the stallion ranks. How would you rank their prospects at stud, and do fault them for their fragility or do you blame it on "the program".

He's had some VERY hyped horses retire to stud. A lot of the really hyped ones are too young right now to know how they'll be as sires. I am not even sure if it's about them becoming good sires....it's more like - win the races, get the stallion deal, and who cares after that. There will always be another one down the line.

The lighter raced ones that have been successful are:
Speightstown, who raced once as a 2-year-old - got hurt somewhere in there and didn't get good until he was 6. He was lightly raced (having a year off plus multiply lay-offs will do that to you).
Dunkirk raced 5 times and was leading first year sire.
Bluegrass Cat (done racing in August at 3)
Scat Daddy (done racing after his 18th in the Derby)
Any Given Saturday raced 11 times, but started late as a 2-year-old.

Two that stand out as good sires trained by him, that were not lightly raced are: More Than Ready- who raced 17 times at 2 and 3....rare for a Pletcher horse; and English Channel- raced on the grass until he was 5. He wasn't precocious, that probably helped him. More Than Ready is just tough as nails.
These guys were not lightly raced either:
Cowboy Cal raced 19 times
Lawyer Ron ran 26 times
Master Command ran 17 times until he was 5.

Guess we'll see how some of the others do soon.

Izvestia wrote:He's had some VERY hyped horses retire to stud. A lot of the really hyped ones are too young right now to know how they'll be as sires. I am not even sure if it's about them becoming good sires....it's more like - win the races, get the stallion deal, and who cares after that. There will always be another one down the line.

Exactly. He gets a lot of extremely well bred and talented colts. A good number had minor injuries, not career threatening, and would have been able to return to the races, given enough time off, but the owners choose to take what they can get and retire them to stud.

In the weirdest twist I can remember re: a Platcher stallion prospect...Verrazano has been I retired and transferred to Aiden OBrian and will be pointed to Ascot.