BARGAIN BRED RACING SERIES & BREEDING CORNER

Commemorate (1240)

In writing last week’s article I came across Commemorate. In this great game we pay a lot of attention to the new sires and the more popular sires. There are many good, older, accomplished sires that get over looked. I believe Commemorate is one of those type sires. He had a solid race record and his pedigree is a little different but also very solid. 

Real Life-Commemorate is by Exclusive Native. His dam sire is Never Bend and his dam’s dam sire is Hail to Reason. His pedigree has good well-known sires put together in a manner that is uncommon. His dosage index is 3.15 indicating a good mix of stamina and speed. He raced five times as a two-year-old winning one listed stakes and ran eighteen times as a three year old.

Early on as a three year old he competed well in a couple of traditional Kentucky Derby preps. He finished third in both the then grade I San Felipe and the then grade II San Rafael. Both of those races were over a mile. He did his best running sprinting. He won the King’s Bishop, which is now a grade I. Commemorate would go on to finish second by a nose in the very first Breeder’s Cup Sprint to Eillo, who was named champion sprinter.

He only sired more than forty runners in one year once in the last twenty years. He was not real popular in the breeding shed but did have some success. His best runner was probably Come on Flip who won the grade II Hawthorn Gold Cup. His top four listed runners all had a son of Northern Dancer or Northern Dancer himself as the dam sire. The inbreeding to Native Dancer seemed to be very popular. He was also inbred at times to Nasrullah and Hail to Reason with success.

Sim Life –In the sim he has just fourteen sim runners. His youngest offspring is a four year old. All of the thirteen others are older like 7,8,10. In those fourteen runners he has a couple of solid runners but no stakes winners. His best runner is #49309 Spirit Weighing. He has not run since week 1971 but his last five races shows you he had some talent. Horse #23051 Financially Mount is another older horse that has raced decent and run pretty well. Commemorate has produced ok on the turf as well. #66820 has been running recently on the dirt and not very well but look at her past performances and she has run many mid nineties speed figures on the turf.

Breeding Suggestions – A son of Northern Dancer is a pretty good place to start when looking for a dam sire. That will give the breeding a 4X5 inbreeding to Native Dancer and a 5X5 to Nearco. I also like inbreeding back to Nasrullah with a grandson of Nasrullah (not through Never Bend) as a dam sire or a son of Nasrullah as a dam’s dam sire. Mr. Prospector would create a 3X3 inbreeding to Raise a Native and while that may very well work I would tend to look for other dam sires. A son of Mr. Prospector would create a 3X4 inbreeding to Raise a Native, which I’m not a huge fan of, but I think it will work.

Anytime you are considering breeding sprinter you must think of Phone Trick and Clever Trick as dam sires. Bold Ruler is a son of Nasrullah so any of his line would be excellent choices for inbreeding to Nasrullah. Raja Baba, Dewan, Bold Bidder, and What a Pleasure come to mind. In Reality, Ribot, Seattle Slew, Damascus all look like good sire line choices.   

Commemorate (1240) X Relaunch (5255) X Bold Ruler (735)

Commemorate (1240) X Phone Trick (4781) X In Reality (2981)

Commemorate (1240) X Sovereign Dancer (6087) X Ribot (5300)

Bargain Bred – Commemorate is a very cheap sire. He is older and will not be around much longer. Also he has no two year olds or three year olds. Lets give him a shot. He gets down to about 22 BPs at weeks end. I like using him with some of Seattle Slews cheaper sons that I have covered recently. Slew O Gold, Slewpy, Slewacide, Seattle Song. Medaille D’or is a good choice as dam sire with Secretariat and Northern Dancer in his pedigree. Silver Buck might also be a solid choice to use as well.

I like the potential of using a couple of Northern Dancer sons as dam sire. With an extremely cheap dam’s dam sire you could use Shareef Dancer or Herat. Obligato is pretty cheap and could match up well.

Commemorate (1240) X Obligato (4509) X Bold Reason (729)

Commemorate (1240) X Slewacide (5957) X Dr. Koch (1793)

What to Expect –I would expect Commemorate’s runners to run well at two. He has many lightly raced older horses that are running just fine so it could take some time for his offspring to mature. Most of his runners seem to do well sprinting and can get up to nine furlongs. Try them on both surfaces. His runners seem to do as well on turf as they do on dirt.

Commemorate caught fire soon after this article was written in 2004. At the end of 2005 he has 41 sim runners. No stakes winners yet but has 7 multiple allowance winners and another 5 runners with one allowance win. He was little used to breed two year olds in 2005 with just six runners but four are already winners and one is already an allowance winner.