BARGAIN BRED RACING SERIES & BREEDING CORNER

Go for Gin

This week the Breeding Corner spotlight falls to Go for Gin. Go For Gin is from the Ribot line. His dam sire is Stage Door Johnny from the Princequillo line and his dam’s dam sire is Never Bend from the Nasrullah sire line. He has a low dosage index number of 1.00 so has plenty of stamina. As a two year old he won the grade II Remsen. As a three-year-old he was a major player in the major three-year-old races. He won the Kentucky Derby and was second in the Preakness, Belmont, Wood Memorial, and Fountain of Youth. He only raced a couple of times as a four year old before entering stud. In the last couple of weeks he has been getting below 60 BPs at the end of the week.

Real Life Progeny – His best runner to date is Albert The Great winner of over three million in purses. If you take a look at his top five runners you will find three of them were bred to dams from the Mr. Prospector line, one from Halo, and one from Storm Cat. Both the Northern Dancer line and Mr. Prospector line have crossed well with Go for Gin. Go for Gin was a stakes winner at two but his progeny seem to be late developers.

Sim Life – Go for Gin has produced four stakes winners in the Sim. Three of the four are seven years old. Two of those three seven year olds did their best running at three and four. The other one is a sprinter? And won a grade III last year. That grade three winner is the fastest Go for Gin horse in the Sim but Go for Gin’s runners more than not excel beyond a mile and prefer dirt to turf. Simmers have crossed Go for Gin with a variety of sire lines. The Mr. Prospector line has a couple of good runners, Damascus has the fastest, and there are a couple of bargain type dam sires used with success like Caller I.D. and Elocutionist. Crossing back to the Nasrullah line seems to have worked as well.

Breeding Suggestions – Some top dam sires have been used with him but for the most part he has been paired with middle of the road sires, which may be why he has not produced more good runners. His Sim runners develop late in the 2yr old season so it would be no surprise to see a Go for Gin runner on the Derby trail. He is a prime candidate for 4X 4 inbreeding to Ribot. That inbreeding is present in one of his top real life runners Go for Cat. It has not really been tried in the Sim. I am of the belief that the Ribot inbreeding in the Sim is second only to the Mr. Prospector inbreeding. His pedigree is very versatile and he can be paired with any sire line. To get 4 X 4 inbreeding I might try Go for Gin X Hoist The Flag X Nashua. To stay inbreeding free I might choose Go for Gin X Carson City X The Minstrel.

Bargain Bred Suggestion - With his cost at or around 60 BPs you have to use some cheap dam sires. Still he has done ok when bred to cheaper sires so why not give Go for Gin X Gold Alert X Orbit Dancer a try. 

Go for Gin stands at www.claibornefarm.com and the web site is a good one. On that web site you can hypo mate with any of the sires standings at Claiborne Farm like Danzig, Devil’s Bag, Seeking The Gold, Monarchos, and Pulpit.