$600k for Gourmet Dinner (photo Coady)
Two-year-old Gourmet Dinner scored a visually impressive 2-length win in the rich $1-million Jackpot under jockey Sebastian Madrid.
A bay Trippi colt, Gourmet Dinner had won the Affirmed and Dr. Fager divisions of the Florida Stallion series at Calder, before a runner-up finish in the In Reality division as 6/10 favorite on October 16 in his previous start.
Gourmet Dinner showed he was back on his game approaching the stretch in the Delta Jackpot. He surged to the lead after a sweeping bid and shook free to prevail by 2 1⁄4 lengths at 20-to-1 odds. Gourmet Dinner completed 11⁄16 miles in 1:45.23 on a track rated as fast for his third stakes win and most lucrative victory to date.
“We took a chance because of the money involved,” trainer Steve Standridge said.
The $600,000 winner’s share virtually guarantees Gourmet Dinner a spot in the starting gate for the 2011 Kentucky Derby (G1) if his connections decide to pursue the spring classic. Rather than make plans for Churchill Downs, though, Standridge said he preferred to just savor Saturday’s win.
The Delta Jackpot was the first victory this year for veteran trainer Standridge, who was forced out of his profession in June 2009 because he was unable to obtain worker’s compensation insurance after his stable encountered three accidents in two years. He transferred all his horses to former assistant Peter Gulyas and returned as the trainer of record for Gourmet Dinner’s runner-up finish in the In Reality.
Standridge added blinkers on Gourmet Dinner for the Delta Jackpot and he settled in sixth as 2.40-to-1 favorite Bug Juice set the tempo through a half-mile in :46.56. Gourmet Dinner moved up to fourth after Bug Juice drilled six furlongs in 1:11.91 and unfurled his winning bid on the far turn.
“He was much closer [than in previous races] and on the bit, so I think the blinkers helped,” Standridge said.
PEDIGREE INSIGHTS
by ANDREW CAULFIELD (TDN)
Gourmet Dinner
DELTA DOWNS JACKPOT S.-GIII, $1,000,000, DED,
11-20, 2yo, 1 1/16m, 1:45 1/5, ft.
1–@GOURMET DINNER, 119, c, 2, by Trippi
1st Dam: Potluck Dinner, by Pentelicus
2nd Dam: Romantic Dinner, by Who’s for Dinner
3rd Dam: Victorious Meg, by Soy Numero Uno
($40,000 2yo >10 OBSAPR). O-Our Sugar Bear Stable; B-Ocala Stud & William J Terrill (FL); T-Steven W Standridge; J-Sebastian O Madrid; $600,000.
Lifetime Record: 5-4-1-0, $809,660. *1/2 to I=mroyallymecke=d (Mecke), SP, $178,325.
Last week’s Delta Downs meet developed into a celebration of the former Claiborne stallion Forty Niner. The Delta Mile S.fell to Z Humor, a grandson of Forty Niner by Distorted Humor; the GIII Delta Downs Princess S., won by Bouquet Booth, provided the first graded stakes success for Distorted Humor’s son Flower Alley in his role as stallion; and the GIII Delta Downs Jackpot was won in good style by Gourmet Dinner, a colt by Forty Niner’s grandson Trippi.
Trippi’s sire End Sweep had been in the news the previous weekend, via his son Precise End. This former New York stallion enjoyed a stakes double in New York and Tokyo, thanks to his sons Driven By Success and Glorious Noah, the latter taking his second Grade 3 victory of the year on dirt.
An interesting aspect of these successes is that all five of the stakes winners mentioned above have at least two lines of Mr. Prospector in their pedigree (Driven By Success and Glorious Noah are both 4 x 3, Z Humor 3 x 5 and Gourmet Dinner 4 x 4, while Bouquet Booth is by a stallion inbred 3 x 3 to Mr. Prospector).
And they’re not alone, as last week’s stakes winners also included Aruna (3 x 4), Turbulent Descent (3 x 4) and Eminent Tale (4 x 4).
Of course there’s nothing new about Mr. Prospector inbreeding involving the Forty Niner branch of the male line, with the likes of Society Selection, Commentator, Fourty Niners Son and Flower Alley being among the Grade I winners which originally encouraged breeders to follow this route. Vineyard Haven is a more recent example and we have now seen the first Grade I winner inbred to Forty Niner himself, thanks to R Heat Lightning.
This winner of the Spinaway S. is inbred 3 x 3 to the sire of Coronado’s Quest, Distorted Humor, Editor’s Note, Ecton Park, Gold Fever, Roar, Sunday Break, etc.
In Europe a certain amount of inbreeding takes place simply because it is very difficult to avoid some of the dominant influences, such as Danzig and Northern Dancer. Of course some of the inbreeding is deliberate, such as the duplications to Danehill which are beginning to creep in.
The Mr. Prospector line has been so successful for so many years that I guess American breeders are increasingly finding that inbreeding to the great son of Raise a Native is becoming harder to avoid. I note with interest that Bouquet Booth and Gourmet Dinner are by no means the only two-year-old group/graded winners of the 2010 season with two lines of Mr. Prospector in the first four generations. There have been successes for Misty For Me, Wonderlandbynight, Rogue Romance, French Navy (all inbred 4 x 3), Kantharos, Dubai Prince and Split Trois (all 4 x 4) and there is even Lou Brissie, who is inbred 4 x 4 x 4.
To these we can add Awesome Feather, A Z Warrior, J.B.’s Thunder, Position Limit, Saamidd, Irish Field, To Honor And Serve, Laughing Lashes and Soldat, all of whom are inbred to Mr. P within five generations.
With Gourmet Dinner and R Heat Lightning to his credit, 2010 has proved an excellent year for Trippi, who also has the stakes-winning Flying Trip among his juveniles. Trippi now ranks third behind More Than Ready and Indian Charlie among the sires of juveniles, but he is no longer in Florida to capitalise on his success. He was sold in the summer of 2008 to South African interests. Then 11 years old, he had spent seven years at J. Michael O’Farrell’s Ocala Stud, and has already been champion sire in Florida.
“It was a substantial offer and ultimately it was a business decision”, Farrell said at the time. “We thought it was in everyone’s best interest if we sold him. He has served us very well.”
Trippi covered 114 mares in ’08 at a fee of $12,500, so his last American crop reaches the races next year. His sire End Sweep also left Florida for foreign climes. The son of Forty Niner made a spectacular start to his stallion career, taking the title of 1998 leading freshman sire, both by progeny earnings and by number of winners, with a record total of 33.
He was sold soon afterwards, leaving his base at Mockingbird Farm after completing his fifth season. His new role was to shuttle between Arrowfield in Australia
and Shadai Farm in Japan. End Sweep was nearing the end of his third Japanese season when he suffered a fall which resulted in his being put down at the age of 11.
End Sweep came to the notice of Japanese breeders early in his career, as one of his 33 first-crop winners was the Japanese colt South Vigorous, who achieved a string of group sprint successes at the ages of six and seven.
Another of his first crop’s durable performers was Nany’s Sweep, winner of the GI Santa Monica H. as a five-year-old. End Sweep went on to take the titles of leading second- and third-crop sire, thanks largely to the Grade I winners Trippi and Swept Overboard.
Trippi enjoyed a magnificent three-year-old campaign after being unraced at two, winning seven of his 10 starts including five graded stakes. Although he possessed enough stamina to win the Flamingo S. over a mile and an eighth, he was something of a seven-furlong specialist and he made all to beat More Than Ready in the GI Vosburgh S.
End Sweep’s premature death looks especially regrettable with the emergence of the outstanding Japanese performers Rhein Kraft, Sweep Tosho and Admire
Moon.
Trippi’s American exploits suggest that he could prove similarly important to his adopted country.
from Thoroughbred Times:
Gourmet Dinner served by lavish array of inbreeding patterns
Making his graded stakes debut, Gourmet Dinner rallied to take the lead in upper stretch and drew off to an impressive 21⁄4-length victory in the $1-million Delta Downs Jackpot Stakes (G3) on November 20. Dismissed at 20-to-1 odds, the two-year old Trippi colt completed 11⁄16 miles in 1:45.23 on a track rated as fast.
His first four starts all were at Calder Race Course, where he scored in the Affirmed and Dr. Fager divisions of the Florida Stallion Stakes series before a second place finish as 3-to-5
favorite in the In Reality division on October 16.
A $40,000 purchase at the 2010 Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co. spring sale of two-yearolds in training, Gourmet Dinner is one of six winners from seven starters out of the unplaced Pentelicus mare Potluck Dinner, who also has produced Calder stakes winner Gaston A., by Concorde’s Tune.
Gourmet Dinner’s winning grandam, Romantic Dinner, also is the second dam of this year’s Oak Leaf Stakes (G1) winner Rigoletta.
Further back, Gourmet Dinner’s stakes-winning fourth dam, Cricket Club, by Dr. Fager, also serves as the matrilineal source of 2000 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup Stakes (G1) heroine Collect the Cash as well as this year’s Toyota Blue Grass Stakes (G1) winner Stately Victor.
Gourmet Dinner hails from the sixth crop of the End Sweep stallion Trippi, a leading sire in Florida before his mid-2008 export to South Africa, where he currently stands at Drakenstein Stud Farm.
Bred in Florida by Ocala Stud and William J. Terrill, Gourmet Dinner’s family tree reveals a cornucopia of advantageous inbreeding patterns, a majority of which have their own strong ties to the Sunshine State. Most prominent, our subject’s sire and broodmare sire, former Florida-bred sprinters Trippi and Pentelicus, share the same primary cross—by a Mr. Prospector-line stallion out of an In Reality line mare.
On the bottom half, Tartan Farms’ legendary Dr. Fager appears twice in the fourth generation of Potluck Dinner’s pedigree. This influence is, in turn, reinforced by Dr. Fager’s half sister, Magic, who serves as the grandam of Pentelicus—a total of three strains to Tartan’s foundation matriarch Aspidistra.
For good measure, Potluck Dinner’s two grandsires, Fappiano and Who’s for Dinner, are descendants of the same immediate family, both tracing back to another key Tartan matron Cequillo.
The $600,000 winner’s share of the Jackpot purse virtually assures Gourmet Dinner of a starting berth in next year’s Kentucky Derby (G1), but the average winning distances of Trippi’s progeny (6.40 furlongs) and Pentelicus’ average winning distance as a broodmare sire (6.68 furlongs) suggest a classic distance could be beyond his reach.
(Thoroughbred Times – Rommy Faversham is a pedigree specialist and author living in Los Angeles. More of his work is available at http://www.equicross.com)
from Pedigree Consultants:
Delta Force
The $1,000,000 Delta Jackpot (gr. III) often throws up a later-developing youngster who has been flying under the radar. This time it was a more exposed type who got the job done. Calder shipper, Gourmet Dinner, was making his fifth career start, and had already won two stakes, the Dr. Fager Stakes and Affirmed Stakes, before suffering his first defeat, in the October 16, In Reality Stakes, his two turn debut.
Gourmet Dinner is a son of Trippi, who had been vying with Montbrook for leadership of the Florida stallion colony, prior to his export to South African. Trippi is by the record-breaking Leading Freshman Sire, End Sweep (by Forty Niner). He did win the Flamingo Stakes (gr. III) over nine furlongs early in his three-year-old season, but subsequently did his best work as a sprinter, taking the Vosburgh Stakes (gr. I), Tom Fool Handicap (gr. II), and Riva Ridge Stakes (gr. II). Purchased for stud duty in Kentucky, he remained in training at four, but failed to win in four starts, and was re-routed to Florida. His general record shows him to have been a very useful sire of fast precocious horses, rather than a progenitor of great class, although to be fair, he wouldn’t have covered the strongest books of mares. He does have another very good two-year-old this year in R Heat Lightning, successful in the Spinaway Stakes (gr. I) and runner-up in the Frizette Stakes (gr. I) and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies (gr. I). His other graded winners are the Kelso Handicap (gr. II) victor, Trippi’s Storm; Jealous Again, successful in the Queen Mary Stakes (gr. II) at Royal Ascot; and Miss Macy Sue, successful in the Winning Colours Stakes (gr. III).
Gourmet Dinner is the second major two-year-old stakes winner this year for his immediate family, as his dam is half-sister to the Montbrook mare, Almost Aprom Queen, herself dam of the Oak Leaf Stakes (gr. I) victress Rigoletta. In female line the family goes back to Clover Lane (fifth dam), winner of the Arlington-Washington Lassie Stakes, and half-sister to the granddam of Deputy Minister. The fourth dam, Dr. Fager’s daughter, Cricket Club, is also ancestress of grade one winners Collect the Cash and Stately Victor.
Gourmet Dinner (TrueNicks A++) is one of three stakes winners sired by End Sweep or a son from just 11 starters out of mares by Pentelicus (sprinting three-parts-brother to Unbridled). Here the pedigree is more interesting, as the sire and broodmare sire are both Mr. Prospector/In Reality crosses, so a “Parallel Pattern.” There are also two crosses of Dr. Fager (by Rough’n Tumble, the broodmare sire of In Reality), and another of Intentionally (sire of In Reality) in the dam. Overall, this doesn’t look like the background of a classic distance horse, but there is no reason that Gourmet Dinner shouldn’t continue to make his presence felt at around a mile next year. Before leaving Gourmet Dinner, we’ll also give a quick call to the runner-up, another Florida-bred, Decisive Moment. He is from the first crop of the Storm Cat hores, With Distinction, and is another version of a parallel pattern, as Storm Cat, and his broodmare sire, Dehere, are both Northern Dancer/Secretariat crosses.
(Pedigree Consultants is found at http://pedigreeconsultants.com)
