Super Saver - Super Stud
155,804 fans packed into Churchill Downs under the rumbling, cloudy Kentucky sky on May 1st, 2010. Twenty of the sport's preeminent 3-year-old colts paraded before them over a sloppy expanse of mud, all yearning for eternal glory in American horse racing. Fast forward to the sight and sounds of 80 hooves walloping the slick ground as they approach the deafening, tumultuous roar from the crowd at the top of the stretch. Shooting through on the rail, cascaded with mud, whip flying, WinStar silks billowing, and the wagging finger of Calvin Borel for the second consecutive year..."But it's Super Saver and Calvin Borel!"...
Only 124 seconds elapsed for Super Saver's name to be inscribed upon the long and illustrious list of America's greatest horse race. Four years after his greatest accomplishment, Super Saver is on top yet again. He's back on the racetrack, not himself, but through the power of his own genes.
If you couldn't have guessed, I'm talking of the first crop sires list of course. Over the short span of six weeks Super Saver is obliterating the charts thanks to his budding sons and daughters. The Derby winner has accumulated a $167,563 lead (as of August 12th) over past competitor and '09 two-year-old and '10 three-year-old champion Lookin At Lucky, although the most impressive statistic may lie in the fact that Super Saver has managed to create that lead while having only half the amount of winners as Lookin At Lucky, with only six thus far.
Super Saver became the initial first crop sire to notch a graded stakes winner when his resilient son, I Spent It, bullied his way through on the rail at Saratoga to score in the G2 Saratoga Special on Sunday. It was most appropriate that I Spent It gave the freshman sire his first graded stakes win since he was also his very first winner, scoring in his maiden on July 2nd at Belmont Park.
Hashtag Bourbon is the other impressive stakes winner for Super Saver to date, rolling home by 4 1/2 lengths in the Mountaineer Juvenile Stakes on August 2nd. The solid stakes victory was also the maiden breaker for Hashtag Bourbon after he ran third with a strong closing rally to Sanford and Saratoga Special runner up Mr. Z at Churchill on June 28th.
Aside from his two stakes winners, Super Saver also has a handful of impressive maiden winners. Market Conduct easily broke his maiden at first asking by 2 1/2 lengths at Saratoga on Sunday when showing a nice closing rally up the rail in the stretch before spurting away late. Save Rock and Roll blew away her competition in a Monmouth maiden on August 2nd when swinging wide and skipping to a near 5 length score over the mud at the huge odds of 26-1. Super Saver's other winning daughter, High Dollar Woman, also showed a liking for the mud when holding off a closing rally from Curalina to win by 1 1/4 lengths at second asking on July 27th at Saratoga. The well bred filly sports a pedigree by a Derby winner out of a mare by a Derby winner (Fusaichi Pegasus). And last but certainly not least, the highly touted Competitive Edge, who annihilated a Saratoga maiden field by 10 1/4 effortless lengths while stopping the clock in 1:09.89 on July 26th.
The first handful of Super Saver's sons and daughters show tons of promise: six winners from 19 runners, two stakes winners, one graded, and over half a million dollars over the course of a month and a half. Does Super Saver have the potential to become the next super stud? Only time will tell, but he's certainly off to a booming start. Super Saver is chewing up and spitting out the competition yet again. First on the first Saturday in May and now in the breeding shed, America's freshman sire is looking to prove himself yet again, this time while also attempting to prove that his progeny could be no joke. And who knows, maybe one of his own will be draped in roses in front of thousands upon thousands of fans underneath the Kentucky sky come next May, just as their father had five years prior.