Faiza Awards Girvin Grade 1 Glory in Starlet Stakes

It seems as if in recent weeks this column has become "The Freshman Sire Column." That's simply because this remarkable current crop of freshmen have kept delivering week after week, to the extent that they occupy six of the top nine places of the overall Leading Sires of Two-Year-Olds table. This weekend it was the turn of Girvin, who followed Good Magic—sire of the Champagne Stakes (G1) victor Blazing Sevens— as the second freshman of the group to be represented by a winner at the highest level when his daughter, Faiza, secured a hard-fought victory in the Starlet Stakes (G1) at Los Alamitos Race Course. In doing so, Faiza took her record to 2-for-2, having scored by 3 1/2 lengths over six furlongs for trainer Bob Baffert on her debut at Del Mar in mid-November. Faiza is the fifth member of Girvin's first crop to secure a stakes victory, following the Saratoga Special (G2) scorer, Damon's Mound; Dorth Vader, successful in the Sandpiper Stakes and Gulfstream Park Juvenile Fillies Sprint; Atomically, who took the FTBOA Florida Sire My Dear Girl Stakes; and the Astoria Stakes winner, Devious Dame. That places Girvin, who has three other stakes-placed horses among his 20 individual winners, at the head of the freshmen by percentage of black-type winners to starts. That Girvin would achieve this much by Dec. 10 of his first year with runners is quite remarkable, given that he didn't start until Dec. 16 of his own 2-year-old season, when he took a maiden special over six furlongs at Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots by a head. Girvin made very rapid strides from that beginning for trainer Joe Sharp. After a second in a minor stakes on turf in his first start at 3, he earned his way into the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (G1) with victories in the Risen Star Stakes (G2) and Twinspires.com Louisiana Derby (G2) on his third and fourth outings. Never in the race at Churchill Downs, Girvin missed by just a nose in the Ohio Derby (G3) in his next start, then gained grade 1 honors by the same margin in the betfair.com Haskell Invitational Stakes (G1), just getting the better of McCraken. Unfortunately, that effort represented a performance peak that Girvin was unable to reattain. A well-beaten 11th in the Travers Stakes Presented by NYRA Bets (G1), Girvin ended the year with a fifth in the Oklahoma Derby (G3). Kept in training, he made just one other start, finishing second by 5 1/2 lengths in the Steve Sexton Mile Stakes (G3) before retiring to Ocala Stud for the next breeding season. He stood there for four seasons, but his early success brought the call to Kentucky, and for 2023 he will stand at Airdrie Stud, at a fee of $25,000. Girvin is the best of the three Northern Hemisphere graded winners to emerge from the first eight crops sired by Tale of Ekati. That son of Tale of the Cat took the Wood Memorial Stakes (G1) and ran fourth in the Kentucky Derby (G1) but was better at shorter, and his most notable victory came as a 3-year-old against older horses in the Cigar Mile Handicap (G1). Given the precocity shown by Girvin's first crop, it's also worth noting the Tale of Ekati captured the Futurity Stakes (G2) at 2. There is also significant precocity in the distaff side of Girvin's pedigree. His dam, Catch the Moon, never ran, but is by Malibu Moon, who scored over five furlongs at Hollywood Gaming at Mahoning Valley Race Course at 2 in fast time on the second of two lifetime starts. Girvin's granddam, stakes winner Catch My Fancy, has an unusual pedigree. She is by the fast and precocious Yes It's True out of Walk Away Rene, a half sister to Clever Monique, the dam of Yes It's True. This gives Catch My Fancy a 3x2 inbreeding to Girvin's fourth dam, Monique Rene. A notably rugged performer, Monique Rene won 29 of 45 starts, 15 of them in black-type races, nearly all at Fair Grounds and Louisiana Downs, and she is ancestress of 21 stakes winners, graded, including Yes It's True and Girvin's half siblings Midnight Bourbon, Cocked and Loaded, and Pirate's Punch. Faiza's dam, Sweet Pistol, a daughter of Smart Strike, showed little in her only two starts, but she does offer a precedent for juvenile stakes success at Los Alamitos. She's half sister to Thousand Words, who took the Futurity Stakes (G2) at that venue, as well as the following year's Robert B. Lewis Stakes (G3). Faiza's second dam, Pomeroys Pistol—by the Danzig line horse Pomeroy— was an extremely talented sprinter, winning five races, including the Forward Gal Stakes (G2), Foxwoods Gallant Bloom Handicap (G2), Sugar Swirl Stakes (G3), and Just Smashing Stakes, and earning places in four other graded events, including when second in the Prioress Stakes (G1) and Test Stakes (G1). Pomeroys Pistol is out of the unraced Prettyatthetable, a daughter of Champion 3-Year-Old Point Given. Her second dam, Swearingen (by Deposit Ticket, a juvenile grade 1-winning son of Northern Baby), was a tough and smart racemare, who won listed stakes at Calder, Hawthorne, Remington, and Retama Park, and took runner-up spot in the Pucker Up Stakes (G3). Swearingen is also dam of two stakes-placed horses, and is granddam of the Daytona Stakes (G3) scorer Toowindytohaulrox. Faiza's sixth dam, the Halo mare Country Romance, plied her trade in western Canada, winning six of 21 starts, and gaining five black-type wins. At stud, Country Romance became producer of some consequence as dam of the short-lived Vosburgh Stakes (G1) winner Harlan (sire of Menifee and Harlan's Holiday, and grandsire of Into Mischief). Harlan was the product of the Storm Cat/Halo cross, as is Girvin's sire, Tale of Ekati. Country Romance is also granddam of the Spinaway Stakes (G1) and Adirondack Stakes (G2) victress Things Change, whose stakes-placed son Lightnin N Thunder appears as broodmare sire of last week's Cigar Mile Handicap Presented by NYRA Bets (G1) victor, Mind Control. Country Romance was out of Sweet Romance, a daughter of Kelso's great rival, Gun Bow, out of the imported Argentine stakes winner Suiti, also dam of the Del Mar Oaks (G2) victress Our Suiti Pie. Faiza is the first stakes winner for Girvin out of a Mr. Prospector line mare, but Tale of Ekati has six of his 15 stakes winners out of Mr. Prospector line mares. Faiza actually has no less than eight crosses of Mr. Prospector that appear 3 x 5 x 5 x 6 x 6 x 6 x 7x 7. What's notable here, and perhaps the key to Faiza, is the frequency that those Mr. Prospector strains appear with Northern Dancer's similarly bred sons, Storm Bird and Nijinsky II. They are found in Tale of the Cat (by a son of Storm Bird out of a Mr. Prospector mare); Tale of the Cat's dam, Yarn, by Mr. Prospector, with second dam by Nijinsky II; Maplejinsky, the granddam of Tale of Ekati, who is by Nijinsky II out of Mr. Prospector's daughter Gold Beauty; Malibu Moon's dam, Macoumba, by Mr. Prospector out of a mare by a son of Nijinsky II; and Thunder Gulch, the grandsire of Faiza's third dam, who is by a son of Mr. Prospector out of a Storm Bird mare. Interestingly enough, Mr. Prospector and Storm Bird both come from the same 'I' mitochondrial haplogroup as Faiza herself.