If we were describing this weekend's Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve (G1) preps in the days of Jane Austen, who used alliterative titles for two of her best known works—Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility—we might be tempted to describe them as Cash and Cachet.
While both the Remington Springboard Mile Stakes and Los Alamitos Futurity (G2) offered equal Kentucky Derby qualifying points, the Springboard Mile lacked the graded stakes status prestige of the west coast test, but offered a purse of $400,000 against the $200,000 available at Los Alamitos Race Course. In the event, the Iowa-bred Wildatlanticstorm scooped the cash, where Practical Move earned the prestige.
Wildatlanticstorm and Practical Move are actually linked by more than wins in a Derby trial, as they are both from the Storm Cat line, albeit with significantly different generational intervals. Wildatlanticstorm is by the now pensioned 28-year-old Storm Cat son, Stormy Atlantic, where Practical Move, from the second crop of Practical Joke , has Storm Cat back in the fifth generation. On the Storm Cat front, we'll also mention the impressive Springboard Mile runner-up, Giant Mischief—who may well be the horse to follow going forward—as he has Storm Cat 4x4 through the male line of his sire, Into Mischief , and his broodmare sire, Giant Oak.
Wildatlanticstorm is from a crop of just 18 foals, that being Stormy Atlantic's 21st (of 23) Northern Hemisphere crops, and is his sire's 110th stakes winner.
As a runner, Stormy Atlantic had a rather unusual career. He started just once at 2, running unplaced and once at 3, where he finished second in an Aqueduct Racetrack maiden. He then, however, made 13 starts at 4 in his final season, winning six of them, and gaining black-type with back-to-back wins in the 5 1/2 furlong Havre de Grace Stakes at Pimlico Race Course and the six furlong Damitrius Stakes at Delaware Park.
If that race record was barely the stuff of which stallions are made, the same can't be said of Stormy Atlantic's pedigree which came right of out of the top drawer. Not only was he by Storm Cat, by some way the preeminent stallion of his time, but he was out of Seattle Slew's daughter, Hail Atlantis, heroine of the Santa Anita Oaks (G1). His granddam was Flippers, whose trio of black-type victories included the Pocahontas Stakes and Golden Rod Stakes. The third dam, Moccasin, was champion 2-year-old filly, and Horse of the Year on two of three year end polls, beating out none other than Kelso in one. What's more Moccasin was a sister to champion 2-year-old colt Ridan, to stakes winner and sire, Lt. Stevens, and to Thong, ancestress of leading sires Nureyev, Sadler's Wells, and Fairy King.
Stormy Atlantic began his stallion career in Florida at the Bridlewood Farm of his breeder, Arthur Appleton in 1999, with early success seeing him transferred to Hill 'n' Dale Farm in 2003. His 110 stakes winners include 48 graded stakes winners. At the highest level he was represented by such three-time grade 1 winner and sire, Get Stormy; Stormy Liberal, successful in back-to-back renewals of the Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint (G1T); Up With the Birds, who took the Jamaica Handicap (G1T); Matriarch Stakes (G1T) victress Stormy Lucy; Stormello, who took the Hollywood Futurity (G1); El Tormenta, winner of the Ricoh Woodbine Mile Stakes (G1T); the Nearctic Stakes (G1T) scorer Next Question; and Victor Security, who took a pair of grade 1 events in Argentina.
Wildatlanticstorm's dam, Imsortaspecial won four of 19 starts. She is a daughter of Big Brown, who captured the first two legs of the Triple Crown before being pulled up in the Belmont Stakes (G1). The second dam, the Pulpit mare B R's Girl, won three races, and gained black type with a third in the U Can Do It Handicap at Calder. She is also dam of Factorofwon, successful in the Black Pearl Stakes at Santa Anita Park. B R's Girl is out of Bam Bam Bull, a Holy Bull daughter who took the Half Moon Stakes at the Meadowlands.
The family has been a relatively quiet one in recent times, and one doesn't find a graded winner until Wildatlanticstorm's seventh dam, Hard To Get, who is third dam of the Texas Mile Stakes (G3) winner Unrullah Bull. Eventually, however, the family makes its way back to La Chica, third dam of Native Dancer and of the great foundation mare, Grey Flight. La Chica, a grey, was likely out of the grey mare, La Grisette, but behind that the family is a mystery, as La Chica's descendants are from the L mitochondrial haplogroup, whereas descendants of her theoretical tap-root mare, The Massey Mare (foundation mare of the Bruce Lowe family #5) are expected to be from the B mitochondrial haplogroup.
Oddly enough the pattern that is behind the upgrading of the recent efforts of the family and that results in Wildatlanticstorm is also connected to a mislabeled branch of the #5 family. In theory, Stormy Atlantic is also a member of this female line, but in fact he is from a branch (back to the 1790 mare Anne of the Forest) that is of the D1b haplogroup.
We've mentioned that Stormy Atlantic goes back to this family through his third dam, champion Moccasin, and where this gets interesting in the pedigree of Wildatlanticstorm is that Wildatlanticstorm's broodmare sire, Big Brown, is out of a mare that has Moccasin's siblings Thong and Lt. Stevens 3x4. For good measure Big Brown himself is also from this family, back to Carpet Slipper, a half sister to Dalmary, third dam of Moccasin, Thong and Lt. Stevens. We'll also note that Wildatlanticstorm is inbred 3x5 to Stormy Atlantic's broodmare sire, Seattle Slew, and he is one of eight Stormy Atlantic stakes winners with this inbreeding.
