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| Astar Thoroughbreds, LLC Breeding News Even though Astar Thoroughbreds is heavily involved in racing, their study of pedigree and statistical breeding sciences compelled them to initiate a breeding program a few years ago. They built a broodmare band, acquired a stallion in Stormy Business and began selling yearlings. These horses are just beginning their racing careers. |
| Did You Know? |
| Since I was a small boy betting races in Chicago, through my father and friends, there was always one constant in betting horses. It seemed, year after year that favorites won 1 out of every 3 races. With that knowledge I wasted many a day developing progressive betting systems knowing that the 33% favorite winning percentage would always come around. However, things seem to have changed. When reviewing track win percentages, it seems that favorites are winning more often than they once did. I looked specifically at 2009 Canterbury Park charts and found Canterbury must have one of the highest rated favorite winning percentages in the country. Last year, over 41% of the favorites at Canterbury won! I have many good friends who refuse to bet favorites and I always tell them they should not consider the issue of betting favorites or not. They need to develop logic so they know which favorites to bet. In other words, if I believe a horse has a 50% probability of winning a race and it's a 2 to 1 favorite, it's a great bet and if you understand probabilities it's a 100% overlay. In fact, it's a much better bet than some horse where a bettor intuitively "likes the odds" and bets a 10 to 1 shot even though it only has a 10% chance of winning. With the shift in winning favorite percentages, and over 41% of favorites winning at Canterbury, bettors who refuse to bet favorites are likely winning on some occasions but often leave the track with a hang dog face. Good bettors who can reasonably predict probabilities, simply have to bet certain favorites to win over an extended period of time. Then again, I also have good friends who only bet on their neighbor's horses. Oh well. |
| Astar Thoroughbreds Personally Bred Horses are Winning (July 25, 2010) Nobodys Buffoon, a yearling sold by Astar Thoroughbreds at a 2008 yearling sale, just won in his first start. He was purchased by Michael Gorra and proved he has some nice talent by going wire to wire in a Maiden Special Weight race at Canterbury Park. He is out of Leading Ballerina, a stakes winning broodmare we sold to The Osborne Farm, and was a great nick based upon our evaluation of his potential. Congratulations to owner Michael Gorra and trainer Stephen Kane. This win follows the second win by another Astar Thoroughbred bred horse, Timeless Fortune. Other personally bred horses at the track are Gazettes Girl, who earned her first check recently, Paprika Parfait who will run her first race soon and Jettisach who has had some solid workouts and we hope to see on the track soon. All of these crosses and nicks are outstanding based upon our personal evaluation system so we expect additional success for the owners of the Astar Thoroughbred bred horses. Stormy Business Yearlings Are The Real Deal! (July 13, 2010) Are you tired of yearling sales with catalog pedigree pages that go to the 4th dam and still can't fill the white space? Do you find yearling sires whose success on the track, or in breeding, is ancient history? Do you talk to breeders who understand little about nicking, inbreeding or the breeding knowledge required to improve yearling success probabilities? Do you really like inspecting yearlings out of mares that never achieved any real success on the race track, or in the breeding shed? If you are like us and understand the economics of local racing, you are only interested in the best Minnesota yearlings. You also want a pedigree and a nick that can compete anywhere, not just in Minnesota. You want a yearling to have a sire that won stakes races, had the heart to always be competitive and actually ran multiple triple digit Beyers in this century. You also want the yearling to have a dam that raced, won multiple times and as a bonus may have won stakes races. If you are a smart buyer, you take this criteria to every sale and if the yearling doesn't hit on all those items, you scratch the HIP number out of your catalog. Then you and your trainer look at the yearlings that do meet your criteria to assure the yearling's conformation is adequate, or in some cases excellent. Then you plan your bidding strategy around the selected horses, letting others bid on the other 80 to 90% that don't meet reasonable criteria for purchase. If your purchasing criteria is similar to ours, here are some Stormy Business sired yearlings that you just have to see to believe!! They are all available for your inspection at the Osborne Farm. Dark Bay Colt Born February 25, 2009, by Stormy Business out of Sugar Hills Miss Sugar Hills Miss is a stakes winning mare with 4 wins earning $93,659. She had 4 previous racing foals, “All Winners”. One foal was a stakes winner and two others are stakes placed! Sugar Storm and Wasson Island, are winning big this year and already have 4 wins at Canterbury! This yearling is big, correct and has been described by trainers who have inspected him as already looking like a two year old ready to run. We decided this would be a great nick in 2008 when we bred Sugar Hills Miss to Stormy Business. The Storm Cat cross is proving out as Sugar Storm, the 2007 colt, is by a Storm Cat son and Sugar Storm has already won two allowance races running a 90 Brisnet speed rating, this year! Wow!! Dark Bay Colt Born March 3, 2009, by Stormy Business out of Gazette Gazette is a stakes placed mare and earned her black type coming in second to Sentimental Charm in the 2005 Northern Lights Debutante. She won twice and earned $37,961. Her first foal, Gazettes Girl, is just starting to race as a 2 year old this year earning her first purse check! This yearling is another big, correct yearling who is also described as looking like a two year old. This is another great nick and Gazette herself was an A++ Werk nick. Gray Filly Born April 6, 2009, by Stormy Business out of Chandi Tara Chandi Tara is a 5 time winner earning $91,852. She has produced winners. This yearling filly is well muscled for a filly and a very correct, pretty gray. The Storm Cat line cross with this Corporate Report mare should produce a nice opportunity and one of best nicks, based on our evaluation system, a Chandi Tara foal has ever had. Dark Bay Colt Born May 5, 2009, by Stormy Business out of Grand Rapids Miss Grand Rapids Miss is a stakes winning mare who won 3 times and earned $79,296. She is a new mare and this is her first foal. This yearling colt is smaller than the other Stormy Business yearlings, due to the later birth date. He is very well conformed with a competitive personality. The Storm Cat line cross should be consistent with the excellent Sugar Hills Miss cross in that Grand Rapids Miss was her stakes winning filly. Breeding News (July 24, 2010) Our broodmare, Sugar Hills Miss, continues to have a tremendous year with Sugar Storm, her 3 year old colt, and Wasson Island, her 4 year old filly, both winning twice already! These two will be forces to be reckoned with particularly in the restricted Minnesota bred stakes races that will be coming up and Sugar Storm just ran a solid second in the Victor Myer Stakes Race. Sugar Hills Miss now has had 3 of her 4 foals be stakes placed, or win stakes races. I can't thank the Sampson family enough for allowing us to acquire Sugar Hills Miss and her stakes winning filly Grand Rapids Miss, so we could breed both of them to our stallion Stormy Business. They have now given us 4 great looking foals and the Sugar Hills Miss yearling colt is possibly the best looking MN yearling we have ever seen. We already have an outstanding offer on the colt but since all of Sugar's foals that have raced have won, she has already produced a stakes winner, her two current runners may be stakes winners, she was a solid stakes winner herself and she just may be the best broodmare in the state. In breeding, 2010 was a perfect season. We have 6 great looking Stormy Business 2010 foals, and all broodmares are back in foal to Stormy Business. We have never before had a perfect breeding season and have to thank Rick and Joyce Osborne, as well as Anoka Equine, for doing such a great job for us. This makes our decision to move all of our mares, to our stallion and the Osborne Farm, look pretty solid in retrospect. Not only did we substantially reduce shipping and vet costs but we improved the quality of our results by having such close proximity to a top MN equine clinic. We also removed the breeding stress that so many breeders seem to ignore when mares experience are shipped to breed, particularly with a new born foal at their side. Lastly,after watching recent local sales, it appears that the few bidders who bid may be bidding against reserves. Only two horses in a local two year old sale commanded a sale price that could have possibly exceeded breeding costs since the total gross sale results were literally lower than our personal expenditures for horses consigned to that same sale last year, we do not expect to gain any value by placing our yearlings in upcoming yearling sales. We are inviting potential buyers to inspect the Stormy Business yearlings at the Osborne Farm. We have now escorted several horsemen from Canterbury to The Osborne Farm in Cambridge. These buyers had a chance to not only see the Stormy Business (Astar Thoroughbred Stallion) and Late Edition (Osborne Stallion) yearlings for sale but also see the stallions and mares that produced these fine yearlings. More visits are scheduled in the next few weeks. (Osborne's Number: 763-689-3661) |
| Current Broodmares All mares were specially selected to be bred to Stormy Business. Demiparfait, Stakes Winner Sugar Hills Miss, Stakes Winner and Stakes Producer Grand Rapids Miss, Stakes Winner Gazette, Stakes Placed Goldtown Beauty, A Holy Bull Mare Sharp Insult, A Grindstone Mare Astar For Dina For an independent view of the resultant foal nicks/pedigrees, go to the Werk Thoroughbreds enick feature and enter Stormy Business as the sire, and the above noted mares. |