by Ann Ferland ©

Plumeria Lei - Repeating a Slewper Cross

Relationships among horses can become complicated, much more so than among humans. Are the mare Rare Charmer and the gelding Road to Slew niece and uncle, because her dam is his half-sister? Or are they half-siblings because they have the same sire? The bloodstock industry generally uses the term "three-parts siblings" or "three-quarter siblings," because three-quarters of Rare Charmer's ancestry is shared with Road to Slew.

This winter/spring at Santa Anita, both of the "siblings" had a grand meeting, with two stakes wins apiece, each emerging as a grade two stakes winner. Rare Charmer, a six-year-old mare has won the Buena Vista Handicap (G2) and listed Fran's Valentine Stakes, while Road to Slew, a six-year-old gelding, has won the Frank E. Kilroe Mile (G2) and restricted Crystal Water Handicap.

The pair of them are somewhat alike, as they are both chestnut and both have a preference for distances at around a mile on the turf course. In the latter quality they are not typical of the offspring of their sire, best known as a sire of sprint specialists, yet Slewpy has turned up in the pedigrees of some distance and turf runners of merit, in particular as the broodmare sire of the Arc de Triomphe winner Helissio.

Slewpy himself was not especially known as a sprinter or a turf runner. This New York-bred did win the six furlong Empire Stakes as a two-year-old against fellow state-breds but his most important win at this age was the Young America Stakes (G1) at 1 1/16 miles, in which he defeated Experimental Free Handicap co-highweight Copelan. He himself was rated at 119 pounds on the Free Handicap, seven pounds below Copelan and Eclipse division winner Roving Boy.

At three, Slewpy started on the classic trail, running third in the Louisiana Derby and fifth in a division of the Wood Memorial. Then his people tried a different tack; after he ran second in the 1 1/16 mile Kingston Stakes on the turf course against older New York-breds, they sent him to England for a tilt at the Derby Stakes (G1) at Epsom. This proved a disaster, as the colt trailed home fifteenth of 21 runners, far behind winner Teenoso, and didn't make it back to the races for over three months.

Once back in the U.S. and on dirt, Slewpy showed what he was really made of with a fall campaign that included three wins in four starts, all of them at The Meadowlands. Following an allowance win, he defeated older horses while giving them weight (according to the weight-for-age scale) in the Paterson Handicap (G2) at nine furlongs. Then he conquered champion Deputy Minister plus his kinsman Water Bank (out of Slewpy's half-sister Summertide) and Fast Gold in the Meadowlands Cup (G1) over the full classic distance of 10 furlongs. The Blood-Horse and Daily Racing Form Handicaps both ranked him among the top 10 three-year-old males of his year, pegging him as eight pounds inferior to champion Slew o' Gold.

Slewpy's campaign at four was anticlimactic, as he won only once in four starts, that being the same Kingston Stakes he had placed in at three, and had no other placings. The fact that he started his stud career more than a year after he made racing headlines no doubt contributed to a lack of enthusiasm on the part of Kentucky breeders.

In any case, he started his second career in Florida at the Wooden Horse Stud, at a live foal fee of $50,000 - remember, this was 1985, in the midst of the Great Bloodstock Bubble. His first foals must have impressed someone, for by 1987, Slewpy was syndicated and standing at Jonabell Farm in Kentucky, where he remained for five seasons.

From his first crop, Slewpy sired Mr. Nickerson, a top-class sprinter on the New York circuit, who won 10 of his 25 starts and nearly $600,000. In a parallel to his sire's career, Mr. Nickerson took a trip across the Atlantic to try to land a top English race - in his case, the Nunthorpe Stakes - but failed to make much of a showing. Tragically, in what was to be his last start before retiring to stud, the 1990 Breeders' Cup Sprint (G1), Mr. Nickerson collapsed and died from an acute pulmonary hemorrhage.

By the end of 1991, Slewpy had sired seven stakes winners from his 156 foals, but he had had no grade 1 stakes winners, no major two-year-olds or classic candidates. Several more successful Seattle Slew sons being available in Kentucky, Slewpy became expendable and was relocated to California, where he stood his 1992 season at the Kerr Stock Farm. Ironically, 1992 was the year several of his earlier offspring took off - Thirty Slews won the Breeders' Cup Sprint (G1), Gray Slewpy won several good sprint races including the Ancient Title H (G3), and Slerp emerged as a graded-class sprinter/miler as well.

Slewpy currently stands at the Flag Is Up Farms in Solvang, CA. The subjects of this article are the best produce of his time in California thus far. Physically, Slewpy resembled his sire, the legendary Seattle Slew, a good bit, being a large, robust, well-muscled if not particularly refined-looking dark brown horse. As a racehorse, Slewpy did just what his breeders might have expected, since he was by a Triple Crown winner from a mare by the stamina/turf influence Prince John, stemming from a French family full of stout bloodlines.

So where does his tendency to sire top-class sprinters come from? My suspicions center on the sire of Slewpy's second dam, Forest Song, an unraced colt by the name of Mr. Music, a full brother to a more famous speed source by the name of Spy Song. Spy Song was not totally lacking stamina - he run second in the Kentucky Derby after all - but speed was his genetic gift to his offspring. His best son, Crimson Satan, came within a length of winning the Belmont, won the Strub when it was 10 furlongs, but still when it came to his stud career, he, too, passed on blazing speed, like that of his influential daughter Crimson Saint.

Both Spy Song and Mr. Music were by Balladier out of the very speedy filly of the early 'Thirties Mata Hari (Peter Hastings-War Woman, by Man O' War). Balladier only raced at two and was a top-class runner, but he has not been as strong an influence toward speed as his sons, so I tend to look at Mata Hari as the source of Spy Song and Mr. Music's Quarter Horse-like tendencies. And since Slewpy's dam, the outstanding and long-lived broodmare Rare Bouquet (14 foals, 13 winners, 3 stakes winners, 2 stakes-placed, six stakes-producing fillies), Mata Hari appears fairly close up, in his fourth generation. It is an interesting possibility.

Meanwhile, back at the female side of the family for Rare Charmer and Road to Slew…

Rare Charmer is the first foal of her dam Dancing Road, who was the unraced first foal of HER dam Plumeria Lei, the dam of Road to Slew; the pair have the same birth year, both arriving in 1995. True to their sire, they have progressed upon maturity and are having their best years at age six. In this case, it would seem that the affinity at work is between Slewpy and Plumeria Lei, but we should not discount the contribution of Rare Charmer's damsire Kennedy Road, who was a champion in Canada at twp and three and a stalwart of the handicap ranks in California during the early 1970s.

The stoutness of Canadian bloodlines of the early E.P. Taylor era are the background behind the success of Nijinsky II, Vice Regent, Deputy Minister, and Storm Bird, among others, and Kennedy Road is right in the mix, being by Victoria Park out of a daughter of Nearctic. Dancing Road is inbred to Canadian champion Nearctic, 3 x 4.

But Plumeria Lei is clearly a key element here. And she is a Cal-bred, too, the daughter of a South African sire and a Kentucky-bred daughter of a Canadian sire and a French dam. Internationalism strikes yet again. Her sire was Bold Tropic, champion two- and three-year-old of his crop in South Africa and a multiple grade two winner in the United States.

Because of quarantine restrictions, which required horses from South Africa to be isolated for 60 days (without training, sometime not even a turn-out), it is difficult for horses from his homeland to recover their best form but Bold Tropic managed well enough, winning the American Handicap (G2) twice, the Carleton F. Burke Handicap (G2), and the Lakeside Handicap (G2) as well as placing in grade one turf races in California. Distances from one mile to 10 furlongs seemed to suit him best.

He went to stud in 1982 at Cardiff Stud in the Golden State and left nine crops of mostly undistinguished foals - only three stakes winners from about 200 foals and only one, the mare Bold Windy, a graded stakes winner; she also placed second in the Milady H (G1). Road to Slew is his first grandchild to win in graded company.

Bold Tropic was a son of the Calumet-bred Plum Bold, a son of Bold Ruler from the distinguished broodmare Plum Cake, dam of Sugar Plum Time and second dam of Alydar, Our Mims and Christmas Past, all tracing to Calumet foundation mare Blue Delight. Plum Bold was a hot early two-year-old in New York, running in four stakes races before Saratoga, winning two and coming second in the two others. Unfortunately, he suffered an injury thereafter and didn't make it back to the track until he was four and didn't cover himself with glory then.

South African interests purchased him for stud duty for a large sum and he rapidly proved worth it, getting Bold Tropic in his first crop. Other group one horses followed and in 1981 he both led the Sire's List and had the top-priced yearling at the National Sales. However, Bold Tropic's exploits had animated interest in Plum Bold and he had been resold to the U.S. for that same 1981 season.

Unfortunately, Plum Bold was unable to reproduce his South African successes in his homeland and has left little trace of his U.S. stud career. Meanwhile, back in the Southern Hemisphere, his daughters were proving to be good broodmares, with horses like champion and classic sire Royal Chalice to represent them.

Tropicana, the dam of Bold Tropic, was a good runner, winning six races at up to 10 furlongs, a daughter of Herculaneum, he a Donatello II son of the dual classic winner Sun Stream. Her dam, Floral, was unraced, as was the next dam, the English-bred Rosehall, and neither produced much of any note. However Rosehall was a half-sister to the dam of Hardicanute, a top two-year-old in Britain, the only year he raced. At stud, Hardicanute has left us the French Derby winner Hard to Beat and Hardiemma, dam of English and Irish Derby winner Shirley Heights, ensuring that his name will be found in pedigrees for decades to come.

Tropicana has some interesting aspects to her pedigree, starting with the fact that she is inbred 4x4 to classic sire Blandford. In the center of her pedigree is a cluster of names - Hyperion, Drift, and Fairway (paternal grandsire of Fairthorn, sire of Floral) that equate to Gulf Stream (by Hyperion from a Fairway daughter of Drift), a champion British two-year-old and an influential sire in Argentina. Meanwhile Rosehill delivers a concentrated dose of Spearmint, a sire to whom she is inbred 3x4x4.

With Moravie, the dam of Plumeria Lei, we come to more familiar territory, for she was bred in the purple, by Northern Dancer from a daughter of Val de Loir. Though bred in Kentucky, she raced in France, without placing once in three starts. Re-imported to the States, she produced three foals in California, none of which raced, then returned to the other side of the Atlantic to produce four more foals, all starters and three of them winners. European conditions seemed to suit her offspring better than North American.

It took at least two more generations of crosses of stallions with U.S. and dirt form in their pedigree backgrounds after Moravie before this female line could produce horses of a caliber anywhere near what the family had produced in Europe. For Moravie was a three-quarter sister to the champion French filly Dancing Maid, gotten by Northern Dancer's son Lyphard during his sojourn at stud in France. Winner of the Prix Vermeille (G1) and Poule d'Essai des Pouliches (G1) among other races, she also ran second in the Oaks (G1) at Epsom (in England) and third behind Alleged and the grand mare Trillion in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe (G1). Despite these heroics, Dancing Maid was rated only second best three-year-old classic filly of her year, behind the Lyphard filly Reine de Saba, unbeaten in three starts in the spring, ending with the French Oaks (G1).

And just to show that the combination of Northern Dancer with Morana, the dam of Dancing Maid and Moravie, was a potent one, yet another three-quarter sister, Mona Stella, by Nureyev, was victorious in the Prix de l'Opera (G2).

This female line has a creditable history in France going back to the 1920s. Morana's dam Moira won a listed-type stakes race, had a group-placed daughter who has produced three stakes winners. One of her half-sisters produced a group-type stakes winner. She was out of a half-sister to the dam of Mincio, the top miler of his generation and a sire of note, and her second dam, Miraflore, won the Prix de Flore, now a group race.

The damsires back along the line are typically French and a highly distinguished bunch - Val de Loir, Sicambre, Goya, Bruleur, and Teddy. Ultimately, we meet an old friend tracking up this branch of the number 14 family, the remarkable foundation mare Admiration. Through her daughters Adula, Adora, Miranda, and most especially the one and only Pretty Polly, Admiration is the female line ancestress of a galaxy of stars, sprinters and stayers, top juveniles and classic horses. And through the sons of the family, the blood of Admiration has been spread everywhere that the Thoroughbred runs.

Rare Charmer shows no inbreeding until the fifth generation, where Bold Ruler makes two appearances, to go with her dam's inbreeding to Nearctic; Road to Slew brings one of the Bold Ruler crosses forward to the fourth. Because of the number of foreign-born sires in the pedigree and the age of Slewpy's dam when he was foaled, the three-parts siblings have missed acquiring some of the more visible strains of the last few decades like Raise a Native, Ribot, Damascus, and Buckpasser. This, of course, means nothing to Road to Slew, a gelding, but it makes his sisters and Rare Charmer interesting vehicles for creating outcrosses with several of the most fashionable sire lines of today.

August 5, 2001. Copyright by Ann Ferland 2001.

**An edited version of this article appeared in the July 2001 issue of Owner-Breeder Internatioal (Vol 14, No. 5)