by Ann Ferland©

In Part 1 we wrote about the California connections of the sire and broodmare sire of California-bred Horse of the Year Tiznow. This week we will explore his female line and the associated sires.

The second dam of Tiznow (by Cee's Tizzy - Cee's Song, by Seattle Song) was a Canadian-bred mare named Lonely Dancer, by Nice Dancer. She was a prolific dam of racehorses - 14 foals, 13 to race and 11 of them winners. Only one of them was a stakes winner, Leery Baba, but several of her daughters besides Cee's Song are already stakes producers; notably, her Dance Alone has foaled Celibate, a Grade 1-winning steeplechaser in Ireland.

Naturally, Lonely Dancer was a winner herself, if a minor one. Nice Dancer, the sire of Lonely Dancer, was a champion and classic winner in Canada, having won the 12 furlong Breeders' S. on the turf at three along with three other stakes races and was named Champion Three-Year-Old colt in his homeland. At four, he added the Dominion Day H-NAGr3 and the Canadian Maturity to his tally of 10 wins in 20 starts.

He was from the last Canadian-sired crop of the great Canadian sire Northern Dancer before that one relocated to Maryland. His dam, Nice Princess, had won a division of the New York Breeders' Futurity, but her parents were French and stoutly-bred - Le Beau Prince (Fontenay-Quillerie, by Sultan Mohamed) and Happy Night (Alizier-Happy Grace, by His Grace) -and likely the source of Nice Dancer's distance abilities.

Nice Dancer was one of six foals from Nice Princess; two others were stakes-placed and two of her daughters produced stakes winners - hers was a family of runners as well. Nice Dancer stood in Canada for five years before he was exported to Japan and compiled a record that would be the envy of many a stallion. In 5 crops he sired 76 foals, from which 68 (88%) raced and 56 (73% of foals) were winners and 9 (12%) became stakes winners, all of these figures being above the breed average. His record in Japan is not available to us in detail, but according to The Blood-Horse, he got almost 400 more foals in Japan and only nine more stakes winners, not nearly as good as his record in Canada.

He sired a classic winner, Fiddle Dancer Boy, winner of the Queen's Plate, and his daughters have produced several stakes winners including Glide Path, winner of Sweden's biggest race, the Stockholm Cup. One of Nice Dancer's stakes winners was a full brother to Lonely Dancer named Mr. Kapacity, a typically durable member of the family who made 111 starts over his career.

Their dam was a Pia Star mare named Sleep Lonely, whose production record looks a lot like her daughter's; she had 14 foals, 11 of which raced, and 10 of which were winners, including Lonely Dancer. She also foaled two stakes winners, Mr. Kapacity and the Canadian grade II winner Quantra.

Pia Star should be vaguely familiar to most followers of pedigrees because he was a steady source of winners in his day, most of them sprinters or milers like Star Envoy, Impecunious, and Speedy Dakota. In this he was reproducing the like of his sire, the speedy top-class six to nine furlong winner Olympia; he himself had been more of a classic distance type, winning the Widener, Suburban and Brooklyn Handicaps, all at 10 furlongs. In this he must have taken after his female line, the illustrious line of Equipoise's sister Schwester. At least he took after his dad enough to equal the world record of 1:33 1/5 for the mile in winning the Equipoise Mile Handicap.

More recently Pia Star has made some news as a broodmare sire, with such grandchildren as turf miler Star of Cozzene, champion Mom's Command, and double Oaks winner in Australia, November Rain. Sleep Lonely was one of the 13 foals of her dam Sulenan, and among her 12 runners and her nine winners; as I have stated, mares in this family made a habit of producing racehorses, not just pasture ornaments.

One of Sulenan's foals was a stakes winner and six of her seven daughters became the dam or granddam of stakes winners. Her stakes winner, Swinging Lizzie, by The Axe II, would not have been nationally known, running on the Maryland circuit, winning 11 of 54 races. It was Swinging Lizzie's sons, Swing Till Dawn and Lively One, who made the headlines, who won and placed in grade 1 stakes races. Both sons have already sired grade 1 winners, and three of Swinging Lizzie's daughters have produced stakes horses so that her name should not disappear from pedigrees anytime soon.

Another daughter of Sulenan was Snow Bower, a winner by Nearctic, who perhaps has the most consistent record of all the mares of this family - she produced 13 foals, all of which raced, and 12 of them were winners, the sole non-winner having raced only once. She produced no stakes horses, leaving that to her daughters, especially Double Axle, whose four stakes horses included Parfaitment, a stakes winner and placed in the Wood Memorial, and English group 2 winner Digression, who has become a stakes sire in Argentina.

Another of Snow Bower's girls was Arctic Swing, the dam of a Capote colt named Ferrara, who ran second in such races as the Malibu S., the Del Mar Futurity and the San Carlos H. (in California!) to gain his bold type.

Sleep Lonely, Swinging Lizzie, and Double Axle share another distinction besides being descendents of Sulenan and being multiple stakes producers - they each have a cross of Mahmoud from the sire side, via his son The Axe II or his daughter Inquisitive's son Pia Star.

Sulenan's sire Tompion, as his name indicates, was a son of the grand champion and sire Tom Fool; his dam was by Count Fleet and his family was top-drawer. Tompion was among the best of his age at two, three, and four. At two, he won the Hopeful S., and placed in the Champagne S. among other races; at three, he won the Travers, Blue Grass, and Malibu S., the Santa Anita Derby and the Bernard Baruch H.; at four, he won the Aqueduct H. and again, placed in top stakes.

Sent to stud, Tompion made more of a splash in France than in the U.S., with his exported sons Blue Tom (French 2,000 Guineas) and Timmy My Boy (Prix Eugene Adam) leading the way, so in 1967 the French imported him for stud duties. He apparently didn't suit French mares as well as he had American ones and sired little of note there (save the dam of Mouktar, winner of the French Derby), eventually ending up in Japan.

Left behind in the U.S. were the grand old campaigner on turf and mud, Travers winner Chompion, and a few notable broodmares, like Sulenan. Chompion was foaled by a three-quarter sister to the dam of Pia Star. Apparently there was some sort of affinity between Tompion and this family that manifested itself in Chompion's racing ability and Sleep Lonely's production record.

Blue Canary, the dam of Sulenan, was more of a race mare than a broodmare, spending seven years on the track as compared to only four years producing foals. She was nowhere near top class as a runner, but she was sound and consistent, starting 133 times for 13 wins, 12 seconds, and 15 thirds. Those four years as a broodmare produced three foals, two colts and one filly, Sulenan; all of them were winners, and one, Cool Canary, was a good allowance horse.

The sire of Blue Canary was an allowance-type winner named Buy and Sell, about whom most readers will know nothing, just as this writer did before researching this story. In terms of pedigree, Buy and Sell was bred in the purple, being by classic winner Bimelech out of Blinking Owl, by Pharamond II, next dam top filly Baba Kenny by Black Servant. As one can tell from all the 'B' names involved, he was bred by Col. Bradley's Idle Hour Stock Farm and, like many of the later products of that farm, he was inbred to the founding stallion Black Toney, in his case 2 x 4.

Blinking Owl was an amazing broodmare, breeding 19 foals in 22 years in the stud, 15 of them consecutively; 16 made it to the track and 15 of them won races, although only one of them earned minor black type. Buy and Sell was her second foal; her 18th was a War Admiral filly named Belthazar, familiar to us moderns as the second dam of Alysheba and Lear Fan.

Buy and Sell sired 11 small crops totaling only 80 foals, among them five black-type earners. One of these was a quick filly named Star Radiance, who in California produced the Del Mar Debutante winner Admirably. Interestingly, Admirably was the fourth dam of recent Rebel S. (Gr 3) winner Crafty Shaw; after years of obscurity, up pops Buy and Sell twice in graded winners in one month.

Blue Canary had a famous champion half-brother by the name of Crimson Satan, voted best at two of a crop that included Jaipur, Sir Gaylord, Ridan, and Decidedly. Despite being by the noted speed sire Spy Song, Crimson Satan trained on three and four to be competitive at classic distances. At three, he finished first in the Jersey Derby but was disqualified to third, ran a close-up third in the Belmont S., and won two lesser stakes while placing in several top races.

He was arguably best at four, with five wins and five seconds in major stakes races all over the country, winning the Strub S. (10 furlongs), Massachusetts H., Washington Park H., etc., placing in the Santa Anita H., Aqueduct S., Woodward S., etc. All this despite being 'mishandled', according to "Thoroughbred Breeding of the World" (John Aiscan and Dan M. Bowmar III). He could easily claim the title of toughest and most consistent campaigner of his generation, if not the most brilliant.

At stud, Crimson Satan reverted to his sire's type and became an important source of that stalwart Domino-type speed, as befit a tail-male descendent of the 'Black Whirlwind.' A few of his get could run a distance of ground, like Oil Power and Brilliant Sandy, but more typical were such speed-burners as Crimson Saint and Whitesburg, for whom the seventh furlong was a bit too far. Crimson Satan will probably be best remembered as a broodmare sire, with grandchildren like Royal Academy, Terlingua, Mt. Livermore, and Salt Dome to his credit. Likewise his best sire son, Whitesburg, today is best known as a dam's sire, particularly of Olympio.

Crimson Satan and Blue Canary, as well as their five other siblings (they were all winners, one a stakes winner), derived a good deal of their soundness and tenacity from their dam, the South American-bred mare *Papila. Although of Argentine parentage, she raced in Chile, where she placed in Las Oaks; imported to the U.S., she won three races before being retired to broodmare duties.

Her pedigree consists of names unfamiliar to North American breeders, but her female line was one of the toughest families developed by Saturnino J. Unzue at his stud in Argentina. Another fact to note is that Papila was inbred 4 x 3 to the French star Val d'Or, who also won the Eclipse S. in England and became a leading sire in Argentina. Additionally her dam Papalona was inbred 3 x 3 to Val d'Or's sire, the English Triple Crown winner Flying Fox, who led the French sire list numerous times.

So although his parents were newcomers to the state of California, Tiznow 's ancestors have been visiting the state for shorter or longer periods for many years and have provided California race-goers with many a thrill. Tiznow is inbred to Northern Dancer 4 x 4 through two of his sons, Lyphard and Nice Dancer, who were, oddly enough, foaled the same year, 1969. We also find it interesting that both also derive from stoutly-bred French female lines, Lyphard's second dam being Barra, by Formor (by Ksar, Tourbillon's sire) out of La Favorite, by Biribi.

Combining these with the rugged South American bloodlines of Tizna and Papila and we have no problem seeing where Tiznow's ability to put one good race after another comes from. Coupled with the brilliance of Northern Dancer and others in the pedigree, it makes a formidable combination.

Copyright Ann Ferland 2001.