Keeper of the Domino Flame:
Is The Line In Trouble?
In a Thoroughbred world dominated by the get of two sires - Mr. Prospector/Raise a Native and Northern Dancer - two uniquely American sire lines stand nearly alone as the spice in an increasingly flavorless stew of bloodlines. They are King James via Rough'n Tumble (Holy Bull) and Domino via Ack Ack (Broad Brush). Amazingly enough, both of these sire lines have managed to stay alive via just one major progenitor whenever one is needed in order to keep the line going, something that speaks not only to their resilience but to the purity of their blood.
The main concern at the moment for both these sires is that they get the right son to carry on the male line. It is all very well and good for Broad Brush to be an excellent sire of runners, but now that he is pensioned one of his sire sons must carry on with authority or the line will die out. The question is, did Broad Brush meet the proper mare or mares during his breeding lifetime for that to take place.
(Holy Bull, by the way, seems secure for the moment, and getting a Kentucky Derby winner with Giacomo certainly did not hurt him. His champion son Macho Uno even has a close relative, Sacred Light, out there racing in 2006 as a classic hopeful).
Consider, for instance, how fortunate Battle Joined was when he was bred to Fast Turn to get Ack Ack. Fast Turn is from the great sire family of *The Squaw II, which also produced Tom Rolfe, Sham and Chieftain. Then Ack Ack was bred to Hay Patcher to get Broad Brush. This mating not only effected inbreeding to *The Squaw II, but Hay Patcher descended from another good sire producing family, that of Hidden Talent (Capote, Exceller, Baldski, etc.)
It has always been our observation that the majority of mares bred to Broad Brush, while very competent racehorses, were not necessarily from the best families, and certainly were not from the best sire families. As a result, he has only a handful of sons listed at stud. The best of these are undoubtedly Best of Luck, Include and Mongoose. All were good racehorses.
Best of Luck earned over $600,000 in wins like the G2 Peter Pan Stakes. He is from Storm Cat’s family and looks like his broodmare sire, Chief’s Crown. He may benefit from the New York bred program, but we’d rather see him in Kentucky where he’d get better mares.
Include is a full or three-quarter brother to a bunch of other Broad Brush get and this is logical, as he is inbred to Hidden Talent via Turn To Talent/Too Bald on a 3 x 4 cross. His tail-female line, Trustful – Family 19 – is not a hotbed of sire production but it has gotten Rambunctious, the great German Surumu, King’s Troop, Solazo, and the California kingpin Pirate’s Bounty.
He doesn’t look much like Broad Brush either, and like Best of Luck favors his broodmare sire, in his case Stop The Music. He has the advantage of standing in Kentucky and there are good reports on his foals, which are two in 2006.
Mongoose looks more like Broad Brush than any of the others. At stud in Florida, he won almost $700,000 and his wins included the G1 Donn Handicap. From the Agrippine (2-G) family that gave us Cigar, this gorgeous dark bay has three crosses of *The Squaw II via How x2/Cherokee Rose. Keep in mind that his foundation mare, Agrippine, is inbred to Foxlaw, a full brother to Aloe, so send him some Round Table/Monarchy blood and keep it coming. He’ll like Gone West too (the Aroma branch of Aloe, and Sharpen Up).
The majority of stakes winners by Broad Brush have not been bred on any particular pattern, though several have keyed off his *Turn-to double. Because both of his *Turn-to lines are daughters, he is relatively easy to balance in this regard. Products of balanced *Turn-to inbreeding among Broad Brush’s top runners include the aforementioned Mongoose and Include as well as Sticks And Bricks, Bristling, Brushed Halory and Merengue.
Hot Brush (*Ambiorix) and Tookin Down and Tough Broad (*My Babu) have played off the bottom half of Broad Brush’s *Turn-to double, affecting inbreeding to Lavendula. And from time to time, another line of *The Squaw II has been added with success.
Stakes winners bred along these lines include Shashoebegon (x3 *The Squaw II via Ack Ack, Tom Rolfe and Chieftain); Bristling (x3 The Squaw II via Tom Rofle x2/Ack Ack); One Bold Stroke (x3 (*The Squaw II via Ack Ack, Tom Rolfe and Chieftain) and Mongoose (Tom Rolfe x2/Ack Ack).
With the exception of Include and his siblings, the majority of Broad Brush’s other top winners have patterns which are either too common to count (i.e. ‘standard patterns’) or they are carried only by the mare (i.e. the mare Halory, dam of Brushed Halory, who is inbred to Almahmoud).
The result of this lack of inbreeding (why not more Hidden Talent-line mares, for instance?) causes us to believe that we might never have seen the best of Broad Brush. This is borne out by how few G1 winners he sired (just five, unless you count a Japanese G1 winner, then six).
The lack of quality in the tail-female lines of his horses overall is also reflected in his lack of throwing sparks as a broodmare sire. Through 2005, his daughters had produced only 25 stakes winners (5%), with a 1.44 AEI vs. a CI of 1.73. His leading earner is Aud, a G3 type and none of their names jump off the page and into one’s memory book of greatness.
Until he was pensioned in 2006, Broad Brush’s stud fee had risen steadily, but he was never a truly commercial horse. As a result, the best mare he probably ever saw, Winning Colors, had a beautiful son by him named Dr. Litin. He brought $2.5 million at auction and never won a dime. Now at stud in Oregon, he is barely advertised.
We’re very worried about this sire line. It is a favorite and not only Broad Brush, but Ack Ack as well was as lovely a physical horse and as determined a runner as one is likely to see. To watch them in action, or to see their best foals, was to know the Domino line had been held safe for another generation.
Having seen almost all our beloved Round Table gone, as well as so many others like *Gallant Man and Hyperion and *The Axe II and *Herbager, we know how quickly these sire lines slip from grasp. We hope and pray with every fiber of our being that this does not happen to Broad Brush.
Ellen Parker's Broad Brush story originally appeared in Pedlines #63, March 2001
and has been updated for the website