HnR Nothcraft Horseracing managed to acquire one such daughter when it purchased the Lemon Drop Kid mare Be Envied. By a regally-bred champion who has the pedigree tools and stud record to be a first-rate broodmare sire, Be Envied was a decent race mare, earning over US$200,000 and placing third in two listed races. Even better, she is a half sister to 2000 Futurity Stakes (USA-G1) winner Burning Roma (by Rubiano), a sound and durable runner who won stakes races every year at ages 2 through 6 and earned over US$1.5 million. And perhaps best of all, she is a great-great-granddaughter of Lady Be Good, a foundation mare for the breeding programs of Wheatley Stable and Ogden Phipps.
Lady Be Good won two juvenile stakes races on her own account but was a better broodmare, producing four stakes winners. Be Envied is descended from the first of those stakes winners, the Princequillo mare Discipline, who won races that are now graded events at ages 2, 3 and 4 before producing 1976 Sorority Stakes (USA-G1) winner Squander (by Buckpasser) and 1986 Diana Handicap (USA-G2) winner Duty Dance (by Nijinsky II), both graded stakes producers. She also produced the unraced Northern Dancer filly Fiddlesticks, whose best racing daughter, Vivano (by Island Whirl) was a Grade 3 winner and placed in five Grade 1 races. When bred to two-time Canadian Horse of the Year Overskate, Fiddlesticks produced the hardy winner When Rome Burns, dam of Burning Roma and Be Envied.
With a genetic background like this and the race record to indicate that she had inherited at least some of the family talent, Be Envied was the kind of mare who could quite reasonably be expected to come up with a good runner given decent opportunities. She did, producing Saturday's Great Lady M Stakes (USA-G2) winner Finest City as her third foal to the cover of City Zip. Like most of her family, Finest Lady has plenty of speed, though she is not as precocious as her heritage might suggest. Nonetheless, she is quite a nice filly, and living proof that it's worth looking for mares with generations of quality production behind them---and hanging on to them like jewels when you find one.