Summer is the time for first-crop juveniles to turn up the heat for their sires. While fans enjoy seeing their old favorites’ babies beginning to show their stuff, stallion managers, consignors, and pinhookers watch with increasing anxiety for those make-or-break runners that may be the difference between a stallion being “hot” next spring and being on a path to oblivion, along with the youngsters sired in the “bubble” second and third crops.
Most of the attention at this time of year gets focused on Saratoga and Del Mar, the places that have historically showcased high-end East Coast and West Coast babies, respectively. Omaha Beach, though, just established a beachhead well away from the coasts. Her name is Hot Beach, and on Sunday, she became the seventh winner and first stakes winner for her sire in the Ellis Park Debutante Stakes. Trained by Brian Lynch for Boardshorts Stable, the dark bay or brown filly scored a solid two-length victory in the 7-furlong race after finishing second in her debut over 5 furlongs at the same track.
Adding interest to her triumph, Hot Beach is a great-granddaughter of 2001 American champion 3-year-old filly Xtra Heat. An extraordinarily consistent sprinter who overcame a middling pedigree, small size, and stifle lesions to become a champion, Xtra Heat was a better racer than broodmare, with two minor stakes winners to her credit. Nonetheless, her family has persisted through her best racing daughter, Elusive Heat.
A US$750,000 purchase from the 2008 Fasig-Tipton February sale of 2-year-olds in training, Elusive Heat was stalked by a misfortune and lasted only long enough to make four starts on the racetrack. A winner in her only start at 2, a maiden race at Gulfstream, she followed up in a Gulfstream allowance in January 2009. She then disappeared for seven months, suggesting the emergence of a physical issue. Brought back out at that summer’s Saratoga meeting, she secured black type by winning the restricted Geyser Spring Stakes, racking up gaudy speed figures of 114 from Equibase and 110 from BRIS. Four months later, she made her final start, dropping a nose decision to Gemswyck Park in the Old Hat Stakes (USA-G3) at Gulfstream. Her broodmare career was equally brief as she produced only one foal, the 2011 Medaglia d’Oro filly Hot Water, who never raced.
Hot Water’s broodmare career has helped make up for the disappointments of her dam’s racing and breeding histories, as Hot Beach is her sixth winner and fourth stakes winner from seven named foals. Her previous stakes winners are the 2016 Street Sense gelding Tracksmith, who won the 2019 Frisk Me Now Stakes at Monmouth and ran third in that year’s Commonwealth Turf Stakes (USA-G3); the 2018 Nyquist colt Scalding, winner of the 2022 Ben Ali Stakes (USA-G3) and $100,000 Michelob Ultra Challenger Stakes (USA-G3); and the 2019 Speightster filly Hot and Sultry, winner of this year’s American Beauty Stakes (USA-L) and third in the Apple Blossom Handicap (USA-G1). Hot Water had no foal in 2022 and produced a Charlatan filly this spring before visiting Life Is Good.
The downside of this pedigree is that Hot Water appears to have passed along some of the issues inherited from her fragile dam; of her previous foals, only Tracksmith has managed more than eight starts, and he made only 11 in a career spanning three seasons. That does not bode well for Hot Beach’s durability. Nonetheless, she should be interesting to keep an eye on, and if she has inherited Xtra Heat’s soundness as well as a measure of her talent, she may be stepping up to bigger things as the season progresses.
Most of the attention at this time of year gets focused on Saratoga and Del Mar, the places that have historically showcased high-end East Coast and West Coast babies, respectively. Omaha Beach, though, just established a beachhead well away from the coasts. Her name is Hot Beach, and on Sunday, she became the seventh winner and first stakes winner for her sire in the Ellis Park Debutante Stakes. Trained by Brian Lynch for Boardshorts Stable, the dark bay or brown filly scored a solid two-length victory in the 7-furlong race after finishing second in her debut over 5 furlongs at the same track.
Adding interest to her triumph, Hot Beach is a great-granddaughter of 2001 American champion 3-year-old filly Xtra Heat. An extraordinarily consistent sprinter who overcame a middling pedigree, small size, and stifle lesions to become a champion, Xtra Heat was a better racer than broodmare, with two minor stakes winners to her credit. Nonetheless, her family has persisted through her best racing daughter, Elusive Heat.
A US$750,000 purchase from the 2008 Fasig-Tipton February sale of 2-year-olds in training, Elusive Heat was stalked by a misfortune and lasted only long enough to make four starts on the racetrack. A winner in her only start at 2, a maiden race at Gulfstream, she followed up in a Gulfstream allowance in January 2009. She then disappeared for seven months, suggesting the emergence of a physical issue. Brought back out at that summer’s Saratoga meeting, she secured black type by winning the restricted Geyser Spring Stakes, racking up gaudy speed figures of 114 from Equibase and 110 from BRIS. Four months later, she made her final start, dropping a nose decision to Gemswyck Park in the Old Hat Stakes (USA-G3) at Gulfstream. Her broodmare career was equally brief as she produced only one foal, the 2011 Medaglia d’Oro filly Hot Water, who never raced.
Hot Water’s broodmare career has helped make up for the disappointments of her dam’s racing and breeding histories, as Hot Beach is her sixth winner and fourth stakes winner from seven named foals. Her previous stakes winners are the 2016 Street Sense gelding Tracksmith, who won the 2019 Frisk Me Now Stakes at Monmouth and ran third in that year’s Commonwealth Turf Stakes (USA-G3); the 2018 Nyquist colt Scalding, winner of the 2022 Ben Ali Stakes (USA-G3) and $100,000 Michelob Ultra Challenger Stakes (USA-G3); and the 2019 Speightster filly Hot and Sultry, winner of this year’s American Beauty Stakes (USA-L) and third in the Apple Blossom Handicap (USA-G1). Hot Water had no foal in 2022 and produced a Charlatan filly this spring before visiting Life Is Good.
The downside of this pedigree is that Hot Water appears to have passed along some of the issues inherited from her fragile dam; of her previous foals, only Tracksmith has managed more than eight starts, and he made only 11 in a career spanning three seasons. That does not bode well for Hot Beach’s durability. Nonetheless, she should be interesting to keep an eye on, and if she has inherited Xtra Heat’s soundness as well as a measure of her talent, she may be stepping up to bigger things as the season progresses.
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