My mare Nova is 14 years old and only has a few foal-bearing years left. In spite of my love for this horse, I am losing patience with her as a broodmare and have contemplated selling or trading her to another stable.
She was the first foal born at Otsego Farms (Housebuster x Raging Fever) and had a really stellar career with a record of 30-9-9-3 and $1.7M in earnings. She was incredibly consistent, with 80% of her races being above PSR 100 and only one race being below PSR 96. She missed racing immortality by a whisker when she was nosed out by Victory Dance in the 2008 Breeders Cup Sprint.
In spite of her credentials, she has been mediocre in the breeding shed. As of now, she has had 7 offspring hit the track. I'll take Scarlet Witch out of the equation, as she is too inexperienced at this point.
Of the other 6 horses, three (Warp Factor Ten, French Twist, Nebula) are/were decent producers, although none can be described as great. The other three (Quasar, Ultron, Big Bang) can only be described as disasters.
She has consistently been paired with superior studs (Run Missy Run, Deaux Francais, Dubai Gold, Revenge, War Machine, Big N' Rich) so you would have thought that some real talent might eventually be produced.
In order to shake things up a bit, I paired her with the true distance horse Union Jack in 2017. The result was the filly Jackanova, a distance horse with good speed. Who knows how that will pan out? Foxie's Lodge used her as a broodmare in 2019 with another distance horse, Jenny's My Gal as the stud.
So... my results with this great mare have been poor. I'd consider finding her a new home if anyone is interested. Perhaps someone else can tap her hidden potential as a broodmare.
1 comment:
Blows my mind that there has been so little interest in this mare. Granted, she didn't have a massive amount of winnings, but she had as much raw ability as anyone. I thought people would beat down the doors for Nova. Haha, what do I know?
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