Value Sires, Part IV: First Juveniles in '22

Gold: ACCELERATE (Lookin At Lucky–Issues by Awesome Again)

$15,000 Lane's End

A horse like this was never going to cause a commercial stampede. Even so, he was priced with nearly brutal realism, at just $20,000. That told us much that was wrong with our business, as this was a model racehorse whose soundness and attitude underpinned a $6.7 million career of inexorable improvement, crowned by what would have been a Horse of the Year campaign but for the claims of a historic Triple Crown winner (five Grade Is interrupted only by a neck defeat at nine furlongs by the dasher City Of Light). But the strategy paid off with an opening book of 167, really pushing the boundaries by the laudably conservative standards of this farm. He has been ticking over nicely enough over the two seasons since, too, with another 213 mares; and processed his first yearlings at a perfectly respectable rate, rehousing 70 of 88 at $72,831.

Even from such a terribly low base, Accelerate has been consecutively eased to $17,500 and now $15,000. He's an unbelievable amount of horse for that kind of money. We know that his own sire remains scandalously under-rated, but turn that round and ask yourself what kind of physique he must be recycling to raise $380,000 as a yearling from one of the best judges in the game.

That's all packaged with brothers placed at Grade I and Grade III level, their dam a stakes-placed half-sister to a Grade I winner; he's also inbred to Broodmare of the Year Smartaire. Not a chink in his armor, then, and you'll be sorry to have turned down this insulting fee when foals bred at much higher cost start being crushed by his stock.

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