GET STORMY – Thoroughbred Daily News, Proven Value Sire, February 21, 2020
GET STORMY (Stormy Atlantic–Foolish Girl by Kiri’s Clown), $7,500 Crestwood
From Chris McGrath, TDN Kentucky Sires Series, February 21, 2020
Last year he was favoured by the most helpfully named of advertisements in dual Grade I scorer Got Stormy, a $23,000 yearling ($45,000 2-year-old) who broke the Saratoga track record as the first female winner of the GI Fourstardave H. in 1:32 flat, besides also finishing second in the GI Breeders’ Cup Mile. But Get Stormy is no one-trick pony, with four other graded-stakes performers in 2019 headed by dual Grade I-placed Clyde’s Image, himself a $24,000 yearling.
Though he is viewed absolutely as a turf sire, I have a bit of a crackpot theory about Get Stormy. Physically he has all the bone and power you seek in a dirt horse and it might be wrong to typecast him at what remains an early stage of his career. Last year 71 of his 106 starters raced on turf; but this group accounted only for 26 of his 48 winners (leaving 22 winners from the remaining 35). Similar story in 2018: 75 of 114 starters raced on turf, but included basically only half his total winners at 27 out of 53 (leaving 26 winners from the other 39). Even allowing for the fact that some of these others scored on synthetics, I just have a feeling that he’s not being given adequate opportunity on dirt.
Get Stormy himself certainly carried his speed relentlessly, the premier hallmark of dirt racing, having made the running for all three of his Grade I wins. Obviously the Storm Cat line is associated with versatility and while there’s plenty of grass in his pedigree, it’s a healthy mix overall: his damsire is by Foolish Pleasure, for instance, and his sire’s dam is by Seattle Slew. In terms of sheer quality, moreover, he also carries Claiborne champion and matriarch Moccasin 4×5. Anyhow that constitution of his (won graded stakes four years running) would be worth replicating for any discipline of racing.
So let’s forget prescribing any rules for Get Stormy and just recognize how he’s upgrading the limited material he can expect at this level of the market. Got Stormy herself, for instance, is out of a $4,500 Malabar Gold mare who raced in Puerto Rico.
Just imagine what Get Stormy might achieve with the mares lavished, at more industrial farms, on newcomers who will never make the grade. As it is, he is in excellent hands; and last year already expanded his book from 47 to 86. And that was before his first big star had remotely hit her full stride.
The barometer says Stormy, but that means a sunny outlook for breeders.