THE BROCK TALK—BY BROCK SHERIDAN

Brock Sheridan

Editor-in-Chief

Florida Equine Communications

JOHN D. FILER PHOTO

Breeders’ Cup Dreams Start With Florida Sire Stakes Success

Scat Dancer and Real Courage started it all on Nov. 2, 1985 at Aqueduct during the second running of the Breeders’ Cup. They were the first two graduates of the Florida Stallion Stakes to make their next start in the $1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (Grade 1).

Scat Dancer, who had won the mile-and-a-sixteenth Florida Stallion Stakes In Reality at Calder on Oct. 19 by nearly four lengths, gave national credibility to the Florida Stallion Stakes, which had been run for the first time just three years earlier at Calder.

Owned by F. Castro and trained by Domingo Vasconcelos, Scat Dancer rallied from tenth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile to finish third, less than two lengths shy of Florida-bred winner Tasso and runner-up Storm Cat. Real Courage, unfortunately, clipped heals with another runner in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile that year and was eased.

While bred in the Sunshine State, Tasso had used the Grade 2 Breeders’ Futurity at Keeneland as his final prep for the Breeders’ Cup.

The next year, however, Dolly Green’s Brave Raj used her three-quarters of a length victory in the Florida Stallion Stakes My Dear Girl as a springboard to a fiveand-a-half-length victory in the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies (G1) and an Eclipse Award as the 1986 champion 2-year-old female.

In the 38 years since the Breeders’ Cup launched in 1984 at Hollywood Park, there have been 28 starters in either the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile or Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies who made their previous start in the Florida Stallion Stakes, which became known as the Florida Sire Stakes in 2014 when it moved to Gulfstream Park and was administered by the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders’ and Owners’ Association. While the Florida Sire Stakes has continuously been a launching pad for Florida-breds with Breeders’ Cup aspirations, its role as Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and Juvenile Fillies prep races have been magnified since 2010 when Jacks or Better Farms homebred Awesome Feather swept the Florida Stallion Stakes before dominating the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies with a two-and-a-quarter-length victory at Churchill Downs in November. In the 10 years since Awesome Feather, seven Florida Sire Stakes graduates have gone on to make their next start in the Breeders’ Cup World Championships. Fort Loudon, another Jacks or Better