Justify had his first Grade 1 winner in the USA last month and, hot on the heels of a second such winner from his first crop of three-year-olds earlier in July, last weekend, two-year-olds City of Troy and Ramatuelle both won impressively, looking a pair of certain future Group 1 winners in Europe for their sire.
Justify was foaled in 2015, the year his trainer Bob Baffert won the Triple Crown with American Pharoah, the first winner of the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont since Affirmed in 1978 and the first Triple Crown winner to have the opportunity of also winning the Breeders’ Cup Classic, which he duly did.
Justify therefore had a tough act to follow, especially as, unlike American Pharoah, he didn’t get the opportunity to further his reputation after the Triple Crown. But while he didn’t race again after the Belmont Stakes, he is notable for being the only one of the thirteen Triple Crown winners to date not to have run as a two-year-old (he made his debut in February 2018) and to retire unbeaten. Raced only six times, that also makes him the least experienced Triple Crown winner.
As a Kentucky Derby winner, Justify succeeded at Churchill Downs where both his sire and grandsire, Scat Daddy and Johannesburg, had failed. In Europe, Florida Derby winner Scat Daddy (whose grandam was by the last English Triple Crown winner, Nijinsky, by the way) became best known for siring the likes of Lady Aurelia, No Nay Never, Caravaggio and Sioux Nation, all of them Royal Ascot sprint winners. Justify, as a winner at up to a mile and a half on dirt, was therefore a very untypical son of his sire to European eyes, but across the Atlantic (including in South America), Scat Daddy had been represented by good winners over longer distances, including American Oaks winners Lady of Shamrock and Daddys Lil Darling, the latter filly dam of this year’s Oaks runner-up Savethelastdance.
In any case, the bottom half of Justify’s pedigree has ‘classic’ rather than speedier influences. His dam is by Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Ghostzapper, his grandam by Belmont winner A P Indy’s son Pulpit and his great grandam was by Baldski, a son of Nijinsky who therefore appears for a second time in Justify’s pedigree.
Justify retired to stand alongside American Pharoah at Coolmore’s Ashford Stud. American Pharoah started out in 2016 at a fee of $200,000 but with his fifth crop of two-year-olds racing for him this year, that was reduced further in 2023 to $60,000. He might not have lived up to that huge initial fee, but American Pharoah has sired seven Group/Grade 1 winners worldwide, including this year’s New York Stakes winner Marketsegmentation.
American Pharoah has also sired two French Group 1 winners for Coolmore, namely 2020 Criterium International winner Van Gogh and 2022 Prix Saint-Alary winner Above The Curve, also a winner in France this year of the Group 2 Prix Corrida. Van Gogh is out of Oaks winner Imagine, a daughter of Sadler’s Wells, while Above The Curve is of interest for being out of the Galileo mare Fabulous, an unraced half-sister to Giant’s Causeway. Other successful crosses between American Pharoah and Galileo mares have yielded the Park Hill Stakes winner Pista and Phoenix Stakes runner-up Monarch of Egypt who was out of the Blandford Stakes winner Up.
Justify’s initial fee was set at $150,000, and while that has now reduced to $100,000, his fee from last year was maintained this spring after his first two-year-olds hit the track last season. Justify has benefited from greater support with Galileo mares than American Pharoah, to the extent that he has had more foals out of Galileo’s daughters in his first two crops than those by any other sire.
Those foals include two-year-old City of Troy who has now won both his starts after an impressive six-and-a-half length victory in the Superlative Stakes at Newmarket last weekend. He’s out of the Galileo mare Together Siempre, winner of the Fillies’ Mile and a sister to Oaks winner Siempre Together and half-sister to Prix Jean Prat winner Lord Shanakill. They are among a multitude of big winners descending from City of Troy’s fourth dam Chain Store, the dam of Irish 1000 Guineas winner Al Bahathri who herself became dam of the 2000 Guineas and Champion Stakes winner Haafhd.
City of Troy’s three-year-old full brother Bertinelli has run well in some valuable handicaps of late, winning the London Gold Cup at Newbury and finishing third in the King George V Stakes at Royal Ascot, but could well be set for bigger things himself.
Other as yet unraced two-year-olds bred on the Justify x Galileo cross include the colts Capulet (out of a Group 3-winning sister to Derby winner Serpentine) and London City (out of 1000 Guineas winner Winter) and the fillies filly Fleetingly (out of Falmouth, Sun Chariot and Matron Stakes winner Alice Springs), Greenfinch (a half-sister to Group 1 winners Roly Poly and U S Navy Flag out of Irish 1000 Guineas winner Misty For Me) and Mayfair (out of Cheveley Park Stakes winner Clemmie, a sister to 2000 Guineas winner Churchill).
Justify also has a Group 2 winner in Australia this year, Learning To Fly (Reisling Stakes at Randwick), but his first top-level success came at Belmont last month when three-year-old colt Arabian Lion won the Woody Stephens Stakes over seven furlongs on dirt. He was followed by a second Grade 1 winner at the same track when Justify’s Irish-bred filly Aspen Grove won the Belmont Oaks over a mile and a quarter on turf. Aspen Grove is out of a half-sister to another of Scat Daddy’s notable winners in Europe, Moyglare Stud Stakes winner Skitter Scatter.
Justify looked to have a very promising two-year-old filly in his first crop with Statuette who won her first two starts in Ireland last year for Aidan O’Brien, notably the Group 2 Airlie Stud Stakes, but hasn’t raced since. She’s a three-parts sister to Cheveley Park Stakes and Prix Jean Prat winner Tenebrism (by Caravaggio) out of Coronation Stakes and Prix Jacques le Marois winner Immortal Verse.
But hopefully Ramatuelle, a filly from Justify’s current crop of two-year-olds, will get the chance to fulfil her early promise. A day after City of Troy had romped home at Newmarket, Ramatuelle looked a future Group 1 winner too in winning the Prix Robert Papin at Chantilly by four lengths from City of Troy’s stablemate His Majesty. Ramatuelle has more speed than City of Troy on her dam’s side as she’s out of Raven’s Lady, winner of Germany’s top sprint, the Goldene Peitsche at Baden-Baden.
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