Second crop sires in the United States have been dominated by Hill ‘n’ Dale’s Violence, and there is no reason to assume that will change before the end of the year. Violence entered stud in 2014 for a fee of $15,000, and he is up to $40,000 for 2019, but his statistics support this raise in stud fee. Depending upon what sire list you refer to, he has around 228 named foals, and 148 starters, with 81 winners, and is hitting at the requisite ten percent for stakes winners with eight currently, and over five million dollars in earnings.

Perhaps it was only a matter of time before sons of Medaglia d’Oro started hitting on all cylinders. They are uniformly gorgeous, like the old man himself, and they are ubiquitous: Atreides, Den’s Legacy, Fast Anna, Vancouver and Mshawish, standing for $20,000 at Taylor Made, are in line to make their names much as Violence has. Only Mshawish, though, has a pedigree that comes anywhere close to Violence’s. Mshawish is out of a Thunder Gulch mare, and has a second dam by Storm Cat (making him double bred Storm Bird). His dam’s side is full of black type, as his third dam is At the Half, dam of millionaire Lu Ravi, and granddam of near-millionaire and Champion Two-Year-Old filly Halfbridled. Any mare from the Unbridled line would seem to be a natural for him.

Violence’s pedigree is more thrilling. He’s out of the Gone West mare Violent Beauty, and his second dam is the Storm Cat mare Storming Beauty, but these first two dams are, with the exception of Violence himself, devoid of black type. What is immediately evident is the surfeit of blood from Secretariat’s ultimate blue hen dam, Somethingroyal, through Secretariat himself in the dams’ side (which includes two of the greatest Secretariat mares of all time, Secrettame, the dam of Gone West, and Terlingua, the dam of Storm Cat), and on the sire’s side through Sir Ivor. This would, by itself, be enough to get pedigree nerds to sit up and take notice.

It's Violence’s third, fourth and fifth dams that stun, however. His third dam is millionaire, Champion, and multiple Grade One winner Sky Beauty. His fourth dam is another multiple Grade One winner, Maplejinsky, by Nijinsky II, who combined with Blushing Groom, his close genetic relative, to create Sky Beauty. And his fifth dam is Gold Beauty, Champion Sprinter, and the dam of sire Dayjur. The build up of Northern Dancer blood through Sadler’s Wells, Storm Bird, and Nijinsky, plus the introduction of Blushing Groom, and the strength of Gone West, who brings Mr. Prospector and Secretariat to the mix, demonstrates exceptional strength and possibility.

On top of that, Violence is gorgeous, and a Grade One winner at two, a formula for precocity that was borne out in his first crop. Having seen numerous weanlings from his first crop myself at Keeneland and Fasig Tipton sales, they too were unfailingly lovely, looking much like dear old dad. Horse racing isn’t a beauty contest, though sometimes beauty will indicate that an impact will be made in the future, and that was the case with Violence’s first crop. They hit, big time.

We can only assume that Violence’s best crops are yet to come, and that if he attracts mares from the Unbridled/Fappiano lines, and the A.P. Indy lines (given his dose of Damascus in his sire line, plus all the Secretariat), that his impact will continue to be impressive. Anyone with a nice Tapit mare should think about breeding to him—I certainly would. It should be noted, as well, that his specialty, as a race horse, was at a mile or a little longer, a recipe for a successful sire, but that his pedigree also infers that distance shouldn’t be a problem. Violence is clearly a young sire to be reckoned with, and the best representative, currently, of his superlative father, Medaglia d’Oro.

-- Roberta Smoodin