So this week it was Not This Time who landed two big punches: a 13th career Grade I scorer, Claret Beret, in the Apple Blossom Handicap; plus the Grade II prize named for his own sire Giant's Causeway, through In Our Time.If Not This Time and Into Mischief are going to slug it out all year long, they will of course be drawing on the same well–each extending a different branch of Storm Cat.How do you trademark that horse's legacy? Well, a couple of years ago we tapped into the wisdom and experience of Ric Waldman, who of course had a ringside side. And he said something very insightful: the key to Storm Cat had been precocity, but that did NOT just mean running fast at two. “It's mentality,” Ric explained. “He was headstrong, tough.”One could question whether the gene pool can still produce another Storm Cat, after so many years of dilution by massive books of mares speculatively wasted on failed stallions. But what we do know for sure is that no modern trainers would showcase toughness, mental and physical, the way their predecessors still did in 1985.Claret Beret's P360 ProfileThat year Storm Cat beat future Classic winner Danzig Connection a head in the GI Young America Stakes, with Mogambo (homebred by a young Peter Brant) just a neck away in third. That fierce battle came just 12 days after the first two had finished in the same order in the World Appeal Stakes, albeit the stewards had then demoted Storm Cat for boring into his rival. Nine days after the Young America, meanwhile, Mogambo came out and won the GI Champagne Stakes by just under 10 lengths. That qualified him as hot favorite for the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile, but while he managed only sixth, and Danzig Connection 12th, Storm Cat was only worn down late (by Tasso) after chasing the future champion sprinter Groovy and committing on the home turn.So, yes, a tough horse. It was a tough crop, too, yet most of the others proved a bust at stud. Certainly, Mogambo had a chequered second career, caught up in the Lundy disaster at Calumet and exported to Japan. But one of the mares he was sent to get him started, in 1987, was the GI Frizette and GI Matron Stakes runner-up Copernica (Nijinsky).The resulting filly, Carmelita, required seven attempts to break her maiden at Canterbury Park and was discarded by a series of breeders in her second career, during which she produced eight fillies from nine named foals. Among a few minor winners was one Mountain Cat, one of the first sons of Storm Cat to have replicated his sire's precocity as winner of four graded stakes as a juvenile.Carmelita's daughter by Mountain Cat, Catalita, did win three races across 18 starts but only at a modest level and was given correspondingly limited opportunity in her own covers. Five of her six named foals did manage to win, again mostly in mediocre company, but one of them–a $5,000 Medallist yearling named Bessie M–did put a Calder sprint stakes onto the page despite bookending her seven-for-27 career with wins under a claiming tag.Bessie M's breeding career appears to have been sadly curtailed after producing four starters. Fortunately, however, for the last of them she caught Not This Time “on the bubble” at just $12,500. The resulting filly made $85,000 as a short yearling at the Keeneland January Sale, and proved a fine pinhook, sold back in the same ring in September for $375,000.Nonetheless you can see why her owners risked losing her in a claimer, even after she broke her maiden. Though one of Bessie M's other foals did manage a minor stakes placing, the pedigree as it stood didn't warrant a place in a breeding program with elite aspirations. But Claret Beret's eventual transfer to Saffie Joseph has drawn out Not This Time's remarkable ability to upgrade mares, and will presumably make her–as a 5-year-old–one of his last rags-to-riches stories before his fancy mares start cycling through. (As we keep saying, even his current sophomores were conceived at $45,000, with his incoming juveniles representing his breakout at $135,000.)But there is room for one more rags-to-riches story: In Our Time belongs to the same 2021 crop as Claret Beret, and famously started out winning under a $12,500 tag. She, too, has ended up thriving for the Joseph barn. But there's another common denominator, and closer up in this instance: whereas Claret Beret brings in another Storm Cat line through her granddam, In Our Time does so through her mother, who was by Hennessy's son Cactus Ridge.Not This Time's commercial promoters will be keen to amplify the fact that Magnitude and Claret Beret have now tilted the balance, between turf and dirt, as his sixth and seventh elite scorers on the main track. But it's no surprise to see In Our Time winning grass sprints. The Giant's Causeway branch of Storm Cat is synonymous not just with versatility, but with toughness—and arguably that makes it the purest of all the Storm Cat brands around. NOT TOO EXPENSIVE NOWIt is not just as sire of sires that Storm Cat has made an indelible mark on the modern breed. His daughter Silken Cat gave us the wonderful Speightstown, who appears to be one of the principal drivers behind the rise of GIII Count Fleet Handicap winner Mad House towards the top of the sprint division. Mad House's sire Vekoma is out of Speightstown's Grade I-winning daughter Mona de Momma, while his dam Stifled Heiress is by his son Munnings.Mad House wins the GIII Count Fleet Sprint Handicap | Coady MediaBut the stallion with the most prominent footprint in any of the weekend's big pedigrees is Machiavellian, behind Expensive Queen (Ire) (Lope De Vega {Ire}), who dead-heated for the GI Jenny Wiley Stakes.Now, besides being another fantastic stallion to extend the Giant's Causeway branch of Storm Cat, Lope De Vega packs a double dose of Machiavellian: his own sire Shamardal is out of the Machiavellian mare Helsinki (GB), full sister to Street Cry (Ire); and his dam, the Group 1-placed Lady Vettori (GB), is by Machiavellian's son Vettori (Ire).But this was powerfully compounded by Lope De Vega's mating with Witches Brew (Ire) (Duke Of Marmalade {Ire}), who is out of the Machiavellian mare Macheera (Ire). I can never have enough Machiavellian in a pedigree, because his dam Coup De Folie combines the two famous daughters of the great Almahmoud: her dam is out of Natalma (Native Dancer), and her sire Halo is of course out of Cosmah (Cosmic Bomb).Obviously Natalma normally enters pedigrees through her son Northern Dancer, who unsurprisingly contributes to Witches Brew as well: Macheera's French Classic-winning dam Caerlina is by one of his grandsons, Caerleon, while the beautifully bred Duke Of Marmalade–whose granddam is Lassie Dear (Buckpasser)–is by another in Danehill.Witches Brew only made €20,000 as a yearling, before her half-brother Al Wukair (Ire) (Dream Ahead) became a Group 1 winner. That elevated Expensive Queen herself to €260,000 as a yearling, but she was only showing a steady level of ability in Europe and has proved an inspired import by Farfellow Farms. Queen as she has proved, she would be a lot more expensive now. A TREND BEGINS FOR BARGAIN SIREAnother with a pedigree that doubles down, top and bottom, is GIII Lexington Stakes winner Trendsetter.Trendsetter wins the Stonestreet Lexington StakesIf his sire Modernist is going to punch above weight, as a $5,000 cover, then it will certainly help that he is out of a half-sister by distaff legend Bernardini to Storm Cat's Breeders' Cup-winning sisters Sweet Catomine and Life Is Sweet. And Trendsetter's dam Suyapa provides a mirror image to Bernardini behind her sire Astrology, who was similarly by A.P. Indy out of a Quiet American mare.Congrats to William Nicks, who bought Supaya in a Fasig-Tipton Digital Sale for just $1,000 in December 2024. As for Modernist, this is the second eye-opening sophomore from his debut crop, following the 11-length romp of Talk to Me Jimmy in the Withers Stakes. The Darby Dan stallion has only had 49 starters, not even half as many as class leader Yaupon, so he's giving himself a chance at a basement fee.The post Breeding Digest: The Cat That Got The Claret appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.