The stallions who entered stud in 2021 should really remain viewed as a work in progress, with only a third crop of juveniles joining the fray. Yet an impetuous commercial market had already made its judgement last year, when Tiz the Law was the busiest stallion in America, with 274 mares, while a stallion who has a superior ratio of black-type winners found himself languishing with 19.Has Counting Stars emerged in time to turn things round for Honor A.P.? It's a big question, for those of us who always thought him grievously underrated on the racetrack. But the outstanding filly of her crop, judged on the GI Coaching Club American Oaks, is well named to prompt reflection. Because it's never enough merely to count the stars produced by any given stallion, as a bare aggregate, without introducing perspective from the relative quantity and quality of his books.Honor A.P. has so far mustered eight stakes winners from 105 starters, having opened no higher than $15,000 (meanwhile halved). Counting Stars is the second at graded level, but the third at least placed in Grade I company.Of those in relevant competition in Kentucky, the only pair to match his black-type winners, as a percentage of starters (7.6), are Vekoma and Complexity. The former, now a six-figure cover, has no fewer than 26: even from a cavalry of 257, that works out at a knockout 10.1 percent. Complexity's 13 stakes winners meanwhile represent 8.4 percent of 154 starters, all conceived at just $12,500.The other main players in their class currently produce black-type winners at the following clip: Tiz the Law 6.9 percent (15 from 217 starters); Volatile 5.3 (10 from 187); Thousand Words 5.1 (eight from 158); McKinzie 4.7 (11 from 235); Authentic 4.2 (11 from 260). (A few others, notably Caracaro, have competitive percentages from a smaller sample size.)But we know that not all black type weighs quite the same, so how about their graded stakes action? Tiz the Law and Vekoma both have 17 such performers, respectively at 7.8 and 6.6 percent of starters; Complexity has nine, at 5.8 percent; Volatile, 10 at 5.3 percent; Honor A.P., five at 4.8 percent; McKinzie, 10 at 4.3 percent; Thousand Words, five at 3.2 percent; Authentic, eight at 3.1 percent.Of the rest, we must salute Shancelot for getting his first black-type winner of any description in no less a race than the GI Bing Crosby Stakes! If not to that extent, McKinzie has shown an uncanny flair for landing his sharpest arrows around the bull's-eye. If you're literally “counting stars”, his three Grade I winners and five Grade I performers overall are the standout achievement of the class. Expressed as a ratio of starters, however, Honor A.P.'s three Grade I performers bat at 2.9 percent.People should judge horses fairly, and there's no way Honor A.P. should already have been written off to the point that he now stands at a tenth of McKinzie's fee, and suffered a nine-fold disparity in their last published books.On the track Honor A.P. beat the Horse of the Year on merit, the one and only time he got a meaningful run at him. His sire admittedly didn't help his profile, but that only shows what kind of physique he has, to have made $850,000 as a yearling. And of course he's out of a Grade I winner.Now he has come up with a champion in the making, from only his second crop, a $13,000 yearling whose first two dams are by Paynter and Cherokee Run. The black type introduced by the granddam does not bear close inspection and her production record proved duly mediocre, leaving as her one real distinction a sibling, Sassy Siena (Midshipman), who precedes Counting Stars by eight years on the Fantasy Stakes roll of honor (then Grade III).Only when we reach the fourth dam of Counting Stars, Golden Reef (Mr. Prospector), do we find some authentic quality: she was a dashing juvenile in 1989, winner of the GII Schuylerville Stakes before twice finishing runner-up in Grade Is. That blood is pretty diluted by this stage, however, so let's give overdue “honor” to a sire replicating an athleticism inadequately appreciated during his own racing career.Even if doing so in revolutionary numbers, however, we shall still require patience: Honor A.P. can hardly retain the attention of the “star counters” through his upcoming crops. Hats off, then, to the astute purchasers of the mare responsible for his flagship performer, who decided to send her back to him this spring. It was smart work to find her, in a digital sale for $160,000; and smarter again, to perceive the upgrade she had received from a $7,500 stallion. Built for SpeedYet another mare discarded at what proved the worst possible moment-and we seem to find these weekly-was Sea Garden (Curlin), picked up for $40,000 at the 2022 Keeneland November Sale. Her son by Hard Spun was sold the following September for $82,000 and, after a profitable pinhook cycle, subsequently emerged as Built, winner of the Gun Runner Stakes and neck runner-up in the GIII Lecomte Stakes.That sufficed for his dam to be cashed out back at Keeneland last November for $600,000. Even that may turn out to be rather a bargain, however, with Built meanwhile discovering his true metier round a single turn. While not immediately building on his Fair Grounds track record, in March, last weekend he got it all stylishly together in the GII Alfred G. Vanderbilt Stakes.Built winning the Vanderbilt | Sarah AndrewWe've previously noted the paucity of evidence under his first two dams: Sea Garden showed little in a light career, while her mother Navy Gardens (Storm Cat) was unraced and shared her fragility with nearly all her foals: the one exception being much to the credit of Street Cry (Ire), whose son Glenville Gardens assembled more wins (15-for-36) than the other six, collectively, did starts. He peaked in a Grade II over seven furlongs of Woodbine turf, confirming speed as the family brand after Built's third dam Marley Vale (Forty Niner) dropped back to win the GI Test Stakes, having failed to get home in the GI Kentucky Oaks. Moreover, the next dam, as a Listed winner over six, was one of few distinctions for her sire Hagley besides the European sprinter Committed.Having devoted our first item to a stallion undervalued relative to his early efforts, we can only despair that one as unequivocally accomplished as Hard Spun should be down to just $20,000. It's not as though he trades in dourness, having already had a Grade II winner over 5.5 furlongs this summer, and remember how he himself won the GI King's Bishop weeks after exhausting all bar Street Sense in the Derby.Hard Spun-one of whose daughters has just made Shancelot a Grade I sire-remains the best value in the land to prove a mare. We've said all this before but must now add that War Front's recent retirement makes this horse our last direct link to the great Danzig. As the advertisers used to say: “Hurry while stocks last!” Carried Across the WaterIf this is a week to reiterate familiar prejudices, let me predictably draw attention to where Kalpana (GB) (Study Of Man {Ire}), winner of the best race staged in Europe this year, found her stamina. All four sires seeding her second generation were American-foaled, each with two American parents. Moreover, three of the four mares channeling these sires into the pedigree were also American. I can't say it often enough: those European horsemen who view dirt blood as “one-dimensional” are laboring under a crass misapprehension.Gold Phoenix | BenoitDirt speed is speed that carries, and as such can fill the gaping hole of class lately created in the European gene pool by a local obsession with precocity.The Americans themselves notoriously don't stage many races that call for a Kalpana, but the latest chapter in the wonderful Del Mar grass career of the 8-year-old Gold Phoenix (Ire) (Belardo {Ire}) should not be credited simply to a European sire (champion juvenile, then miler, now in Turkey).For his latest wins, as indifferent to 14 furlongs as to nine, Gold Phoenix mined a genetic bedrock that is predominately American. For one thing, each side of his pedigree is pegged down by Nijinsky, responsible both for his own third dam and that of Belardo. Europeans like to claim Nijinsky, on account of his racing career, but his maternal line reached the U.S. in 1915; while that of his sire arrived in 1894. And in the foreground is damsire Mizzen Mast, by that wonderful influence Cozzene out of a mare tracing to Newstead Farm diamonds Mrs Peterkin/Legendra. An awful lot of Gold Phoenix's blood has simply been repatriated.The post Breeding Digest: Counting on Stardom appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.