Getting your matings right is only ever a start. The babies then need to find their way into the right hands, generally something outside your control. But if there are degrees of expertise out there, you can at least be confident that the vast majority of our community will be reliably animated, first and foremost, by a passion for the horse.On those rare occasions when that confidence proves shockingly misplaced, however, even our best selves can seldom redeem the disaster.Happily, that has at least happened with one of 33 neglected horses discovered on a farm near Ocala in 2009. Many did not survive. One that did, whether by fortune or fortitude, was a 9-year-old General Meeting mare, a winner in a light career but sold the previous winter for $2,200. Meetmeontime was retrieved by her previous owners, who continued the painstaking care of the rescue charity and restored her to such a bloom that she was actually able to resume breeding.Famously, Meetmeontime's second foal after her reprieve turned out to be Bucchero, now recycling his salvaged genetic legacy to such effect at stud. After Bucchero broke his maiden for Ironhorse Racing Stable, its founder and managing partner Harlan Malter alertly took into his program the Line of David filly delivered by Meetmeontime the following spring.Meetmeonline showed no hint of her half-brother's class in six starts. In the meantime, however, the quality of her genes had been corroborated by Meetmeontime's first foal, Meets Expectations (Valid Expectations), delivered back in 2004. For while she had shown nothing as a runner, her visit to Bucchero's sire Kantharos also produced a top sprinter in World of Trouble.That was evidently not lost on Nathan McCauley of River Oak Farm and Lesley Campion, who partnered with Malter on Meetmeonline for her breeding career. Though disappointed that she failed to reach her reserve, when consecutively offered with covers by Union Rags and Twirling Candy, Campion and McCauley bought out Malter and in 2022 sent her to Midshipman.Sea Strike going through the ring at OBS (Hip 325) | OBSAnd this, really, is what I mean by “our best selves.” Foaling out mares is admittedly peripheral to Campion's portfolio, and certainly McCauley loves trading. Yet there couldn't be a more exemplary contrast between the passion and knowledge devoted to Meetmeonline, and the horrifying environment that nearly claimed her dam.In choosing Midshipman, moreover, her owners recognized the sheer, proven worth of a yeoman standing at a lower fee than so many of the rookies who annually host a stampede of mares–despite the certainty that most will fail.There's actually a challenging question here, for those driving the commercial obsession with new sires. (Which, as I'm always saying, starts with the spenders not the breeders.) Because are we really being “our best selves,” ensuring the breed's welfare, in flooding the gene pool with blood statistically guaranteed, overall, to impair its quality?We know for a fact that hardly any newcomers will match Midshipman on a ratio of stakes winners (62 at 6.7 percent of named foals) and performers (13.4 percent) that beats even his farm's top gun, Nyquist.It must be gratefully acknowledged that the roster they share always gives those breeders who do prize accomplishment every incentive to tap into it. Midshipman, Hard Spun and Street Sense have maintained traffic even into the veteran stage by the accessible pitching of fees.What Midshipman hasn't quite managed is to put the same elite icing on the cake. Despite a few near-misses, his 10 graded stakes winners have yet to crown his career at the highest level. But that might yet change, following the breakout eight-length Curlin Stakes success of his son out of Meetmeonline, Sea Strike.Sea Strike | Sarah AndrewSold for $140,000 as a Keeneland September yearling to Arroyo Bloodstock—via Paramount, where Campion is such a welcoming presence—this colt proved a knockout pinhook through Caliente Thoroughbreds at OBS, Kimmel/Sallusto signing at $650,000 for Flanagan Racing. (Remarkably, the same prospectors found last year's Curlin Stakes winner Chancer McPatrick (McKinzie) in the same consignment.) After rebounding from his 'TDN Rising Star, presented by Hagyard,' debut, Sea Strike melted the clock on Sunday and could yet become the Grade I winner Midshipman has long deserved.Meetmeonline meanwhile has a yearling filly by another who punches above weight, Army Mule, and now a brother to Sea Strike. That's how you steady a ship, after it has been salvaged from a sickening whirlpool. There's no conspicuous reason for this family to have flourished. Sea Strike himself does have a conspicuous triplication of Seattle Slew, three of whose sons appear as respective damsires of Midshipman, Line of David and Meetmeonline. But that's the point, really. We don't predicate our care on guarantees. Every horse deserves the best of horsemanship. GOOD-GOOD A WIN-WINOf course, we can only trade in the world we live in. None of us, then, can ever be wholly absolved of an opinion on all those vaunted new sires. Which is fine, so long as we double down–because truly believing in a stallion, rather than in some unthinking vogue–when everyone else is moving on, and fees and books start to slide.During our winter quest for value among Kentucky sires, for instance, I asked why anybody who thought Life Is Good worth support at $100,000, or Corniche at $30,000, would go elsewhere when the same semen was now available at $60,000 and $15,000 respectively. After all, we had meanwhile been able to examine what they can produce, and anyone who did so would surely persevere.Life Is Good | Sarah AndrewClearly any sensible breeder must demand more from sires in this intake launched with conspicuous advantages of quantity (such as Golden Pal or Epicenter) or quality (Flightline or Life Is Good). If you're allowed 293 mares, it's going to take more than merely aggregated wins or purses to impress anyone. As always, performance is relative.To be fair, only a couple of stallions are getting their first winners at a brisker rate than Golden Pal, who has a dozen winners from no fewer than 37 starters already. These are Highly Motivated (nine for 23) and, down in Florida, Roadster (seven for 19). Others earning early headlines are Early Voting and Life Is Good, who between them have a constellation of 'TDN Rising Stars.'As acknowledged, Life Is Good had plenty of assistance from mares deemed worthy of a six-figure fee. One such was the dam of Life Changing, who made his sire the fastest ever to register a fourth 'Rising Star' at Saratoga last weekend–nearly a year after his recruitment by Repole Stable, over the street, for $1.025 million.That price reflected the fact that Smart Shopping (Smart Strike) had already added Seize the Grey (Arrogate) to the wonderful family cultivated by the late Audrey “Tolie” Otto, and meanwhile her children, tracing to the Wheatley matriarch Lady Be Good. Who knew that by combining her line with a stallion like this, “Good” things might happen! GASAWAY TAKES CHARGEIt was because everyone was scurrying to the next cycle of unproven stallions that Take Charge Indy was exported to Korea even before his first runners reached the gate in 2017. When he finished second, second and first in the intake, through its first three years, WinStar activated a clause to bring him home. Unfortunately, he has seldom approached another Long Range Toddy since. In fairness, 27 black-type winners represent a respectable one-in-20 named foals but a tricky breeding season last year reduced him to $7,500 this spring.But the Midas touch of Lance Gasaway, plus others who shared the Mystik Dan adventure including trainer Kenny McPeek, is now fanning some life back into the embers of Take Charge Indy's eligibility as conduit for his parents' celebrated genes.Twinkle Town | Sarah AndrewTwinkle Town, six-length winner of the GII Saratoga Special Stakes, is the first runner out of Southern Grayce (Liam's Map), a four-time winner purchased by Gasaway for $170,000 as 2-year-old in 2020. That made her best of some otherwise ordinary winners out of She Be Keene, a Posse half-sister to GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies scorer She Be Wild (Offlee Wild). But another half-sister to that pair, Wild Empress (Empire Maker), has already this year freshened up the page by producing GII Twinspires.com Louisiana Derby Emerging Market (Candy Ride {Arg}).So we now have a third luminous talent below Twinkle Town's third dam Trappings (Seeking the Gold), despite the racetrack mediocrity she shared with her siblings and almost all her foals. People who hang their hat on a system will doubtless explain that Emerging Market and Twinkle Town both resulted from the intervention in this family of a son or grandson of Unbridled, in Empire Maker and Liam's Map respectively. We can perhaps cede a point in that Take Charge Indy, for his part, additionally owed Long Range Toddy to a mare by Unbridled's Song. But to borrow the famous cable sent from the Monte Carlo casino: “System working well, send more money!”The post Breeding Digest: Safe Hands Steady The Ship appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.