Musket Man, a Grade 2-winning son of Yonaguska, will relocate from Elite Thoroughbreds in Louisiana, where he entered stud in 2011, to Dr. Jerry Bilinski’s Waldorf Farm in North Chatham for the 2015 breeding season. His fee will be $2,500.
Bred by in Kentucky by Jim E. Nelson and Sergio De Sousa, 8-year-old Musket Man is out of Fortuesque, a stakes placed daughter of Fortunate Prospect from the family of Grade 1-winning millionaire Ron the Greek.
Campaigned by majority owner Eric Fein, Musket Man went undefeated in two races at two. During the 2009 Kentucky Derby prep season, after finishing third in the Grade 3 Sam Davis Stakes, Musket Man went on to win both the Grade 2 Illinois Derby Grade 3 Tampa Bay Derby. In the Classics, he finished third in both the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby and Grade 1 Preakness Stakes.
Musket Man won two other stakes races at four and placed in six additional graded stakes, including seconds in the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap and Grade 1 Carter Handicap, and a third in the Grade 1 Whitney Handicap. He retired with a record of six wins, three seconds and five thirds from sixteen starts and earned $1,236,820.
Fittingly, the first winner and first stakes winner for Musket Man was Ostrolenka, a New York-bred homebred for Eric Fein who followed a blowout fourteen-plus maiden-breaking score at Belmont Park on September 28 with a victory in the Sleepy Hollow Stakes for New York-bred juveniles on Showcase Day. Musket Man currently sits at number eighteen in the first crop sire rankings.
“We are very pleased to have a stallion of his stature coming to New York to complement the stallion power this state deserves with the improvement of the quality of racing and our New York breeding program,” said Dr. Jerry Bilinski.
