She Be Smooth Continues Success of Speightstown Sons

Young sons of Speightstown seem to be on a roll. In last week's column we discussed Labwah, whose victory in the UAE Oaks (G3) earned her a credit as the first graded stakes winner from the initial crop of 3-year-olds sired by Speightstown son, Charlatan. This week, we are going review the pedigree of She Be Smooth, who became the first graded scorer for another second crop Speightstown stallion, Lexitonian, with a victory in the Davona Dale Stakes (G2). This was just the second start for She Be Smooth, who captured a 1-mile maiden special weight Jan. 23 at Gulfstream Park as a prelude for her dominant 6-length Davona Dale triumph. Speightstown currently only has one established top-level stallion son, that being veteran Munnings, who is responsible for 88 stakes winners, six of them grade 1. Despite that, he's been something of an under-the-radar sire of sires, with no less than 30 sons who have sired at least one stakes winner. Of these sons, 13 have sired a graded winner and seven have been represented by a grade 1 winner, including Speightster, who came up with 2024 Eclipse Award winner champion sprinter Straight No Chaser. Charlatan retired at $50,000—the highest starting price for a son of Speightstown—and led his sire class by yearling average in 2024 (106 sold for $248,627), but Lexitonian had a far more modest beginning, starting at a stud fee of $10,000, and with 39 first-crop yearlings selling at an average of $37,667. Despite that, Lexitonian retired to Calumet Farm with plenty of credentials, both in performance and pedigree. A winner every year from 2 to 5, the chestnut took the Chick Lang Stakes (G3) and Concern Stakes at 3, missed by a nose to Collusion Illusion in the Bing Crosby Stakes (G1) at 4, and at 5 captured the Alfred G. Vanderbilt Handicap (G1), and took second, beaten just a head in the Churchill Downs Stakes (G1). On the score pedigree, he's not only by Speightstown, but he's also out of Riviera Romper, a winning daughter of Tapit and the 2006 Test Stakes (G1) heroine Swap Fliparoo. She Be Smooth is the fourth stakes winner out of the 36 starters from the first crop of Lexitonian, preceded by Revera, successful in the Desi Arnaz Stakes; Ritzaphena, who took the Prairie Meadows Debutante Stakes; and the Coronation Futurity victor Fire and Wine. She Be Smooth's dam, Seattle Smooth, was a performer of unusual quality for the first book of a $10,000 freshman sire. The daughter of Quiet American won seven races, including the Ogden Phipps Handicap (G1), Shuvee Handicap (G2), Cotillion Stakes (G2), Go For Wand Stakes, and Bay Meadows Oaks. Before her assignation with Lexitonian, however, she had produced 10 foals, eight of which had started, seven winning, but none had done better than the Tapit duo Gunfire, second in the Turf Paradise Derby, and Seattle Slang, third in the Remington Park Oaks (G3). She was purchased for $300,000 by Calumet, She Be Smooth's owner and breeder, at the 2015 Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale, when carrying a colt by Malibu Moon. Coincidentally at the same sale, Calumet acquired Riviera Romper, carrying Lexitonian, for $310,000. Seattle Smooth is half sister to Moonshine Gal, the dam of Ladies Handicap scorer Just Got Out. She is also a half sister to Nuestra Star, whose Afleet Alex daughter, Amfitriya Star, was exported to Russia, where she captured the Russian One Thousand Guineas and Oaks. Seattle Smooth's dam, Our Seattle Star, is half sister to Rare Star, successful in the Beulah Park Scarlet and Grey Handicap and the River Downs Tomboy Stakes. The third dam, Dot's Star, captured the Kellogg Stakes at River Downs, but it's been a quiet family in the generations going back to Seattle Smooth's sixth dam Flying Streak. From there the family takes an upturn, at least via the branch descending from Flying Streak's daughter, Fly Bye Babe. She is ancestress of more than 80 stakes winners, 35 of them graded, including two-time 1990-91 champion sprinter Housebuster, 2024 champion male sprinter Straight No Chaser, and other grade 1 winners Bright Future, First Samurai, A Huevo, Jeranimo, Nutella Fella, and Victor the Winner. The family arrived in the United States in 1880 with the importation of the British-bred mare Kapanga. She produced a true celebrity in Kingston, winner of 89 races—more than any other North American runner—co-champion male handicap horse in 1889 and 1890, and leading sire in 1900 and 1910. By coincidence, She Be Smooth is bred on the same Speightstown/Quiet American cross that produced Charlatan. There is another feature to the pedigree here, in that Lexitonian's broodmare sire Tapit—the sire of the two stakes placed horses out of Seattle Smooth—is a Fappiano/Seattle Slew cross, where Seattle Smooth is by a son of Fappiano out of a mare by a son of Seattle Slew, the Fappiano strains coming via Unbridled and Quiet American, two horses with a very similar pedigree background.