Three-time grade I winner and 2009 champion 3-year-old male Summer Bird had his first confirmed in-foal mare since entering his initial season at stud at Mr. & Mrs. Ben P. Walden Jr.’s Pauls Mill Farm in Versailles.
The Mining mare Love Tunnel was checked in foal to Summer Bird Feb. 25 at Woodline Farm in Lexington. Love Tunnel is the dam of graded stakes-placed performers Fearless Vision and Divine Angel. Her 2010 foal is a colt by Tapit , the leading sire that hails from the same female family as Summer Bird.
According to Pauls Mill director of sales Patrick Morell, breeders’ response for Summer Bird has been overwhelming, and his first book is nearly complete with limited availability remaining. Morell reported that the book contains mostly stakes winners and stakes producers, including those owned and supported by Summer Bird’s owners and breeders Dr. Kalarikkal & Vilasini Jayaraman, as well as the Waldens.
Summer Bird, who became the first 3-year-old since Easy Goer to win the Belmont Stakes, Travers Stakes, and Jockey Club Gold Cup (all gr. I), is standing his first season for $15,000 stands and nurses.