La Affirmed, a pensioned graded stakes producer for Elizabeth Moran’s Brushwood Farm, was euthanized May 21 because of complications from the infirmities of old age. La Affirmed, whose breeder was Louis Wolfson’s Harbor View Farm, was 27.
La Affirmed was the second-highest-priced broodmare sold at auction in North America in 1996 when purchased by Brushwood at the Keeneland November breeding stock sale. (The most expensive was Mariah’s Storm carrying the great Giant's Causeway .) La Affirmed, a maiden winner on the racetrack for Harbor View, was in foal to Storm Cat and had produced graded stakes winners Caress and Country Cat, both by Storm Cat. La Affirmed also came from a superior family. A half-sister to champion Outstandingly, she traced in female family to La Troienne. La Affirmed’s second dam, Finance, was a half-sister to Buckpasser.
Consigned by John Williams, agent for Harbor View, La Affirmed was purchased at the Keeneland sale for $1.9 million.
That Storm Cat/La Affirmed mating produced Bernstein, whom Moran sold as a weanling for $925,000 at the 1997 Keeneland November breeding stock sale. Bernstein developed into an Irish group winner and a successful stallion.
La Affirmed’s other foals that were bred by Brushwood included New York grade II winner Della Francesca (by Danzig), plus the Storm Cat colt Alajwad, whose price of $5.5 million at the 2001 Keeneland September yearling sale was the second-highest for a yearling at auction in North America that year.
During her career, La Affirmed produced 15 named foals. Only six were winners, but four were stakes winners. Caress, the best of La Affirmed’s offspring on the racetrack, with three graded wins, produced two graded winners, including grade I winner and successful sire Sky Mesa .
Another of La Affirmed’s daughters, Emmaus (by Silver Deputy), produced multiple graded winner Wiseman's Ferry, and another daughter, stakes-placed Unify (by Farma Way) produced added-money winner Coherent.
La Affirmed’s youngest offspring is the 5-year-old unraced Giant’s Causeway mare Lafirma.
La Affirmed, out of the Round Table mare La Mesa, will be buried at Brushwood near Malvern, Pa., with Moran’s two-time Jockey Club Gold Cup (gr. I) winner Crème Fraiche and others.
