view raw text
1 » — — - --—-———-—— — —— T r , m Ml mm WILLIS SHARPE KILMER, ! THE BREEDER | By SALVATOR j Any man who has the price can become the owner of a great race horse. But many a man has spent the better part of a lifetime in the effort to breed one — and has not succeeded. Many persons suppose that this has been because he has just been unlucky, for they consider that luck is the main factor in breeding, just as they also suppose it is the main factor in racing. That luck enters into both breeding and racing is indisputable. But that it governs either is a mistaken idea. In the long run It is merely incidental. Success in racing may be bought But success in breeding cannot be. Real success in it — success that is both eminent and continuous — can only be attained by a man who has mastered its problems — at least its major problems, for no man has ever solved them all, and none ever will. And in order to do so he must be, one may say, born to that vocation — just as truly as a man must be born a poet if he ever attains fame in the literary world. Now, many men who are deeply interested in breeding attain little success in it because they cannot bring to it what success demands. While those who do attain a success that is otherwise incomprehensible. It goes without saying that such men are few and far between. But when one appears upon the scene he makes his presence felt in such a manner that there can be no mistake about him. Like all master builders for a breeder is essentially a builder he is known by his works. In the familiar words, "there they stand," and when we survey them everything is before us. Everything, that is, except the skill, or faculty, or genius, that caused them to arise, that being something beyond analysis and a thing apart — a true creative gift and, as such, absolute. Mr. Willis Sharpe Kilmer belongs, without reservation, in the small company of American gentlemen included in this classification. Of which the best evidence is what is written opposite his name on the records. He is best known in the turf world as the owner of Sun Briar, a great race horse and a very great" sire, with which stallion it may be said that he really began breeding "in earnest" — he was breeding race horses before he placed Sun Briar, after retiring him to stud, at the head of Sun Briar Court, Binghamton, N. Y., in 1919, but with that action his real career may be dated. The first of the get of Sun Briar appeared on the turf as two-year-olds in 1922, and from that date to the present Mr. Kilmer has established the following record as a breeder of winners: Tear. Winners. Seconds. Thirds. Winnings. 1922 51 44 50 66,618 1923 79 72 74 129,964 1924 86 61 79 182,179 1925 71 57 75 97,744 1926 67 67 76 106,426 1927 104 94 84 194,745 1928 128 97 89 341,610 1929 116 115 108 233,463 1930 169 129 150 302,240 1931 212 144 170 345,989 1932 163 130 145 184,325 1933 159 153 150 121,876 12yrs. 1,405 1,163 1,249 ,407,179 The name and fame of Sun Briar and the family he has founded are so inseparably connected with Mr. Kilmers career as a breeder that it will be interesting to sum up what that stallion has accomplished under his owners management as a progenitor. So, here it is: SUN BRIAR AS A SIRE. Year. Winners. Seconds. Thirds. Winnings. 1922 4 7 3 | 9,325 1923 36 28 34 80,346 1924 51 38 42 147,175 1925 52 37 33 194,996 1926 36 37 43 80,164 1927 60 49 41 100,946 1928 88 71 48 193,229 1929 90 73 72 201,259 1930 87 66 74 216,875 1931 96 71 80 241,824 1932 70 55 60 99,210 1933 41 37 43 41,861 12yrs. 711 569 573 ,607,210 When we reflect that Sun Briar, when placed in the stud, was totally untried as a sire Mr. Kilmer bought him as a yearling, as were also the great majority of the mares with which he was mated, the results attained are eloquent at once of the stallions wonderful prepotency and the skill and judgment that his matings were the fruit of. As all the racing world well knows Sun Briars trump card as a sire is Sun Beau, now his companion in the stud at Court Manor, whose winnings, the great sum of 76,744, exceed those of any other race horse, of any and all countries, by over 0,000. But if we set him aside the get of the stallion have won a net amount of ,-230,466. And, as the table above shows, since his get first appeared in public, as two-year-olds, for twelve successive seasons they have averaged winning practically sixty races and about 35,000 annually. He is not merely the sire of one phenomenon, or "super-horse," but a family in which greatness prevails. Almost the whole roster of Sun Briars winners have been bred personally by Mr. Kilmer. The stallion had been mated to very few public mares as a matter of policy, and for years his fee has been the highest in America — ,000. Yet if we deduct the winnings of all his get the figures show that, aside from them, in the last twelve year, horses by other sires bred by Mr. Kilmer have won around ,000,000 and over 700 races; which, again, testifies to the fact that without Sun Briar and his family Mr. Kilmer would still rank as one of Americas most eminent breeders. The list of great and famous winners that he has bred, by various sires, is a long one — too long for recital in such a brief sketch as this, but they are so well known to all as to scarce require enumeration. Mr. Kilmer, while he has, so to speak, concentrated upon "the Sun Briars," as a breeder is a man of wide-ranging mind, many-sided, fond of experiment and always working outside the beaten paths. He has imported stallions and mares from Eng- land, France and Germany in order to make the crossings, matings and blends of blood that have appealed to him, and such animals will today be found in his stud. He has never "pinned his faith" to any one strain or cross, but, on the contrary, has carried out his studies, his problems and his experiments with a singular breadth of judgment and selection. Like all of the most eminently successful breeders, he has bred really to please himself — which is the only way in which really creative breeding ever has been or ever can be done. By so doing he has not only attained results which have given him the fame he enjoys — he has enriched the American breeding fabric in a manner that few men ever have, adding to it not only things new and hitherto unprecedented, but of immense and permanent value.
