A championship season in Argentina for JUMP START

With back-to-back Group 1 wins in Argentina this fall, IDOLO PORTENO has become the talk of South America, and leaps up as a major contender for Argentinean Horse of the Year. The 4-year-old distance-lover is the second Group 1 winner for JUMP START in Argentina in the past six months, joining top miler LIVINGSTONE among the country’s elite.

IDOLO PORTENO won the famed Gran Premio Carlos Pellegrini-G1 on Dec. 13 at Hipodromo San Isidro by an impressive four lengths over last year’s winner and 2013 Argentine Horse of the Year Soy Carambolo, getting the mile and a half over the turf in a snappy 2:28.11. In his previous start he captured his first Group 1 race, the Gran Premio Dardo Rocha, at Hippodrome de La Plata on Nov. 19 by an eyecatching five lengths on the main track, also at one and a half miles. The Thoroughbred Daily News reports that “Idolo Porteno could potentially be sent up North and be aimed at an international campaign with Hall of Fame trainer Ron McAnally in Southern California.”

JUMP START has five crops of racing age in the Southern Hemisphere. Adding in his stakes performers from those crops, he is the sire of 43 stakes winners, 12 of them graded/group winners, and 33 additional stakes-placed runners. In addition to his Southern Hemisphere Group 1 performers, his Grade 1 runners in 2014 include Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile-G1 third-place finisher PANTS ON FIRE, top 3-year-old sprint filly and Grade 1 Test S.-placed MISS BEHAVIOUR, Woodward S.-G1-placed millionaire PRAYER FOR RELIEF, and Ballerina S.-G1-placed WILLET.