Five Swiss Yodeler Yearlings at Del Mar Sale

DEL MAR, Calif. (July 30, 2002) -- When Swiss Yodeler won six of nine starts at age 2, including a courageous front-running triumph in the 1996 Hollywood Futurity, the son of Eastern Echo fulfilled the precise virtues -- class, speed, and early success -- of his well-heeled pedigree. 

From the early returns of his first crop, it is evident the same will be said of many of the young horses sired by the nation's leading freshman sire. 

Now an 8-year-old resident of Pepper Oaks Farm in Santa Ynez, Swiss Yodeler has sat atop the national freshman sire list for much of 2002. He was given an invaluable assist in the formative days of his stallion career by breeder Marvin Malmuth, who in early 1999 leased seven mares to owner Heinz Steinmann, securing the stallion a proper and substantial first book. 

Swiss Yodeler's first stakes winner, Oberwald, plus his first four winners this spring, were produced from mares of that group. Swiss Yodeler's trainer, Mike Harrington, has nearly two dozen of his old star's progeny in the barn. 

MacKenzie Miller was credited for his enduring patience with the exquisite homebreds of Paul Mellon's Rokeby Stables, but from time to time a precocious horse was given the chance to show his stuff at an early age. In 1990, the same year Miller was forced to stop on the immensely talented Red Ransom, he unveiled a son of Damascus named Eastern Echo, a colt from one of Mellon's most influential families, that of Broodmare of the Year Glowing Tribute. 

As with Red Ransom, Eastern Echo's career was all too brief, and he was retired unbeaten after three starts, including a memorable win in the Grade I Cowdin Stakes at Belmont Park. 

At Lane's End Farm Eastern Echo was bred to the Raja Baba mare Drapeau, whose lineage boasts a succession of major East Coast performers. She is a half-sister to the very smart stakes winners Royal Pennant and Royal Plume, and her extended family includes the names of major winners French Colonial, Nine Keys, and Silver Voice. Her Eastern Echo colt of 1994, a handsome, well-built chestnut, was Swiss Yodeler. 

Swiss Yodeler is the latest to reawaken the Damascus legacy, a tremendous presence still on the bottom of American pedigrees yet once also an influential sire-line. Five of his yearlings will be presented at Del Mar, including those out of mares by California fixtures like Nostalgia's Star, Jaklin Klugman, and Pirate's Bounty. -- Robert Knollhoff