The late champion Bernardini was Sheikh Mohammed’s first winner of an American Triple Crown race, taking the 2006 Preakness Stakes under the Darley banner. The international outfit, which races as Godolphin while continuing to stand its stallions under the Darley brand name, has since completed a personal Triple Crown, winning the 2021 Belmont Stakes with Essential Quality and, now, a long-sought Kentucky Derby with Sovereignty.
Fittingly, Sovereignty is linked to Bernardini, who is the sire of dam Crowned. The Kentucky Derby win continued to add to Bernardini’s outstanding résumé as a broodmare sire, where he has left his biggest mark.
“He’s the most wonderful broodmare sire, and it keeps on getting better and better,” said Michael Banahan, Godolphin’s director of bloodstock in the United States. “It’s a great legacy for him, and I think his legacy is going to follow through with all these great broodmares out there.”
Bernardini, by A.P. Indy, won 6 of 8 starts, all at age 3. In addition to his Preakness, he scored Grade 1 wins in the Travers and Jockey Club Gold Cup. He then finished second in the Breeders’ Cup Classic to lock up a divisional Eclipse.
Bernardini, who died in 2021, is the sire of 93 stakes winners to date, and his final crop is aged 3. His runners are led by multiple Grade 1 winners Alpha, Art Collector, Cavorting, Stay Thirsty, and To Honor and Serve. He is represented by more than a dozen sons at stud, including California leading sire Stay Thirsty, sire of five graded/group winners, among them Grade 1 winner Mind Control.
However, it is as a broodmare sire that Bernardini has been most successful. He is represented by 132 stakes winners worldwide, including 70 graded/group winners, out of his daughters through Saturday. In the United States alone, this group is burnished by Kentucky Derby winner Sovereignty; Kentucky Oaks winner Serengeti Empress; Eclipse Award champion Immersive; multiple Grade 1 winners Catholic Boy, Chancer McPatrick, Clairiere, Colonel Liam, and Matareya; and Grade 1 winners Du Jour, Hunter O’Riley, La Cara, Mo Town, Paris Lights, Speaker’s Corner, and Wicked Whisper.
Crowned died in 2024, according to records from The Jockey Club, after producing her final foal, a Nyquist colt, that year. She also produced two Into Mischief fillies, full sisters to Sovereignty, now in the Godolphin broodmare band – the winner Jane Grey and the placed Misintention. Jane Grey had her first foal, a Medaglia d’Oro filly, in 2024.
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