Sitting atop the three-year-old Timeform ratings for the current season is Whobegotyou, with a mark of 126. The Caulfield Guineas winner is one of two Australian-bred first-crop sons of Street Cry to be given a rating in excess of 120, the other being Takeover Target's half-brother Predatory Pricer, who won the G3 Gloaming Stakes and finished third in the AJC Derby in April.
Whobegotyou's Classic victory made him one of nine sons and daughters of Street Cry worldwide to have won at the highest level, and two of these have already joined their sire at stud. Street Sense, the first horse to complete the Breeders' Cup Juvenile and Kentucky Derby double, stood his first season in Australia last year and when he returns in August, he will be accompanied not only by Street Cry himself but also by his paternal half-brother Street Boss, a dual G1-winning sprinter in the US.
A strapping chestnut, Street Boss was summed up perfectly by his trainer Bruce Headley, who said: "He was so, so the way I like a horse to look. This great head and eye and a top line with all this power and correctness, the great bone, straight legs, flat knee, good sturdy bone, good feet. Everything that I think is good, that is what I saw in him."
These physical attributes noted by Headley at Keeneland's September Yearling Sale pointed the way to a highly successful partnership between trainer and horse, with Street Boss breaking his maiden on debut at three before embarking on a memorable four-year-old season. In nine starts he won six times, including five in a row, finished a close-up second on two occasions and third once.
This extraordinary campaign of 2008 started on 17 January with a winning outing over 1100m at Santa Anita in which he equalled the course record which stands at 1:01.27. He took the runner-up slot on his next start a month later when stepped up another 200m in distance before commencing on his string of victories at the same distance (1300m) in an allowance race on 6 March. Back-to-back wins at Santa Anita led to a hit out in Stakes company at Hollywood Park in the G3 Los Angeles Handicap over 1200m. This time the course record was lowered when Street Boss stopped the clock at 1:07.55 despite clipping heels and stumbling in the first 100m of the race. From that day, he would compete only in Grade One company. The Triple Bend Invitational, in which he stretched out to win at 1400m, was the next stop on his successful tour before he annexed another top-flight contest, the Bing Crosby Handicap (1200m), again posting a new course record in a time of 1:08.67.
Back at Santa Anita in September, Street Boss finished half a length behind Cost Of Freedom when second in the G1 Ancient Title Stakes and stayed on the west coast track for the final race of his career, in which he ran third in the G1 Breeders' Cup Sprint and retired with a Timeform rating of 124.
Street Boss is set to stand at Northwood Park at Seymour for the coming season, just as his sire did on his previous visits to Australia and, representing a complete outcross for Northern Dancer mares, we feel he offers a range of possibilities for Victorian breeders at the highly competitive stud fee of $16,500. His trainer called him 'the perfect horse' and we can't help agreeing with Bruce.
