A Graded Stakes Winner from the Elite Family of Gun Runner
A rare sales purchase for Phipps Stable, Fly So High was bred in Kentucky by the Goodman family’s Mt. Brilliant Farm and acquired from the Lane’s End Farm consignment at the 2016 Keeneland September Yearling Sale.
Trained by Hall of Famer Shug McGaughey, Fly So High finished third in her October 2017 career debut and came back the following month to impressively break her maiden, winning the one mile dirt race at Aqueduct by 7 ¾ lengths to earn “Rising Star” status from the Thoroughbred Daily News.
She followed up her maiden win with another eye-catching victory in January 2018, cruising to a 5 ½-length allowance optional claiming victory at Gulfstream Park.
Showing significant promise, she dove into deeper waters for the Davona Dale Stakes (G2) at Gulfstream in March, a race she won commandingly by 3 lengths but was pulled up after the race and vanned off the track. Ultrasound results revealed a small tear in an upper suspensory.
While she would have likely been one of the favorites for the 2018 Kentucky Oaks (G1) or potentially set her sights on the Breeders’ Cup that year, the injury instead ended her career and she joined the elite Phipps Stable broodmare band.
While an overwhelming majority of Phipps family’s horses have historically been homebreds, Daisy Phipps Pulito spoke here about why her family’s stable purchased Fly So High, noting that “[e]very few years, my father [Ogden ‘Dinny’ Phipps] and I would like to buy a couple of fillies to introduce some new blood to the broodmare band… I thought it was really important to continue to do that…”
Fly So High was a natural fit for the Phipps family, as she is by Malibu Moon, the same sire of the Phipps family’s 2013 Kentucky Derby winner Orb, and from one of the most attractive female families in the stud book.
Fly So High’s dam Quiet Flight, by Quiet American, is a full sister to grade 2-placed Quiet Dance, producer of Breeders’ Cup Classic (G1)-winning Horse of the Year Saint Liam, by Saint Ballado, and United Nations Stakes (G1) winner Funtastic, by More Than Ready, the latter now standing at Three Chimneys Farm.
Quiet Dance is also the granddam of Hall of Famer and another Three Chimneys Farm stallion in red-hot sire Gun Runner, by Candy Ride (Arg). She is also the granddam of Mother Goose Stakes (G1) winner Buster’s Ready, by More Than Ready, who was purchased as a broodmare prospect for $2.4 million by Wertheimer et Frère.
The granddam of Fly So High, Misty Dancer, by Lyphard, is a half-sister to Minstrella, by The Minstrel, an Edward P. Evans homebred who won three group 1 races in Europe and was a champion juvenile in Ireland.
The active family’s other recent notable stakes winners include Gun Runner’s half-sister Pretty Anna, by Quality Road, winner of the 2024 Comely Stakes (G3), and Right and True (Ire), by Arizona (Ire), winner of the listed 2024 Star Appeal Stakes in Ireland for the Coolmore partners.
Fly So High is the dam of three horses of racing age, including sophomore Curlin colt Peak Performer who recently moved forward by finishing on the board in a competitive $170,000 maiden special weight at Kentucky Downs earlier this month. She also has an unraced juvenile colt by Gun Runner and is currently in foal to WinStar Farm’s elite sire Constitution.
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