No trotting stallion has had the breadth of success over the last 20 years as Muscle Hill. The super racehorse has extended his capacity and blessed the sport with colts and fillies with superior talent. Breeders are always looking for a successor to the King as lifespan for all is limited to a degree. For Muscle Hill there have been sons that have been effective and have produced champions during his lifetime, but none have matched his stature in the stud barn. Bar Hopping, Southwind Frank, Trixton and Resolve have had their share of champions on the racetrack but have not yet shown the capacity to produce another future sire. It’s safe to say that in 2023 things changed rapidly for the Muscle Hill stallion line in that his son Tactical Landing made an explosive impact on the sport and perhaps the breed with a pair of trotting colts that produced at a high level on the racetrack and appear to have pedigrees primed to extend the line in the breeding shed. While Hambletonian winner Tactical Approach took most of the headlines for his sire during the summer and retired the divisional champion, it’s hard to say from a breeder’s perspective that he outshined his stablemate and fellow son of Tactical Landing – Karl – over the long campaign. Karl appears to be the chosen one from his near flawless performances on the racetrack and the glowing reviews he’s received from fans and horsemen alike this season. His dominance in the year-end Dan Patch award suggested that the writers know when they have seen greatness and rewarded it. Karl is far from ready to be a stallion like his stablemate Tactical Approach will be in 2024 at Diamond Creek Farm, but that doesn’t mean mouths are already watering about his likely future destination. While a 2024 campaign on the racetrack and the pursuit of a Hambletonian is primary to his schedule, breaking into the next generation for followers of Muscle Hill and extending the breed may be the most exciting part of the Karl biography. There probably isn’t one person that knows more of Karl’s roots than Ernie Martinez, the veteran horse agent who first spotted Tactical Landing at Steve Stewart’s Kentucky Farm when he was two weeks old and knew right there, he had to buy him. “You could see it in his eye,” said Martinez of his first meeting with the Muscle Hill colt from a Breeders Crown-winning dam. Of course, Martinez knew of Tactical Landing’s impressive pedigree, but he was more committed to the overall confirmation of the colt, a factor in analysis critical to his future thinking. “I tried to buy him as a weanling for $600,000,” said Martinez, recognizing the enormous potential in the full brother to champion Mission Brief. That mission failed to be achieved, so Martinez put a solid group together and when Tactical Landing sold as a yearling in Lexington in 2016 purchased him for an eye-popping $800,000. Martinez had belief in the pedigree, but with years of experience his eye told him that Tactical Landing was born to be a champion. Unfortunately, despite the accolades Martinez cast on Tactical Landing, the freshman campaign was disappointing to say the least. Trainer Bob Stewart had gained a great reputation for cultivating champions with a string of future sires in Andover Hall, Conway Hall and Angus Hall to his credit. Stewart conditioned Tactical Landing through his 2-year-old season but early in the sophomore campaign Martinez thought it was time to make a change. ► Sign up for our FREE DRF Harness Digest Newsletter “He just kept on making breaks. We knew he had the talent but wasn’t putting it together,” said Martinez. In stepped Jimmy Takter, who has spent a Hall of Fame career taking prospects and making them champions. Suddenly Martinez was seeing the vision he had from his first encounter with Tactical Landing as the horse blossomed into what he had expected. Tactical Landing didn’t win the 2018 Hambletonian but he went out a champion in the fall, capturing the Breeders Crown and TVG versus fellow sophomore Six Pack and older horses. Tactical Landing had the look and now the performance of a champion but hardly had the pick of the top broodmares in the sport in his first year as a stallion. Martinez’s connection to Karl on the dam side is extraordinary in that it brings him to Ohio where he first saw a daughter of Speed In Action, a sire at the time only noted for success in the Buckeye State, with rare exception. The filly, Say Your Prayers, was a yearling at the time. “I came to the Kraner’s farm in the spring of 1992 to deliver a mare,” said Martinez of the first encounter. “They let a bunch of yearlings out in the field to run and I told Mr. Kraner ‘you can’t sell that one’.” Martinez was pointing towards Say Your Prayers. “He told me we sell all our yearlings,” said Martinez, who knew he had to have Say Your Prayers from that impressionable first meeting, and when she later sold that year, he grabbed her for just $10,000. Say Your Prayers would be one of the best 2-year-old trotting fillies in Ohio in 1993, winning the Sire Stakes final at Raceway Park and then going on to back-to-back victories at the Delaware County Fair. “She won in (1):59 and change but probably could have gone in (1):58,” said Martinez. Say Your Prayers would go to Pompano late in her 2-year-old season for the Breeders Crown, with Martinez more than optimistic he had the best horse in the country. “It just didn’t work out. The gate was going too slowly and she was getting over excited,” said Martinez of the trip that saw Say Your Prayers cause a pair of recalls and ultimately be scratched from the elimination. The filly she would have met that night was Gleam, the ultimate Crown final champion. Say Your Prayers’ racing career past her freshman season was a disappointment and she was eventually sold. “James Crawford called me up and asked if she was for sale,” said Martinez. “I told him I would sell her to him on one condition, that he breed her to American Winner. He agreed.” Crawford did breed Say Your Prayers to American Winner among a long list of future partners. It was only when he bred her to R C Royalty and she produced an 11th foal that something resembling the mare’s racing talent would arrive. Avalicious, with a 1:53 2/5 mark, was Say Your Prayers’ last and best. Her success as a broodmare has been mercurial compared to her mom, with stakes horses from two of her first four foals. Yet it is her fifth foal Karl, her first meeting with Tactical Landing, that has potentially changed the course of the Muscle Hill line and the sport as well. “He’s a horse that I think will be the first to trot in 1:48,” said Martinez of Karl. As for extending the Muscle Hill line, Martinez already believes that Tactical Landing is the heir to the throne. “I think as he gets better quality mares going forward, you’ll see more of these champions,” said Martinez.