Much has been made about the female side of Chasing Yesterday’s family – after all, the Grade 1 winner is half-sister to Triple Crown winner American Pharoah. But both sides of the filly’s family are outstanding. Chasing Yesterday, who earned her fourth straight stakes victory in Sunday’s Sunland Oaks to punch her ticket to the Kentucky Oaks, is by perennial leading sire Tapit, who is off to a flying start in 2019. Tapit has already recorded 11 black-type stakes winners less than three months into the season – six of those were graded or group winners – to lead all North American sires. Tapit’s current 3-year-olds represent the book of mares he garnered in 2015 at Gainesway Farm after recording a breakout season in 2014. Tapit, already the sire of 2008 Eclipse Award champion Stardom Bound and 2012 champion Hansen, was represented by 2014 Kentucky Oaks and Breeders’ Cup Distaff winner and champion Untapable, as well as Tonalist, the first of the stallion’s three Belmont Stakes winners. Tapit established a single-season earnings record for a North American sire in 2014 – a mark he broke in both 2015 and 2016. Tapit’s stud fee rose to $300,000 in 2015, and the mares he covered not only included Littleprincessemma – the dam of American Pharoah and Chasing Yesterday, as well as graded or group-placed American Cleopatra and St. Patrick’s Day – but Juddmonte Farms’ champion Close Hatches. The result of the latter mating was Tacitus, who won the Grade 2 Tampa Bay Derby earlier this month to place himself on the Kentucky Derby trail. Leading Tapit’s other graded stakes winners this year is Synchrony, who repeated in the Grade 3 Fair Grounds Handicap last month for his fifth graded stakes victory. He proceeded to finish third in the Grade 2 Muniz Memorial Handicap last Saturday. Also competing for Tapit on that Fair Grounds card Saturday was Silver Dust, a close second in the Grade 2 New Orleans Handicap after winning the Grade 3 Mineshaft Handicap in February. Bellavais scored the first graded stakes victory of her career in the Grade 3 Marshua’s River Stakes in January at Gulfstream. That track was also the site of Dream Pauline’s win in the Grade 3 Hurricane Bertie Stakes, her second consecutive graded triumph for her sire.