B. Wayne Hughes's Spendthrift Farm has unveiled a new breeder incentive program to help support the nursery's fourth-year stallions. Under the Safe Bet program, breeders are assured that a stallion's first crop of 2-year-olds will have at least one graded/group stakes winner in 2019 or the breeder will be completely relieved of the stud fee for the impending foal in 2020.
“It's no secret that Mr. Hughes is constantly thinking of ways we can offer breeder-friendly programs for our stallions,” said Spendthrift General Manager Ned Toffey. “The inspiration behind the Safe Bet program largely came from the success of our leading first-crop sires last year, particularly the great things accomplished by Cross Traffic and Goldencents. Breeding to a fourth-year stallion requires making a bet on the early success of the stallion's first runners. It can be very rewarding–as we saw last year–and there's also risk involved. We wanted to remove as much risk for the breeders as possible.”
Toffey continued, “In recent history, you typically have a handful of freshmen in every class that sire a 2-year-old graded or group winner, and it's usually a very good sign for a sire. Safe Bet assures that a breeder will be investing in a stallion that will have the immediate success of a graded or group winner from his first 2-year-olds to race in 2019. If that does not happen, the breeder won't owe a stud fee. It's that simple.”
Spendthrift has six stallions with first-crop 2-year-olds hitting the racetracks this year: Wicked Strong, Palace, Race Day, Danza, Medal Count and Normandy Invasion–all of whom are participating in the Safe Bet program.
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