Into Mischief Has A Bold Mission For 2025

Even now, having broken his own record haul to secure a sixth consecutive general sires' championship, we cannot quite call him another Bold Ruler. But if Into Mischief can extend his reign through 2025, so matching the sequence achieved by the Claiborne legend between 1963 and 1969, he will give formal gilding to his status as the stallion who best defines our epoch.

Bold Ruler actually added an eighth title in 1973, but that modern record–we must leave Lexington's 19th century career as a bewildering case apart–does not feel secure even with Into Mischief now entering the veteran stage. The libido that has underpinned the Spendthrift champion's hegemony shows no sign of diminishing as he turns 20 and, despite a forbidding fee nowadays, his book actually climbed back to 193 mares this spring from 174 in 2023 (a book that produced a stellar 82% live foals).

And of course it is sheer volume that not only guarantees Into Mischief continued momentum, even if he happened to be pensioned tomorrow morning, but also makes him the poster boy of the modern commercial era.

Because here is the triumphant paragon of an industrial model that has become so dominant that several of the more conservative farms are conspicuously releasing the brakes on book sizes. With the defeat of the mare cap, you can see people looking at Spendthrift and Coolmore and deciding: “If you can't beat them, join them.”

But it would be ridiculous to treat an animal as freakishly prepotent as Into Mischief as any kind of template. He proved capable of siring top horses even from the mediocre mares he covered as a prototype for the kind of incentive schemes by which Spendthrift's late owner B. Wayne Hughes so enjoyed rocking the Bluegrass boat. And from that base he has followed a trajectory that is by no means guaranteed, and steadily improved his black-type ratios (while stretching out his stock to Classic distances) with his upgrading mares.

That has brought him to a touching moment of parity with Tapit. Both are currently credited with 166 lifetime black-type winners as a virtually identical proportion (c 11.5%) of their named foals.

The venerable Gainesway champion, whose book is being carefully supervised these days, must very soon be deposed as North America's all-time leading sire–very possibly in 2025. His progeny earnings stand at $213.5 million, while Into Mischief has just raced passed his latest career milestone on $200.6 million.

And Into Mischief has already laid down a marker for 2025 by also topping the table for 2-year-old sires, with Citizen Bull leading his six stakes winners and seven graded stakes performers. (Both of those represent class highs, but hats off to Nyquist and rookie McKinzie for two juvenile Grade I winners apiece. More follows below, incidentally, on McKinzie and an absurdly tight race for the freshman crown.)

Tapit | Gainesway

With total progeny earnings of $35,368,704 (all stats updated through December 29), Into Mischief has shattered the record of $28,562,932 he posted in 2022. That felt inevitable the moment Laurel River won the G1 Dubai World Cup, but the fact is that Into Mischief would have fallen only marginally short (at $28,212,648) even if that particular horse had never left his stable this year.

And, as we've indicated, the fact that he sent out far more foot soldiers than any other sire–474 starters, with his son Goldencents next on 397–does not alone account for the fact that he duly tops every column, from stakes performers through to Grade I winners (five). For his ratios nowadays are strong, too. His 35 black-type winners represent 7.4% of starters. Aside from a couple of freshmen, who are obviously a case apart, that clip is matched among active competition in Kentucky only by Oscar Performance (10 at 7.5%) and Not This Time (17 at 7.4%).

Of course, nowadays that blend of quality and quantity also applies to Into Mischief's mares. His first foals conceived at six figures are now turning six, and his latest juveniles were sired at $225,000. So we must give due credit to those among his pursuers still maintaining superior percentages in crucial indices.

Best Of the Rest

With his expanding arsenal, for instance, Gun Runner has reached a new personal best of $22,485,868, securing second place with only a fourth crop in action. That's up from $17,663,202 and third place in 2023. And his dozen graded stakes winners, including four at the elite level, represented 4.7% of starters, against 17 for Into Mischief at 3.6%. Overall Gun Runner's average earnings per starter were $88,180, compared with $74,618 for Into Mischief.

Just under one in 10 of his starters made a graded stakes podium, which looks pretty wild compared with Into Mischief's 6.5%. But he was actually matched by third-placed Justify, who accumulated $16,149,027 with just a third crop in play. These two young guns really haven't missed a beat. By the same token, they have not had to overcome the challenges that delayed the rise of the ruler they aim someday to dethrone.

The venerable Mineshaft obviously owes fourth place to the desert plunder of Senor Buscador, who accounted for 76.7% of his total $15,680,634 bank, though it was nice to see him close out 2024 with a 2-year-old stakes winner (Jenkin in the Year's End Stakes at Oaklawn). But Constitution certainly took a major step forward–as many had confidently anticipated–in finishing just behind on $15,400,026. While just lacking that Grade I headliner he elevated himself sharply, with a sixth crop into the gate, from $10,641,524 and 15th place in 2023. And of course he now also has a son making waves in Tiz the Law.

While Curlin slipped a few places this year, just making the top 10 on $13,792,523, he included another three elite scorers among his dozen graded stakes winners, the latter compiled at a class-high rate of 5.2% of starters.

Curlin | Sarah Andrew

Broodmare Sires

Tapit's diminishing footprint sees him drop right down the general sires' table to 27th, but by the same token his daughters are increasing their own reach. And while the venerable gray surrenders his broodmare sire title to the late Street Cry (Ire), he appeared as damsire to an unrivalled 34 stakes and 16 graded stakes winners in 2024.

Street Cry, sire of a couple of epoch-making female talents on the racetrack, has proved unsurprisingly effective as a distaff influence. He owes the division laurels to globetrotter Rebel's Romance (Ire), but his daughters produced four additional Grade I winners this year. Another lamented Darley stallion, Bernardini, continues his rise in this sphere in seventh, matching Tapit's class-high 32 graded stakes performers (similarly including three Grade I winners) at 5% of starters.

But watch out for Blame, whose precocity in this sphere is already well established: his daughters are operating at mad, off-the-charts ratios, with 17 stakes winners and eight graded stakes winners at 9.5% and 4.4% of 2024 starters. His footprint for now remains too narrow to put him any higher than 34th (up from 49th), but those strike-rates are more than DOUBLE almost all those above him. (In other words, stand by for more Blame in the next instalment of our Value Sires series!)

Second-/Third-Crop and Turf Sires

Among the younger sires trying to consolidate their status, the cream rose to the top in the second-crop table through the maturing stock of Omaha Beach. Having finished behind three neighbors in a Spendthrift monopoly of the 2023 freshman title, this time round he tops the table on all class indices, for instance with 11 and 21 black-type winners and performers (respectively at 6.8% and 13% of starters), and two Grade I winners (among five placed at that level).

Runner-up Audible cannot match those ratios but has similarly thrived through his first sophomores (sixth as freshman) and ties Omaha Beach with six graded stakes performers. But the cavalries behind some of these young commercial sires continues to astound. Fourth-placed Vino Rosso, for example, has accumulated exactly 200 starters in 2024 with only a second crop of juveniles into the gate! Let's hope some of those young stallions showing promise under the radar get more attention than Preservationist, who has now left the country despite a class-high 56% winners to starters in 2024.

Having come up with the Epsom Derby winner City of Troy, Justify continues his dynamic start with the third-crop title, though runner-up Good Magic has achieved a historic distinction by joining only Man o' War and Gallant Fox in siring Classic winners from both his first two crops. Obviously he must allow some credit to Puca (Big Brown), who gave him both Mage and Dornoch, but he matches Justify with three elite scorers this year.

Justify stands alone, however, when it comes to sheer weight of stakes action: he has had no fewer than 41 black-type and 25 graded stakes performers, at a knockout 16% and 9.8%, respectively. This looks a pretty vintage group overall, with City of Light securing third through flagbearer Fierceness and Oscar Performance matching the top two with five graded stakes winners. As noted above, the Mill Ridge star's 10 stakes winners have come at an outstanding 7.5%: he had just 134 starters, compared with 326 for Mendelssohn who duly claims fourth. Oscar Performance actually made the top 10 on the general sires' list when measured by earnings per starter.

Unsurprisingly he did the same on the overall turf list, despite only sending a third crop of juveniles to the gate. But the grass champion is Twirling Candy, whose outstanding campaign places him sixth on the general sires' list, with $8,457,529 of his aggregate $15,174,744 banked on the green. No surprise to see Justify (a few cents shy of $8 million) lying second, nor the splendid veteran War Front in fourth, but those who take a prescriptive view of pedigrees must clock none other than Into Mischief between them. If you consider that his stock will typically experiment with grass only if not working out on the main track, it reflects pretty scandalously on the big international programs that he has been given virtually zero opportunity in Europe.

McKinzie-86_PRINT_credit_Gainesway-1024x745.jpg" alt="" width="632" height="460" /> McKinzie | Gainesway

Freshman Sires Go To the Wire

And finally we come to the incredible race for freshman sire. We've had to leave it late, because that's just what the three protagonists have done. In fact, the issue remains so desperate that it feels best to defer final congratulations until the last cent of purse money has been definitively paid out. As things stand, however, it does look as though McKinzie has just held out, with the added insurance of apparently the trio's sole remaining entry–that I can trace, at any rate–before midnight on New Year's Eve. (That's the aptly named Not Too Late, who at time of writing was set to contest Monday's Parx Future Stars Filly Stakes.)

But it has really gone to the wire, Tiz the Law making a dramatic late lunge through the neck success of Legal Empress after a stretch duel for a maiden at Oaklawn on Sunday. Previously the Coolmore sire had been lying third on $2,665,687, behind Vekoma on $2,717,095 and McKinzie on $2,729,178. This 11th hour bonus took his bank to $2,731,687–in other words, just inching the Ashford stallion past McKinzie. But whoa, what's this! Not much over an hour later, McKinzie's daughter Kinzie Queen, though beaten a long way into fifth of seven in the Year's End Stakes on the same card, scraped together $6,650. With debutante Young and Pretty having added a few dimes for her 18-length fourth of seven at Gulfstream, McKinzie appears to have pulled it out of the fire, with the updated standings placing him on $2,736,038, a wafer-thin lead of $4,351 over Tiz the Law, with Vekoma barely 10 grand further behind on $2,721,295. As we've cautioned, however, we need to let the ink dry on this–not least because of some ongoing contention regarding certain runners overseas. (Another data source was on Monday still showing Tiz the Law with a lead of $533!)

There must have been gnashing of teeth at Spendthrift on Sunday after Vekoma's son Red Miller, 2-1 on the morning line for his debut at Tampa Bay, came through as a veterinary scratch. He had clocked the fastest of 111 four-furlong breezes working from the gate at Belmont last month. But then how many other “shoulda coulda woulda” moments have been endured, through the last few months, by each of these stallions?

But this is just a rosette, after all, and the sage professionals standing these horses will know that each deserves celebration for more or less forcing a dead heat. Tiz the Law especially deserves recognition in having fielded only 50 starters, against 68 for McKinzie and as many as 83 for Vekoma, nonetheless matching McKinzie's two graded stakes winners (plus his two others placed at that level). But McKinzie has artfully made his bullets count, his only two black-type winners both contriving Grade Is–at which level, moreover, he has had two others placed! Vekoma, for his part, has meanwhile made numbers tell with no fewer than 39 individual winners, equaling the domestic record shared by Wildcat Heir and Chapel Royal.

Tiz the Law | Coolmore

That did not turn out to signal some transformative impact on the part of either of those horses. While too many young stallions are nowadays industrially exploited through a fleeting window of opportunity, the fact remains that all these horses have only just started out. We must give an especially honorable mention to Complexity, however, who set a strong pace before running out of reinforcements (56 starters) and fading into fourth. Even so his five stakes winners were only matched by McKinzie and Vekoma, while Complexity also joined the Gainesway sire and Tiz the Law with two graded stakes winners. As a class, they have mustered 11 of those, compared with just three for the historically underachieving freshmen of 2023.

For bureaucratic purposes, every Thoroughbred turns a page on New Year's Day. But their official birthday is only ever a milestone on a slow, circular road that can only be travelled with much perseverance and more luck. We wish you plenty of that vital ingredient in 2025.