Kentucky Value Sires For 2025–Part 4: Into The Teens

This is a fun category. Priced between $10,001 and $19,999, these stallions remain within reach of many hands-on breeders, yet include quite a few that can be legitimately described as proven. At the younger end of the scale, meanwhile, others remain full of promise.

As already emphasized in this series, stallions that have shed their rookie glamor can offer real value to breeders of adequate nerve and imagination. If you're genuinely trying to get ahead of the curve, and not just cynically exploiting a vogue in which you have no real belief, the time to double down is when everyone else is getting out. If you stick with a horse “on the bubble”, and he comes good off his sliding fee, then you'll find yourself going to market with a commodity that's both in demand and in short supply.

PROXY only started last year yet has already been slashed from $25,000 to $15,000, after covering 125 mares in his debut book. His sturdy resume (banked $2.75 million) and elite parentage make for a very wholesome package and, without a single foal on the ground, the case in his favor is 100 percent unchanged.

The most striking of this year's breeding stats was arguably the book of 200 corralled by PAPPACAP as the most precocious member of Gun Runner's debut crop. That's a remarkable effort by Walmac after he'd been out of sight and mind for a year, and he remains $12,500.

But among those about to head to the bar and celebrate their first-born, the one that excites me is ANNAPOLIS at $12,500. This beautiful animal combines a top-class grass record (stakes record in the GI Coolmore Turf Mile) with a family strewn with elite dirt performers. He was priced to recruit mares in a hurry, having only entered stud at the 11th hour, and was duly fully subscribed at 149 mares. Though the pressure is not the same this time round, the price is–and that's a real windfall for astute breeders.

Corniche-05-10-2023-SA6_0696-_PRINT_Sarah-Andrew-1024x745.jpg" alt="" width="619" height="451" /> Corniche | Sarah Andrew

Of five in the preceding cycle, only one would have fit this bracket when starting out in 2023. The others have all taken a cut to keep them in the game, though some coped better than others in making their sales debut.

Champion juvenile CORNICHE has now been halved from his opening fee to $15,000 despite an excellent six-figure average for 17 weanlings sold of 21 offered. That reflects a smaller second book (77 mares from 180) but he sets an auspicious template for the kind of progress sought by pinhookers (RNA $385,000 yearling to $1.5 million 2-year-old).

EARLY VOTING has also been halved in fee (to $12,500) and book (191 to 77), but processed 16 of 24 weanlings at a perfectly respectable $73,531. Though another confined to a light career, arguably he has an inspiring pedigree for this kind of money as a son of Gun Runner out of a half-sister to Speightstown.

MANDALOUN performed very similarly with his weanlings, shifting 19 of 22 at $71,131. His farm allowed him as many as 211 mares for his debut, and 144 returned last spring. That's a pretty strong position for a horse now $15,000 from an opening $25,000, never mind for a GI Kentucky Derby winner from a Juddmonte family meanwhile elevated by an Arc for Bluestocking (GB) (Camelot {GB}).

As a splendid exception, WinStar have given early supporters of the clock-melting NASHVILLE reassurance that their investment has not depreciated, keeping him at his opening $15,000. Quite right, too: he has a robust pipeline in place, a bumper debut book of 204 followed by one of 164, and 20 of 27 weanlings traded at $67,525.

A couple of the preceding intake, KNICKS GO and SILVER STATE, slip into this bracket after no more than a steady start at the yearling sales. But they will have plenty of troops on the ground next year (their juveniles graduate from opening books of 151 and 171 respectively) so retain every chance of landing running.

That's exactly what VOLATILE has done. Certainly a solitary stakes scorer doesn't tell the whole story of his freshman campaign. With 25 winners overall, his half-dozen black-type performers (same as McKinzie) included the GI Champagne Stakes runner-up and GI Hopeful Stakes third.

That vindicated a pretty spectacular sales debut for Volatile, 88 of his first crop having sold at an average $125,431. Typically of the commercial market, his second crop took a slide to $53,890, but he received another 163 mares last spring and it feels like he has given himself a big chance.

In contrast to all these younger guns seeking renewed momentum, this tier also embraces several more established operators–a couple will be found on the podium–whose blue-collar attributes will soon prove far beyond most of the rookies standing at much higher fees.

True, KANTHAROS had a quieter year by his standards but, include his overall body of work (including a couple of Grade I winners), he remains a great credit to a horse that started out covering cheap mares in Florida. In fact, he's a top 20 active sire on lifetime earnings, yet he's down to $12,500 for 2025.

While DIALED IN also saw quite tepid trade at the yearling sales, he remains in due demand–another strong three-figure book in 2024–as a horse eligible to match any quality he receives among the quantity. He has three Grade I winners plus one who earned more than the three of them combined in Gunnevera.

Kantharos | Sarah Andrew

KARAKONTIE has long represented value as a consistent supplier of stakes action. His turf profile may never match the standard commercial agenda in Kentucky but dual Grade I winner She Feels Pretty has this year reminded everyone of the racetrack class he can impart at just $15,000. With those regal genes in mind, he should perhaps hold particular appeal for a breed-to-race program that wouldn't mind retaining a filly.

FROSTED has not lived up to early expectations but he had gone too low at $10,000 and his dignity is soothed at $15,000 after three graded stakes winners this year. His new accessibility has been rewarded with over 300 mares over the past two years and that will only help bed down his repackaging for smaller commercial breeders.

Those meanwhile entitled to build on a solid start with first sophomores include FLAMEAWAY, who welcomed 172 mares last spring at $15,000. Seven domestic stakes winners to date are supplemented by a bright impact in Chile, evoking his sire Scat Daddy, albeit his latest yearlings found trade pretty tough.

Vino Rosso and Maximus Mischief also endured the market erosion routinely suffered by young sires after jumping through the early commercial hoops, now duly down to $12,500 and $15,000 respectively. Both had contributed to Spendthrift's domination of the 2023 freshman race before being left behind by their pricier neighbor Omaha Beach in the second-crop table, albeit MAXIMUS MISCHIEF counts hot-off-the-press Grade I scorer Raging Torrent features among eight stakes winners this year. Again like Flameaway, both maintained auspicious mare traffic last spring: 190 for Vino Rosso, 169 for Maximus Mischief. While VINO ROSSO still needs to find a graded stakes winner, he has actually had four Grade I performers and always seemed likely to consolidate with maturing stock.

VALUE PODIUM

Bronze: CAIRO PRINCE Pioneerof The Nile–Holy Bubette (Holy Bull) Airdrie $15,000

Much like the guy on the top of this podium, this horse goes quietly about his work at a level that you already know will prove way beyond the majority of new stallions charging multiples of his fee.

Cairo Prince turned out another dozen stakes winners this year. Overall he gets those at essentially the same lifetime clip as Nyquist, Practical Joke, Maclean's Music and Violence, to name four random examples. Sure enough, his latest yearlings once again averaged over $50,000, including home runs of $385,000 and $350,000.

Pretty good going for a horse at this stage of his career, and that commercial functionality is what elevates him to the podium above a couple of others whose status as “proven” is additionally underwritten by the occasional Grade I winner. Value means different things to different people, but the fact is that this horse is doing a more reliable job at looking after breeders who need to put bread on the table.

Remember, too, that his page has gone up in the world: Cairo Prince's Grade I-placed half-sister, already dam of Outwork, is now further distinguished as second dam of Fierceness.

Silver: THOUSAND WORDS Pioneerof The Nile—Pomeroys Pistol (Pomeroy) Spendthrift $12,500

Okay, so he had the Spendthrift machine behind him, with 110 named foals in his debut crop. But they were conceived at just $7,500; he has meanwhile been standing at $5,000; and both yearling crops wobbled along at an average of around $28,000. Yet what does the market know?

Here's Vodka With a Twist, a $2,500 yearling, winning the Debutante Stakes on her way to consecutive runner-up finishes at Grade I level. Here's The Queens M G, who cost a giddy $3,500, romping by nine in the GIII Adirondack Stakes.

Thousand Words | Autry Graham

Time to go back and remind ourselves where all this is coming from. Physique? A seven-figure Book 1 yearling. Pedigree? Well, the damsire might have raised an eyebrow or two, but the mare proved well named as his highest achiever (triple graded stakes winner/dual Grade I runner-up). And she has also produced the dam of GI Starlet Stakes winner Faiza (Girvin). And performance? Well, that's where his profile had ebbed away: though an unbeaten Grade II winner at two, Thousand Words had gradually drifted down the crop.

Though a book of just 61 in 2023 will flatten his curve, he has seized his fleeting opportunity and will surely now be getting a widespread second hearing.

Gold: MIDSHIPMAN Unbridled's Song—Fleet Lady (Avenue of Flags) Darley $15,000

What a stalwart this horse has been for breeders on a budget! He has admittedly had a couple of modest years by his remarkable standards, a typical outcome after his fee, just $7,500 in 2021, reached $20,000 in 2023. In theory that might indicate a slight upgrade in his next crop of yearlings, but the most observable outcome was a smaller book.

His numbers have rallied at $15,000, and that's incontestably value against lifetime ratios that remain way ahead of what could be expected after so many years at four figures. Much higher fees tend to be paid, for instance, to match Midshipman's 16 percent black-type performers to named foals.

But what clinches his place on the podium is the way he reconciles the mysterious consensus that a horse bred to run is somehow not the same as a horse bred to sell: Midshipman's latest yearlings, conceived at $10,000, hit an average of $56,388.

Here's a horse that has looked after a lot of ordinary folk over the years. So many years, in fact, that it's worth reminding ourselves how it all makes sense: this was a champion juvenile with a stallion's pedigree, which is supposed to be the grail.

All he needs now is to crack that Grade I winner: no stallion deserves one more.