B. Wayne Hughes

B. Wayne Hughes's Spendthrift Farm has acquired the breeding rights to undefeated multiple Grade I-winning juvenile Jackie's Warrior (Maclean's Music--Unicorn Girl, by A.P. Five Hundred), recent winner of Belmont's GI Champagne S., a 'Win and You're In' event to the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile at Keenland next month. Trained by Steve Asmussen, the J & J Stables-bred colt has earnings of $402,564 in four career starts for owners Kirk and Judy Robison. "Jackie's Warrior is proving to be one of the fastest 2-year-olds to come around in the last decade...

Revolutions start in the street. But it's only once they have taken over the citadels, and adapt to the trappings and opportunities of power, that you can judge their ultimate success. In transforming the stallion business from the bottom up, B. Wayne Hughes was aptly faithful to his own origins. The son of an Oklahoma sharecropper, he remembers a Grapes Of Wrath migration from the Dust Bowl to California with a mattress strapped to the family jalopy. He also remembers local hostility to the incomers: not least because the "Okies,"...

As far as marketing for a nascent, unorthodox racehorse ownership venture goes, you couldn't do much better than a horse carrying your silks into the Churchill Downs infield as the GI Kentucky Derby winner. That's what Michael Behrens experienced Saturday, as Authentic (Into Mischief), bought into by his MyRacehorse microshare partnership in June, fought off favored Tiz the Law (Constitution) past the Twin Spires to earn the garland of roses. Wednesday, Behrens joined the TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland as the Green Group Guest of the Week to...

When Authentic (Into Mischief) ran in this week's Kentucky Derby, he carried the hopes and dreams of over 5,000 microshare owners with him, who can now rightly call themselves owners of a Kentucky Derby winner.

It could be quite a Derby week for Spendthrift Farm and its owner B. Wayne Hughes. Spendthrift has never won a Triple Crown race but is in solid position in this year's GI Kentucky Derby with two starters it co-owns, Authentic (Into Mischief) and Thousand Words (Pioneerof the Nile). It could also be a huge couple of days for Spendthrift's white-hot stallion, Into Mischief. He will be represented by 'TDN Rising Star' Authentic in the Derby and by the freakishly fast 'Rising Star' Gamine in the GI Kentucky Oaks. Hughes...

B. Wayne Hughes's Spendthrift Farm has acquired the breeding rights to multiple Grade I-winning millionaire Vekoma (Candy Ride {Arg}--Mona de Momma, by Speightstown). The chestnut captured the prestigious GI Runhappy Metropolitan H. Saturday, four weeks after dominating the GI Runhappy Carter H. "We are extremely excited about Vekoma and his future as a stallion. It's not often you see an elite racehorse that is by a Grade I winner and out of a Grade I winner," said Ned Toffey, Spendthrift general manager. "Vekoma is a terrific blend of his sire...

All that glisters is not gold. Certainly we shouldn't get too carried away: Goldencents has been launched by mares in such volume that there would be something badly amiss if he didn't come up with the occasional smart racehorse. In fact, a suitably brisk start made by his first juveniles in 2018 saw him entertain a staggering 239 mares last spring. That put him in the company of seven other stallions in the 200 club (five at Ashford, the other two alongside Goldencents at Spendthrift) and onto an aggregate 929...

It's a sobering fact of life that the act of raising a child is a largely unacknowledged affair. For sure, birthdays, holidays and other celebratory moments garner plenty of photographs and Facebook likes. But beyond the narrow confines of the family nucleus, there's only very limited patience for whether little Billy shoved a battery up his nose, or whether darling Annie, dressed as a lobster, stole the show in her elementary school production of Moby Dick. But rarely--only very rarely--do the formative exploits of individual children garner universal interest. Think...

Stakes-placed mare Tizso Wicked (Aus) (Duporth {Aus}) topped the Inglis Digital February (Early) Online Sale, with Spendthrift Australia picking up the mare in foal to Street Boss for AU$150,000. Rushton Park offered the 8-year-old mare, who placed in the G3 Bow Mistress S. at her final start, having won six races all up. The additional appeal of her being in foal to Street Boss, having recently had her first foal by Astern (Aus), was compelling for Spendthrift. "She obviously has a very deep American female family and there is a...

If a horse is standing at a major farm in Kentucky you can be assured that he was a quality racehorse. That's Omaha Beach (War Front--Charming, by Seeking the Gold). He earned $1.6 million, won three Grade I races and would have been the favorite in the GI Kentucky Derby if not for a minor issue that led to his being scratched. But what separates Omaha Beach, who is entering stud this year at Spendthrift Farm, from so many others is his versatility. During his 2019 campaign, he won at...

The University of Louisville College of Business Equine Industry Program has named Spendthrift Farm owner B. Wayne Hughes as the winner of the 2019 John W. Galbreath Award for Outstanding Entrepreneurship in the Equine Industry. "B. Wayne Hughes helped shift the breeding industry paradigm significantly in the last decade," said Sean Beirne, director of the equine program. "He has not been afraid to rethink and experiment to lead the industry in a new direction." The Galbreath Award has been given annually since 1990 to honor entrepreneurial leadership that has had...

Michael Behrens has very suddenly--and a bit unexpectedly, he admits--found himself in a position to be buying a significant amount of bloodstock. Behrens is the co-founder of MyRacehorse, the micro-shares syndicate that acquires partnership interests in racehorses then slices those assets into far smaller investment opportunities that generally cost below $400 per share and usually equate to one-tenth of one percent of ownership in a race-ready horse, all training costs included. The firm barely existed a year ago and only bought its first 2-year-old at auction this March. Yet Behrens...