Breeding

Horse Racing Alberta has released the details of the 2021 Thoroughbred Breed Improvement Program. The total Thoroughbred allocation for breeders, owners and stallion owners has been increased to $1,581,465 for this season. Breeders' will share in $340,233 available to breeders of horses of all ages foaled in Alberta placing win, place and show in all sanctioned races in Alberta having a minimum $7,000 purse and where entered at or above a minimum $6,250 claiming price. The bonus will be paid after the conclusion of the Alberta racing season. Bonuses will...

Nothing, it seems, will help you see through the vanity of materialism quite like a $4.1 billion fortune. A few summers ago, I was sitting alone in the baronial boardroom at Spendthrift, waiting to interview the farm's owner. It was a hot day, but here all was panelled cool, the venerable furnishings slumbering through the prosperous drone of a lawnmower. I was thinking about this apt conflation of heritage and modernity when startled by the entry of a tanned octogenarian whose casual apparel, in the round, must have cost rather...

No matter how ugly racing can get over here on our dirt tracks, most recently highlighted by the Gl Kentucky Derby betamethasone positive of the Bob Baffert-trained Medina Spirit (Protonico), North American pedigrees have to be reckoned with wherever racing is conducted at the highest levels, and that includes on turf in Japan (Sunday Silence) and Australasia (Danehill) in addition to Europe (Sadler's Wells). No one knows this better than the Coolmore partners, headed by maestro John Magnier, who learned this lesson decades ago on American buying sprees as the...

Revved Up (Candy Ride {Arg}--Storm Flag Flying, by Storm Cat), a multiple graded-stakes placed winner of $372,524, has been retired from racing and will enter stud at Lori and Francisco Bravo's River Oaks Farm in Sulphur, Oklahoma. He will stand for a fee of $2,000 as the property of the Revved Up syndicate. A five-time winner at the races and placed in the GIII River City H. and GIII Arlington H., the Phipps-bred Revved Up, a $350,000 purchase out of the 2018 Fasig-Tipton July Horse of Racing Age Sale, is...

The Louisiana-based Aurelius Maximus (Pioneerof the Nile--La Reina, by A.P. Indy) had his first mare confirmed in foal this week. The durable Pay the Man (Bernstein), owned by Montgomery Equine, is among the first book of mares for Grade II-placed Aurelius Maximus. The Ohio-bred made 76 trips to the post in nine years at the races, winning 27 times (including 21 black-type races) for earnings of $1,058,511. Aurelius Maximus stands at Adcock's Red River Farms in Coushatta, LA, for an advertised stud fee of $2,000 LFG with consideration to approved...

Game Winner (Candy Ride {Arg}), the champion 2-year-old male of 2018, has had his first mare confirmed in foal, officials at Lane's End announced Thursday. The Machmer Hall-owned Desire Street (Congrats) was the first mare reported in foal to the son of Indyan Giving (A.P. Indy). The 9-year-old is a half-sister to SW & GSP Abraham (Distorted Humor); GISP Beat the Benchmark (Speightstown); and to Groton Circle, who produced SW Supreme Aura to the cover of Candy Ride in 2015. Desire Street's second dam includes MGSW & GISP Miss Isella...

The Indiana Thoroughbred Alliance (ITA), in conjunction with Kentucky Equine Research, will be hosting a free webinar focusing on broodmare nutrition Feb. 4, starting at 7 p.m. EST. The webinar will focus on proper nutrition practices for breeders and farm managers for all stages of the broodmare's reproductive cycle. The information will be presented by Peter Huntington BVSc, MACVSc, an external lecturer and examiner at the University of Melbourne Veterinary Science program and Director of Equine Nutrition for Kentucky Equine Research Australasia. The webinar is open to anyone looking to...

The wait is very nearly over for the young pretenders we will examine in this fourth installation of our multi-part Value Sires series: stallions with their first runners in 2021. While the full verdicts must be delayed until these are given a fair shake with their first full seasons with 2- and 3-year-olds, the reality is that the first juvenile races in the coming months will be akin to a perpetual Christmas morning in the bloodstock world, with each of us eager to unwrap the packages we have been examining...

Spendthrift Farm's Vino Rosso (Curlin--Mythical Bride, by Street Cry {Ire}), the champion older dirt male and winner of the GI Breeders' Cup Classic in 2019, was represented by his first foal Jan. 5 when the 6-year-old mare Shine Time (Malibu Moon) produced a filly at Jim and Pam Robinson's Brandywine Farm in Paris, Kentucky. "I tell you what, you could not ask for a better foal. She is just beautiful and very smart," Pam Robinson said. "Physically, she is a strong filly with good bone. I cannot say enough positive...

And so we come to the group standing on the brink. The group facing the moment of truth, when their most precocious stock enters the gate and offers some initial indication as to their competence for the task for which, ostensibly at least, they were bred. As such, this should perhaps be the moment we double down. That's what we would do, at any rate, if we had real faith in the choices we have made for our mares. If we have selected their mates well, then people will be...

There will be an infusion of new American blood into the Japanese stallion ranks in 2021 with retirements to stud of Mozu Ascot (Frankel {GB}) and Mr Melody (Scat Daddy). Each is the first of their respective sires' progeny to take up stud duty in the island nation. Bred in Kentucky by Jane Lyon's Summer Wind Farm, Mozu Ascot was led out unsold on a bid of $275,000 at the 2015 Keeneland September sale before being acquired privately by Capital System Co. Ltd. A maiden winner at third asking under...

You have to shake out a lot of grit from the riverbed before you glimpse that glint of gold. John Ropes started panning just about 40 years ago. He had a girl working for him at the time whose father, Andy Smithers, trained in Canada. When Ropes told her that he'd decided to buy a racehorse, she tried to save him. "No," she implored. "I'm telling you, don't do it." Ropes was adamant. He had always loved horses. His parents took him racing as a kid in Miami and, though...