horse breeding

The unexpected death of Arrogate (Unbridled's Song) on Tuesday was a devastating blow to his connections at Juddmonte and to the industry at large. He was the horse that Juddmonte had expected to base its boutique North American stallion operation around and he was the last great hope that his late sire would deliver a top-of-the-line stallion, something Unbridled's Song has been unable to do yet during an illustrious career as an excellent sire of racehorses, including 22 Grade l winners, and an outstanding sire of broodmares. Those expectations have...

Pleasantly Perfect (Pleasant Colony--Regal State, by Miswaki), who completed a historic Breeders' Cup four-timer for trainer Richard Mandella in the 2003 GI Classic and went on to sire a trio of top-level winners, passed away Wednesday in Turkey. He was 22 years old and died of natural causes. Bred in Kentucky by Clovelly Farms, Pleasantly Perfect was purchased by Gerald Ford's Diamond A Racing Corp. for $725,000 at the 1999 Keeneland September sale. Turned over to Mandella, the strapping bay won back-to-back runnings of the GII Goodwood Breeders' Cup H....

Not his time yet, surely. Can't be. A son of two-turn titan Giant's Causeway; a half-brother to late-blooming Liam's Map. Yet there it is, in black and white: three starters, two winners. Hopeful Princess hurtling just 4 1/2 furlongs at Churchill last week; and Swaggy George at Gulfstream the next day, circling the field into the stretch and sprinting four lengths clear. So while these remain the very earliest of days, Not This Time could not have made a more auspicious start to his stud career. On the one hand,...

For half a century, Arthur Boyd Hancock III has called Stone Farm home. It is a tract of land where, as the nursery's website succinctly states, the team is 'trying to raise you a good horse.' To say they've achieved that goal over the years would be an understatement of monumental proportions. The list of animals that have grown up on that stretch of Bourbon County Bluegrass include stakes winners too numerous to mention; horses from A to Y, including Classic-winning and Classic-placed runners like Gato del Sol, Risen Star,...

They say that every cloud has a silver lining. For SF Bloodstock's Tom Ryan, it was a very dark cloud. Last Friday, SF lost a foal at 30 days old. Then the next day, a young mare passed away after suffering from colic for the third time, leaving behind an orphaned foal. "Even when you know it's for all the right reasons, I promise you it's always a difficult call to euthanize any animal," Ryan said. "The ripple effect across a farm afterwards is immense, but without exception the show...

College students in equine management programs are facing an educational tradeoff this spring: Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, they're getting an immersion in crisis control that wasn't originally on the syllabus. But the horse-related teaching is not as hands-on as instructors and pupils would like, because many learning institutions have mandated a switch to online-only classes in an attempt to keep the virus from spreading on campuses. This presents a unique challenge at Arkansas State University, because the school is one of the few in the nation that offers degree...

Two weeks ago, the bombshell indictments of trainers Jorge Navarro, Jason Servis, et al., sandwiched between a volatile stock market and the spread of the coronavirus, were the talk of the industry, leading to renewed calls by some for the passage of the Horseracing Integrity Act in Congress. At the time, the doping scandal promised to upend racing's precarious standing, but with hindsight, the plunge of the markets and the rise of the virus may cost the racing and breeding industries greater long-term harm than what's alleged in the indictments....

I am going to pick Runhappy as my leading freshman sire. Unfortunately, I do not have any of them in the barn. We seemed to get outrun on all of the one ones that we wanted. I vetted a lot of them at the yearling sales and really liked them physically. He was a very fast horse himself and it looks like he is going to pass that trait on. My under-the-radar stallion would be Not This Time. We had a filly slated for Gulfstream that could be any kind...

'TDN Rising Star' Maximus Mischief (Into Mischief), who stands alongside his superstar sire at Spendthrift Farm, has had his first mare confirmed in foal. Spin to Gold (Hard Spun) scanned in foal Feb. 28 for breeder D J Stable at Hidden Brook Farm in Paris, KY. Spin to Gold was a maiden winner at first asking, same as Maximus Mischief. Winner of his first two career starts by a combined 14 3/4 lengths, Maximus Mischief remained unbeaten in the GII Remsen S. and was third in the GII Holy Bull...

The 2020 edition of the Fact Book is now available in the Resources section of The Jockey Club website at www.jockeyclub.com. The Fact Book is a statistical and informational guide to Thoroughbred breeding, racing and auctions in North American and also includes a directory of Canadian, international, national, and state organizations. Links to the Breeding Statistics report that is released by The Jockey Club each September and the Report of Mares Bred information that is published by The Jockey Club each October can be found in the Breeding section of...

After a devastating 2019 fire at Louis and Grace Merryman's Anchor and Hope Farm in Port Deposit, Maryland, the rebuilding process has come full circle with the arrival of Force the Pass, a Grade I-winning son of Speightstown, who will begin his first season at stud at the farm this year. Force the Pass also marks a new beginning for T. K. Kuegler's Wasabi Ventures Stallions as the first stallion to stand for the growing syndicate. Kuegler grew up listening to racing stories from his great grandfather, trainer P. J....

Through the first three installments of this series, we've repeatedly complained about ever-more manic investment in unproven stallions and the resulting potential for chronic deterioration in the gene pool. So we won't reprise the theme today, other than to remark that this situation creates a rather more immediate and specific challenge for the next group under review. Because while second- and third-season stallions can still offer breeders the possibility of riding an early vogue, this lot have just been exposed to the judgment of the yearling market--which history reveals to...