Indian Charlie

For over a half century, Airdrie Stud has grown into one of the most recognizable names in the breeding industry. Well known for producing future stakes horses, developing stallions or selling livestock, the Midway, Kentucky operation has become part of the very fabric of racing. And while the nursery, founded in 1972 by Governor Brereton Jones and his wife Elizabeth, has been a fixture at the yearling sales for much of its history, its return to the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Select Yearling Sale offers a departure from its sale's program in...

We are all the products of our environment. Tim Thornton could see as much, when he saw a foal that had been delivered at sea trying to walk on dry land for the first time. "He was, like, six weeks old," he recalls. "It was so funny to see him get off that ship, rocking everywhere, giving it the sea legs." But then that's pretty well how Thornton himself might have felt, as one born and bred for horses, had he ever been torn away to work in some other...

Bret Jones is the vice president at Airdrie Stud located in Midway, KY, a 2,500-acre breeding operation founded in 1972 by his parents, Governor Brereton Jones and his wife, Elizabeth. He is a graduate of the University of the South (Suwanee) and has formally been a member of the team at Airdrie since 2006. He also serves on the Board of the Breeders' Cup, a position he's held since 2011, and was a commissioner on the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission from 2016-2020. He currently serves on the board of trustees...

A lot of you will know the feeling. Day three of the January Sale, back ring, and your horse is coming back out after a matter of seconds. The digital board had stalled at $2,500, and then cleared. Bret Jones exchanged a grimace with farm manager Ben Henley. Pretty terrible, no getting away from it. But what can you do? It wasn't the first time Airdrie has had to cut its losses on a horse, and nor would it be the last. As his father has always told Bret: "Better...

This whole industry, as I've often remarked, turns on a delicate pivot. We need pedigree to hold up sufficiently for the big investors to stay in the game, and incidentally to keep the rest of us in business; but we also need a sufficient number of unaccountable aberrations for the little guy to feel he always has some kind of chance, as well. If the top lot at Keeneland September Book I won the GI Kentucky Derby every year, then almost the whole pyramid beneath would collapse. But nor can...

Grade III winner and promising young sire Cinco Charlie (Indian Charlie--Ten Halos, by Marquetry) has been purchased by Bob & Tyree Wolesensky's Leadem Farm and will relocate there for the 2022 breeding season after spending his first five seasons at Spendthrift Farm. Jay Goodwin orchestrated the deal. "Texas racing is thriving and the breeding business is coming back," said Goodwin. "Bob and Tyree approached me about finding a stallion that would fit Texas and I don't think we could have found a better one. Cinco Charlie was a brilliantly fast...

In his early days in the Thoroughbred business, Hanzly Albina served the Foustok family's Buckram Oak Farm as assistant farm manager and later managed Four Roses Thoroughbreds for the same operation. "As a young person in the business, you don't get to do a lot, but you get to study a lot," Albina recollects. The horseman is now applying that and other knowledge he's acquired over the years as an advisor to Maurice and Samantha Regan's Newtown Anner Stud, the breeders of 'TDN Rising Star' and GII Rachel Alexandra S....

This business about sire lines has been driving your correspondent a bit nuts for the past 40 years, dating from when he first came to understand the realm, initially through the discourses of the great analyst Dr. Franco Varola and the estimable author Abe Hewitt. In those days we all not only relied on the historical database of a rather limited number of stallions but also on the patience needed to assess the long-term impact of form, function, and pedigree. You had Phalaris and Swynford, then Nearco and Hyperion, then...

Spendthrift Farm's Cinco Charlie (Indian Charlie) was represented by his first winner Tuesday when Patricia and Daniel Yates' Big On Big scored a hard-fought victory in his career debut. Showing a mostly pedestrian local worktab until perking up with a five-furlong bullet in 1:02 4/5 (1/7) July 18, the dark bay took a late punch to be 28-5 at the off and led narrowly as the middle marker in a three-way pace duel through a sharp :22.40 quarter. Starting to find a bit of daylight past a :47.26 half, he...