Omaha Beach

Champion Will Take Charge (Unbridled's Song--Take Charge Lady, by Dehere), whose 13 black-type winners includes this year's GI Hollywood Gold Cup hero There Goes Harvard, will join the stallion roster at Darley Japan in 2023, according to a post on the nursery's website. Will Take Charge has stood his first eight seasons at stud at Three Chimneys Farm. Campaigned by the late Willis Horton during his first two seasons at the races and trained by D. Wayne Lukas, Will Take Charge won the 2013 GI Travers S. and GII Pennsylvania...

Into Mischief once again leads Spendthrift Farm's roster for 2023 with his stud fee remaining at $250,000 S&N, the operation announced Thursday. Spendthrift has added four new stallions including MGISWs Jackie's Warrior (Maclean's Music) and Cyberknife (Gun Runner), who are both pointing for the Breeders' Cup. The other new additions are GI Belmont S. winner Mo Donegal (Uncle Mo) and GSW Greatest Honour (Tapit), who are both available for inspection at the farm. Champion Jackie's Warrior, the likely favorite in the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint, will command a fee of...

LEXINGTON, KY - The Keeneland September Yearling Sale might have taken a day off Friday, but the auction lost none of its momentum when bidding returned for the first of two Book 3 sessions Saturday in Lexington. A colt by Curlin paced another competitive session when selling for $900,000 to the BSW/Crow Colts partnership. For the session, 287 yearlings grossed $50,747,500. The session average was $176,821--up 5.69% from last year's corresponding session--and the median rose 3.7% to $140,000. Through five days, 956 head have sold for $287,737,500. The average is...

by Chris McGrath & Stefanie Grimm It's all the trees I feel guilty about. That, and the postman's lumbago. But while many people nowadays complacently compress the world's biggest yearling auction onto a digital device, a stubborn few of us will always prefer scribbling notes on the dog-eared pages of a paper catalog. Whichever your preference, of course, you will do well to avoid wearing out the soles of your shoes during the Keeneland September Sale--not to mention other reserves, in morale or finances. Before you start appraising individual hips,...

The 2022 class of first-crop yearling sires features a diverse batch of Kentucky-based young stallions including a pair of Breeders' Cup champions, two sons of reigning top sire Into Mischief, five graded stakes winners at two and five Grade I winners on turf. Throughout the course of the yearling sales season, we will feature a series of freshman sires as their first crop points toward the sales ring. Check out past editions of our series here.   Omaha Beach (War Front--Charming, by Seeking the Gold) set the bar high for this...

By Christie DeBernardis & Jessica Martini    LEXINGTON, KY--Yearling sale season started with a bang Tuesday at Fasig-Tipton's July Selected Yearling Sale. The auction house saved the best for last with the final horse through the ring, a son of Curlin (Hip 302), topping the day on a $600,000 bid from the Green family's DJ Stable. Last year's leading freshman sire Gun Runner accounted for the day's second-highest seller, a $430,000 colt (Hip 153) sold to de Meric Sales. Both colts came from the Gainesway consignment, which was responsible for...

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...

Fasig-Tipton has catalogued 23 entries for its April Digital Selected Sale. Bidding is now officially open and will close this Tuesday, Apr. 26, at 2 pm. The catalogue, which may now be viewed at digital.fasigtipton.com, consists of horses of racing age and breeding stock. Entries catalogued include: Time Sensitive (Hip 1): 4-year-old daughter of Nyquist is a half-sister to recent GIII Stonestreet Lexington S. winner Tawny Port (Pioneerof the Nile). Topo Grigio (Hip 2): Winning daughter of multiple graded stakes winner Summer Wind Dancer is believed to be in foal...

With the 2022 breeding season right around the corner, we will feature a series of breeders' mating plans over the coming weeks. Today we have Barry Butzer of Sun Valley Farm. WILLA (m, 5, Will Take Charge--Miss Kilroy, by A.P. Indy), to be bred to Blame, and her half-sister KITTY (m, 3, Street Boss--Miss Kilroy, by A.P. Indy), to be bred to Union Rags Very lucky to have my dad at side the day Miss Kilroy strode into the ring at the 2009 January Keeneland Breeding Stock Sale, an 11-year-old...

With the global economy tottering in the Covid headwind, last year a lot of stallion farms went out of their way to help breeders with fee cuts. As a result, as I've previously suggested, the market's remarkable rally since means that the present trading environment represents a pretty historic opportunity. And that particularly applies to the next group in our series, as the first to have absorbed those cuts. (Even last year, it felt as though the rookies had been priced with the usual and necessary opportunism.) Especially because one...

Hang on a minute. Weren't the seven fat years supposed to be followed by seven lean years? The way the market has gone in 2021, we have barely had seven lean minutes. Nothing, certainly, approaching the kind of reset required, logically and historically, for the cyclical functioning of capitalism. The prospect of some such "correction" had been the only latent comfort, cold as it was, for a bloodstock market confronted by the global economic shock of the pandemic. Because a decade of almost relentless growth wasn't even ending due to...

In Friday's TDN, Brian DiDonato provided a list of weanling siblings and dams of Breeders' Cup Friday contenders entered in the Keeneland November Sale. Today, Christie DeBernardis followed up with Saturday Breeders' Cup contenders, their dams and younger siblings who are set to sell at that marquee auction. As Brian said, there is no update like a Breeders' Cup update! Hip 103 - GI Breeders' Cup F/M Sprint contender Edgeway (Competitive Edge) will head straight from Del Mar to Lexington, where she will be offered in Book 1 of KEENOV....