Share the Upside

If you're in this business, chances are you're seeking 'Saturday afternoon horses.' In this new series, we will select a stallion from the previous weekend whose runners particularly impressed. We start with the sire of the most coveted prize of all: this year's GI Kentucky Derby winner. Spendthrift Farm has long called Goldencents "Into Mischief's value sire." As a member of the five-time leading sire's first crop, he was conceived on a $12,500 cover and, while quietly plying his trade with solid runners and numbers that put him at or...

Never mind the champion stallion who emulated his own rags-to-riches rise: every yard of paddock rail, every coat of paint, every blade of grass at Spendthrift Farm commemorates the man whose arrival here transformed the commercial breeding landscape. But it's not just the fact that it will formally preserve his name that makes an especially apt memorial of a new visitor center, opening later this year. For its very existence attests to the unique, restlessly challenging style of the late B. Wayne Hughes, and the determination of those charged with...

All five first-season stallions based at Spendthrift Farm have had their first mares reported in foal, the farm announced Sunday evening. Basin (Liam's Map)'s first reported in-foal mare is Littlegreatone (Bernardini), and By My Standards (Goldencents)'s is Danceswithbourbon (Outwork). Known Agenda (Curlin), Rock Your World (Candy Ride {Arg}) and Yaupon (Uncle Mo) each had two mares confirmed as pregnant on the same day. Pink Fizz (Dialed In) and Sunandsea (Henny Hughes) checked in foal to Known Agenda, Hope Lady (Tapiture) and Mrs. O'Connell (American Pharoah) to Rock Your World, and...

GISW Basin (Liam's Map-Appenzell, by Johannesburg) has been retired from racing and will stand at Spendthrift Farm in 2022. Standing for a fee of $7,500 S&N, the 4-year-old will participate in the farm's "Share The Upside" program. "We are excited to add Basin to the Spendthrift stallion ranks and to be able to offer breeders a horse of his caliber through our Share The Upside program," said Ned Toffey, Spendthrift General Manager. "We pride ourselves on being able to offer quality at all levels, and we believe there's a lot...

St. Elias Stables' Known Agenda (Curlin--Byrama {GB}, by Byron {GB}), winner of this year's GI Florida Derby, has been retired from racing and will take up stud duty at Spendthrift Farm in 2022. The chestnut, who will stand for an introductory fee of $10,000 S&N, will be offered through the farm's "Share The Upside" program on a limited basis. He is available for inspection by appointment. "Any time you can add a Florida Derby winner by Curlin with his looks and pedigree, you jump at the opportunity," said Ned Toffey,...

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...

Darby Dan Farm has set 2021 stud fees for its roster of 12 stallions that will stand the upcoming breeding season, led by Dialed In (Mineshaft), who will stand for $15,000 S&N, down from $20,000 a season ago. The roster also features Tapiture (Tapit), Klimt (Quality Road), and GI Breeders' Cup Classic contender Higher Power (Medaglia d'Oro), new for 2021, who will each stand for $10,000 S&N. GI Kentucky Derby winner Country House (Lookin At Lucky), also new for 2021, Flameaway (Scat Daddy), and Copper Bullet (More Than Ready) will...

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,"...

Reigning GI Kentucky Derby winner Country House (Lookin At Lucky-Quake Lake, by War Chant) has been secured for stud duty by John Phillips's Darby Dan Farm in Lexington, Kentucky. Country House will be participating in Darby Dan's "Share the Upside" program, and his fee for the 2021 season has been set at $7,500 S&N. "We are excited to stand Country House and to provide breeders the opportunity to breed to a Kentucky Derby winner through our "Share the Upside" program," said Ryan Norton, Darby Dan Farm's stallion director. "There is...

Spendthrift Farm's multiple graded stakes-winning millionaire Coal Front (Stay Thirsty--Miner's Secret, by Mineshaft) had his first mare confirmed in foal. The Wildcat Heir mare Defying Gravity scanned in foal Mar. 10 for breeder Ken Doyen at Sparks View Farm in Paris, KY. She hails from the immediate family of multiple graded stakes winner and sire Too Much Bling. Bought for $575,000 as an OBS April 2-year-old in 2016, Coal Front was named a 'TDN Rising Star' a year later at Keeneland and went on to win five stakes over his...