Beholder adds another jewel to Leslie's Lady's tiara
The late Broodmare of the Year Leslie's Lady can now officially add "dam of a Hall of Famer" to her long list of accomplishments, as her champion daughter Beholder was officially inducted on Friday. The ceremony came in the Fasig-Tipton sales pavilion just days before the company’s selected yearling sale, where Leslie’s Lady’s sons and grandsons are expected to make an impact on the sire leaderboard.
Leslie's Lady, who died in January at age 26 at her longtime home, Clarkland Farm in Lexington, Ky., is the dam of seven winners from nine starters to date; her final foal is 2. The Tricky Creek mare, a stakes winner herself, is led by four-time Eclipse Award heroine Beholder, Grade 1 winner and leading sire Into Mischief, and versatile Grade 1 winner Mendelssohn.
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Spendthrift Farm has been tied to this family for more than 15 years, since purchasing Into Mischief for $180,000 out of the 2017 Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co.’s March sale of 2-year-olds in training. After becoming a Grade 1 winner later that year, he has developed into a linchpin for the farm’s stallion division. In 2021, he claimed his third consecutive North American leading sire title, breaking his own single-season earnings record. He is now emerging as a prominent sire of sires, and Spendthrift stands four of his sons or grandsons, led by 2020 Horse of the Year Authentic.
Spendthrift snapped up Beholder for $180,000, still a relative bargain, from the Clarkland consignment at the 2011 Keeneland September yearling sale. In accepting the mare’s Hall of Fame plaque, Spendthrift president Eric Gustavson – the son-in-law of the farm’s late owner, B. Wayne Hughes – thanked all the people involved in breeding, consigning, selecting, and training the champion.
“The long list begins with Fred and Nancy Mitchell and their staff who bred and raised Beholder,” Gustavson said. “[Spendthrift’s] Ned Toffey, Seth Semkin, Des Dempsey, Jim Brown, and Sean Feld, who either helped pick her out at the sale, or cared for Beholder as a yearling. Raul Reyes and his staff at Kings Equine, who gave Beholder her early lessons in Ocala.”
Leslie’s Lady is represented by a pair of sons with lots in the catalog for the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga selected yearling sale, set for Monday and Tuesday. Into Mischief, a commercial juggernaut thanks to his racetrack success, has 15 yearlings set to sell, accounting for outs through Saturday morning. Those include a colt out of another Broodmare of the Year, Indian Miss. Mendelssohn, who stands at Coolmore’s Ashford Stud, has five second-crop yearlings expected to sell. His first crop is heating up on the racetrack, with six individual winners through Friday.
Two of Into Mischief’s sons also have yearlings in the catalog, with Coolmore’s Practical Joke’s second crop joined by the first crop for Audible, who stands at WinStar Farm.