Force the Pass will enter stud in Maryland in 2020, becoming a rare Grade 1 winner to stand in the state. He is the latest newcomer at Louis and Grace Merryman’s Anchor and Hope Farm in Port Deposit, Md., which is continuing to build an exciting roster of young stallions even while rebuilding from a destructive barn fire in August.
It’s college basketball season, and everything in Lexington, Ky., is wallpapered in Wildcat blue. But students from the University of Kentucky could be forgiven for having fond thoughts about an adopted Oklahoma Sooner. Multiple Grade 3 winner Fear the Cowboy, bred and raised by the University of Kentucky’s Maine Chance Farm, which employs students as part of the curriculum, enters stud this season at Glasses Creek Ranch near Madill, Okla.
Tale of the Cat’s legacy is secure through his sons and grandsons at stud, ensuring that his particular branch of the legendary Storm Cat’s sire line is fruitful. His classic-placed Grade 1 winner Lion Heart sired Kantharos, who got off to such a hot start at stud that he was “called up” from Florida to the epicenter of the North American stallion ranks in Kentucky. Kantharos, in turn, was represented by his first son at stud in 2019 in Bucchero, and has a newcomer in Kentucky for 2020 in the versatile and wickedly fast World of Trouble.
Journeyman Stud has found great success this year with freshman sire Khozan, a lightly raced half-brother to a champion. The Ocala, Fla., farm hopes to continue that winning formula as it adds St Patrick's Day to its roster for 2020.
Dixieland Band, one of the original three stallions at Lane's End Farm, died at age 30 in 2010. A decade later, his great-grandson Catalina Cruiser will enter stud at the farm for the 2020 season as Lane's End continues to invest in this sire line.
His name was Halo, with all that that implies. But the nearly-black stallion was anything but angelic.
Over its storied history since being founded in 1937 by Leslie Combs II – who named the property after the 1879 Belmont Stakes winner bred by his great-grandfather – Spendthrift Farm has been an industry leader as a stallion operation. The farm syndicated back-to-back Triple Crown winners Seattle Slew and Affirmed in the 1970s, and has also been home to such standouts as Raise a Native, Nashua, Swaps, Gallant Man, Foolish Pleasure, Majestic Prince, and more.
Uncle Mo shattered records as he led the freshman sire list in 2015, and is now reaping some of the results of that early success.
Unaided, the dam of Breeders' Cup Mile winner Uni, was purchased by Peter Brant's White Birch Farm for $1,382,661 in U.S. funds over the weekend at the Arqana December breeding stock sale in France.
The superstar Australian mare Winx has been confirmed in foal to I Am Invincible, and is expected to deliver her first foal in the second half of 2020, spring in the Southern Hemisphere.
