A Breeders' Cup victory that puts a young horse on the path toward the Kentucky Derby or Kentucky Oaks is virtually priceless. But Storm the Court and British Idiom, who each earned 20 points toward the spring classics with their victories in the Juvenile and Juvenile Fillies, respectively, both were bargain buys, costing just $100,000 combined.
Regally-bred Grade 1 winner Delta Prince, who was scheduled to enter stud next year in Kentucky, was euthanized Friday. The 6-year-old son of Street Cry was undergoing treatment at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital, but suffered complications associated with laminitis and renal failure subsequent to an incident of colic, owner and breeder Adena Springs said in a press release.
Stormy Liberal will attempt to win the Breeders' Cup turf Sprint for a third consecutive year on Saturday, and one of those trying to stop him will be his half-brother Leinster.
Zenyatta spent three championship campaigns in trainer John Shirreffs's barn in California. But whatever memories of her former life as a racehorse remain for Zenyatta, now a broodmare at Lane's End Farm in Kentucky, she evidently doesn't remember the trainer who guided her to titles as champion older female in 2008, 2009, and 2010, and Horse of the Year in 2010.
Quality Road, a rising star in the stallion ranks for Lane’s End Farm over the last several years, will again see his stud fee spike in 2020, with his advertised fee of $200,000 placing him among the most expensive sires in North America.
Lane's End Farm has acquired the breeding rights to Game Winner, last year's Eclipse Award champion juvenile, and plans to add him to its stallion roster in 2021.
While American Pharoah was dominant on the racetrack, he faces a strong group of rival freshman sires as he begins to construct his legacy. This year's freshman class could have nine entrants in the body of the field for Breeders' Cup races.
Street Sense won the Breeders' Cup Juvenile in 2006 and then went on to become the first winner of that race to take the following year's Kentucky Derby. This week in the Breeders' Cup, his son Maxfield will try to put himself on the road to the Juvenile-Derby double, and his McKinzie will try to do something Street Sense couldn't.
There are plenty of million-dollar questions on the Breeders' Cup program – and some of them involve just who the attendees for Spendthrift Farm might be cheering for the loudest.
Union Rags produced two Grade 1 winners from his first crop to the races in 2016 and has continued to blossom for Lane's End – prompting the farm to invest further in the promising young sire's line. His son Catalina Cruiser, part of a strong hand for Union Rags at the upcoming Breeders' Cup, will enter stud alongside his sire next year.
