Champion Groupie Doll will be sent to Tapit for her initial mating following her imminent retirement, while 2011 Horse of the Year Havre de Grace, Kentucky Oaks winner Plum Pretty, and recent sale-topper Betterbetterbetter will be bred to War Front in 2014.
Wildcat Heir, a prominent sire in Florida over the past several years, was represented by his first Grade 1 winner Dec. 26, when then-3-year-old filly Heir Kitty scored a hard-fought upset win in the La Brea on Santa Anita’s opening-day card. Wildcat Heir, a 14-year-old Grade 1- winning son of Forest Wildcat, was one of the fastest sprinters of the mid-2000s and has consistently passed on that speed to his progeny, the best of which excel at sprint and mile distances on both dirt and turf.
Grade 1 winner The Lumber Guy, New York's Horse of the Year in 2012, has been retired from racing and will stand the 2014 breeding season at Keane Stud in Amenia, N.Y. for an advertised fee of $5,000.
It has become all too easy and customary for Americans to dismiss the earnings of Japanese horses, pointing to the inescapable fact that the average purse in Japan is almost three times the average purse in the United States, and seeming to accept that discrepancy almost as a badge of honor instead of the scarlet letter of shame it should be.
DRF Breeding staff writer Joe Nevills makes his selections for the 2013 Eclipse Awards in the form of haiku; a Japanese poem of 17 syllables, in three lines of five, seven and five.
Old Friends, the Thoroughbred retirement organization based out of Georgetown, Ky., is planning an expansion to its Kentucky property in order to take in more horses.
New Year’s Day winner of the 2013 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, will stand his initial season at Hill ‘n’ Dale Farm in Lexington, Ky. for an advertised fee of $12.500.
Leslie Brownell Combs II, former president of prominent central Kentucky stud farm Spendthrift Farm, died on Sunday in Lexington, Ky. He was 80.
Lere Visagie’s Rockridge Stud in Hudson, N.Y., will host a stallion show on Saturday, Feb. 1, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern.
New York Thoroughbred Breeders, Inc., will conduct its annual stallion season auction starting at 12 p.m. Eastern on Friday, Jan. 10, and ending at 12 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 13.
