Rob and Stacy Mitchell take pride in being hands-on owners and breeders, doing their own work with their horses at their Briland Farm in Lexington, Ky. That includes delivering the foals. As the Mitchells' homebred Kentucky Oaks winner Secret Oath faces males again in Saturday's Preakness Stakes, the couple may still be in Lexington awaiting a very special delivery.
Creative Minister was a 2 3/4-length winner of a salty allowance race at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May, some seven hours before Epicenter carried the Winchell Thoroughbreds colors to a game second in the Kentucky Derby. The two colts will converge in the Preakness Stakes on Saturday. Ironically, Creative Minister, who races for Fern Circle Stables, Back Racing, and trainer Kenny McPeek, is from a Winchell foundation family and will now seek to upset their star colt in the Preakness.
Rich Strike, who gave Calumet Farm a record-extending 10th Kentucky Derby victory as a breeder, will not be in Baltimore on Saturday. But Calumet homebred Happy Jack is expected to be in the starting gate for the Preakness Stakes, looking to extend the historic operation's record in the second jewel of the Triple Crown.
Flatter, a consistently successful sire who carried on the legacy of A.P. Indy as a cornerstone of the Claiborne Farm roster for nearly two decades, was euthanized on Monday due to the infirmities of old age. He was 23.
Rich Strike, from the first crop of Calumet Farm stallion Keen Ice, pulled off the second-biggest upset in Kentucky Derby history on Saturday evening at Churchill Downs, shocking a full house as he overhauled favored Epicenter in the final stages and returning $163.60.
It will be Sunday morning in South Korea when the Kentucky Derby is run Saturday morning at Churchill Downs, and the Thoroughbred industry in that nation will be waking up to find out if one of its residents is a winning classic sire.
Try to name reliable classic lines in the United States, and a couple immediately come to mind: Kentucky Derby winner Unbridled, who has founded a strong branch of the family tree for his grandsire, the prolific Mr. Prospector, and Belmont Stakes winner A.P. Indy, who represents Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew’s branch of the Bold Ruler line. Both are solidly represented in a Kentucky Derby field that is extremely hard to pick apart on pedigree.
Two successful classic sires – including one of the most successful stallions in the modern history of the Kentucky Oaks – are among those whose progeny should not be bothered by the expected wet track for Friday’s filly classic.
They say breed the best to the best, and hope for the best. Mandy Pope began seriously upgrading her broodmare band about a decade ago in order to follow that maxim, and has established one of the best in the country. That has led her to Kentucky Derby week, where she's hoping for the best with her lightly raced Charge It.
It often takes longer for a stallion to prove himself as a broodmare sire than as a sire of sires. With no expensive stud deals in the offing, fillies sometimes race longer than colts – and, of course, once retired, they only have one foal a year to begin building their resume, as compared to a stallion, who will have dozens of shots at stakes victories in each crop.
