Few racing seasons in recent memory have ended precisely the way 2019 did. What the New Year brings is hope for more than a few new stallions and perhaps with it a chance for a strong revival in the breeding business. With millionaires McWicked, Bit Of A Legend N, Captain Crunch, Lather Up and Courtly Choice all leaving the racetrack for the final time, there will be a host of options for broodmare owners to choose. The announcement last week that Bettor’s Wish, a potential 2019 Horse of the Year, will service between 40 and 45 mares in 2020, added a new name for those in New Jersey. Bettor’s Wish will also return to the racetrack in 2020. While the options are many on the stallion front, one has to wonder whether the new male blood will be an effective inducement to owners of pacing fillies and mares in their decisions to race or breed? For the breeding business to grow in earnest it will need not just more stallions of substance but more mares to be bred to those stallions. Will the influx of a large supply of new pacing blood be a net positive or negative going forward? Broodmare owners often flock to first-crop sires simply because of the anticipated benefit of selling the offspring. Buyers generally look for something new and better, and often that comes packaged nicely with a new and unproven sire that buyers remember from the racing days. That’s something that may seriously work against some of these new stallions as they will in fact not only have to compete against existing stallions with popularity when their first crops sell in 2022, but other first croppers. Of course from a regional perspective a new stallion can get a tremendous boost. With the exception of Pennsylvania, a state that continues to produce year after year, the stallion market is wide-open and that pretty much explains why so many stallions have found homes in 2020. The sport has gained strong roots in places like Ohio and Indiana. Ontario and New York are certainly in the market for new and exciting faces, and New Jersey breeders must have more optimism in 2020 than they did just three years ago. While owners of a majority of the new stallions are looking to have their horses service above 100 mares in the coming season by pricing them effectively for local markets, the Bettor’s Wish ownership has a different strategy. Trainer and part-owner Chris Ryder believes that the son of Bettor’s Delight should have no problems servicing mares and returning to the racetrack sometime in May. “We’ve tested him and believe he could serve 50-60 mares comfortably,” said Ryder. Ryder doesn’t anticipate any issues in Bettor’s Wish training back to the races and breeding at the same time. “With the number of mares we’re looking to breed, I don’t see any reason why he couldn’t do both,” Ryder said. Father Patrick was able to breed 73 mares his first year in New Jersey while training simultaneously for a 4-year-old campaign. While his breeding results were more than impressive, Father Patrick’s racing season was limited to just five pari-mutuel starts in 2015. The owners of Bettor’s Wish have come up with a $10,000 stud fee for the soon-to-be 4-year-old and that seems a bit low given his pedigree, performance and high expectations. “Sure I think we could have gotten more but we’re thinking ahead to a fee that would work in 2021 and beyond,” said Ryder. There is certainly strong support for Bettor’s Wish at that price, and with the ownership group including active breeders Eric Cherry and Art Zubrod, those first foals could have incredible value. Unlike the other first-year stallions that Bettor’s Wish will compete against, his foals are likely to be in extreme demand in 2022 with the numbers that go to auction likely to be of an extremely select few. Captain Crunch, though not quite completing his racing season the way he started it, is perhaps the second-most interesting new pacing stallion for 2020 given that he’ll extend the Somebeachsomewhere stallion line one generation as the first son of Captaintreacherous to stand. While expectations always run high, 2020 marks a quite different scenario to breeders in that none of those retirees was a dominant force on the racetrack like a Somebeachsomewhere. They are well-bred racehorses that were at times exceptional and at others times just consistent. Will the long-term success of a Bit Of A Legend N be a strong enough lure to bring more broodmares into the game? The breeding business has always been one where players are looking for the next big thing. In the case of Bettor’s Wish or Bit Of A Legend N, there’s the inspiration that a successor to Bettor’s Delight still needs to be found. In the case of Captain Crunch, it could just be the first in a long line of attempted successors to the late Somebeachsomewhere. With McWicked and Courtly Choice, it’s probably just a case of horses that deserve a chance to pass along solid genes to the next generation. Hopefully we’ll see an upsurge in the number of pacing broodmares bred in 2020. There’s certainly enough to choose from.