Iowa State adds Grade 1 winner in Free Drop Billy

Anchor Down, the leading stallion in Iowa, regardless of progeny conception area, for 2023, has departed the country. But his stall in the Iowa State University stallion barn didn’t stay empty for long, as the program continues to boast an enviable roster for students to work around.

Grade 2 winner Anchor Down came to Iowa for the 2022 breeding season from Gainesway Farm in Kentucky, and his first state-conceived progeny won’t race until 2025 – while their sire’s career continues in Korea, where he begins stud duty this year. Anchor Down’s Kentucky-sired runners banked $2,075,356.

That gives Anchor Down the lead by a wide margin in the state over Iowa State’s newest recruit, Grade 1 winner Free Drop Billy. Free Drop Billy launches his Iowa residency in 2024 for a $2,500 fee after beginning his career in 2019 at Spendthrift Farm in Kentucky. His runners earned $979,915 last season. Next on Iowa’s earnings list is Grade 1 winner Stroll, a former Claiborne Farm resident who has long reigned at Iowa State. He is the state’s leading sire with locally conceived runners, at $795,279.

Free Drop Billy, by Union Rags, won the Grade 1 Breeders’ Futurity as a 2-year-old and placed in five other graded stakes. From his first two crops, he is the sire of multiple stakes winner Free Drop Maddy. He now joins the state’s most prominent roster.

While Iowa State University maintains a herd of Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse broodmares for use in its teaching program, the university stallions also are publicly available and currently dominate the commercial landscape in Iowa. According to The Jockey Club’s Report of Mares Bred for 2023, there were five stallions reported to have covered mares in Iowa on the season; four of those stand at Iowa State, and they combined to cover 57 of the 63 mares reported bred.

Illinois

It is no surprise to see Ghaaleb continuing atop the Illinois sire ranks – and no surprise to see those ranks continuing to be small, as the state’s breeders and owners continue to grapple with reduced live activity in the state following Arlington Park’s closing.

Ghaaleb, standing for a private fee at Wildwood Farm, launched his career by siring four first-crop winners from as many starters in 2017. He has been a top 10 general sire in Illinois every season of his career and had led that list three straight years, and four of the last five. In 2023, he had a solid strike rate of 27 winners from 33 starters to amass progeny earnings just shy of the seven-figure mark, at $996,125.

For the second year in a row, and fifth time in the last six years, there will be no new stallions retiring to Illinois for the upcoming season to join the ranks alongside Ghaaleb and others, and the state’s breeding numbers continue to contract, mirroring a national trend seen in many regions. According to the Illinois State Fact Book published by The Jockey Club, 1,239 mares were bred to 123 stallions in the state in 2002, the first year listed in the book’s statistics. By 2010, those numbers were 540 mares and 79 stallions, and a decade later, in 2020, they had decreased to 107 mares and 30 stallions. In 2022, the most recent year in the fact book, 96 mares were bred in Illinois, and there were 25 stallions in the state.