“There was something about Into Mischief that Wayne always gravitated toward,” Spendthrift Farm general manager Ned Toffey recalled of the late Spendthrift Farm owner B. Wayne Hughes. “He was always very, very optimistic about his chances of being a sire.” Into Mischief, selected by Hughes as an unraced juvenile and named in honor of his late son, has amply rewarded his owner’s optimism throughout his career. A Grade 1 winner in Spendthrift’s colors, he has gone on to be a record-setting three-time leading sire for the historic farm, bringing it a Kentucky Derby victory and building a legacy of his sons and grandsons now joining him in the barn. Into Mischief also was the flagship stallion for several innovative breeding incentive programs that were the brainchild of Hughes, who died last August at age 87. “If Wayne were here to reflect on another record-breaking year for Into Mischief,” said Hughes’s son-in-law Eric Gustavson, who has taken on the mantle of farm owner, “he might shake his head and echo something he said early on about his success as a stallion – ‘Into Mischief might be the next Northern Dancer.’ ” Hughes, the Public Storage founder, raced his first Thoroughbred in 1972, and acquired Spendthrift in 2004. He purchased Into Mischief for $180,000 out of the 2007 Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co.’s March sale of 2-year-olds in training. According to Gustavson, Hughes named the colt in honor of youngest son, Parker, “who was always ‘into mischief.’ ” Parker Hughes died at age 8 in 1998 after a battle with leukemia. Hughes committed himself to eradicating the disease, with his philanthropy supporting many important research milestones. Amid Parker’s cancer treatment, Hughes launched a charitable foundation that today focuses on funding pediatric cancer research. :: DRF BREEDING LIVE: Real-time coverage of breeding and sales In the Spendthrift colors, Into Mischief won three times and finished second three times in six career starts. His biggest victory came in the Grade 1 CashCall Futurity at Hollywood Park in December 2007, with Gustavson watching alongside Hughes. “As soon as he crossed the finish line, Wayne turned to me and said, ‘We’ve got ourselves a stallion,’ ” Gustavson recalled. “Little did any of us know at the time how prophetic a statement that would be.” After a 3-year-old campaign in which he won the Damascus Stakes and finished second in the Grade 1 Malibu Stakes, Into Mischief retired to Spendthrift for the 2009 season. In a tough market for new stallions following the recession that came to a head the previous fall, he covered 61 mares at an advertised fee of $12,500. The following year, Hughes sought to drum up support for Into Mischief and another young Spendthrift stallion, Notional, by unveiling his innovative “Share the Upside” program, in which breeders could earn a lifetime breeding right after supporting a young horse in his first two years at stud. “The program was instituted to try to help him get mares,” Toffey said. “He really was not overly popular with breeders [early]. He really does embody so many of the things Wayne espoused over the years – that we’ve got to make things work for the breeders. We can’t just sit back and wait for people to call and sign up. We’ve got to incentivize people to use our stallions. You never know where the next good one is coming from.” In that spirit, Hughes unveiled other breeder-incentive programs in the following years, such as “Safe Bet” and “Breed Secure” to provide economic safety nets for breeders, particularly smaller breeders gambling on young, unproven stallions. Those programs not only boosted the book numbers for Spendthrift’s stallions, they altered the landscape in the highly competitive Kentucky stallion market, as a number of other farms adopted their own iterations of those programs, with Hughes’s blessing. “Why shouldn’t the people supporting the stallion by bringing their mares to him and paying the money to raise the [foal] to get it to auction be able to participate in the percentage play that is much higher on the stallion than it is on the mare or on the foal? That was the genesis of the ‘Share the Upside’ program,” Hughes told Daily Racing Form in 2013. “And it came out pretty good, because guys made a lot of money on the first one we did, which was Into Mischief. We’ve got other ones coming, and I think it will be more popular in years to come. You know, there’s a resistance on the part of everyone to change. That’s a natural instinct for people. But it’s a nice program, and we’re happy to be part of it. I don’t have any pride in being the first to start it. I just want it to be good for our industry, that’s all. It’s certainly been good for our farm.” Indeed, with Into Mischief’s success, his early supporters struck gold. The stallion’s first crop, born in 2010, produced a pair of Kentucky Derby starters in Goldencents and Vyjack; both went on to be millionaires, with Goldencents winning two editions of the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile. As Into Mischief climbed through the ranks from that point, his value steadily grew. One of the initial “Share the Upside” lifetime rights to the stallion, which cost $13,000, was reported to sell for $350,000 in 2017. Five years later, Into Mischief is preparing to stand for $250,000 for a single season in 2022. The stallion’s rise to this point from humble beginnings was a special source of pride for Hughes. :: Take your handicapping to the next level and play like a pro with free Formulator, DRF's premium data product “I’m so thankful Wayne got to see him do so many great things as a stallion before he passed,” Gustavson said. “And much like Malibu Moon, a foundation stallion for our farm, Into Mischief did it the hard way. He had to overcome small early books and less than top-class mares. Wayne loved that blue-collar aspect of Into Mischief’s career.” Into Mischief claimed his first crown as North America’s leading general sire in 2019. He moved the bar even higher in 2020, powered by his first classic winner, Kentucky Derby hero Authentic. That colt, co-campaigned by Spendthrift and the micro-share group MyRacehorse, another innovation Hughes supported, claimed the Horse of the Year title after adding the Breeders’ Cup Classic, and Gamine also earned a divisional Eclipse Award after taking the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint. Powered by those two, Into Mischief set a single-season earnings record of $22,506,085. Hughes was on hand as Authentic arrived at Spendthrift two days after the Classic, joining his sire in the stallion complex as he continues to build his legacy. Goldencents, the stallion’s first son to stud, is a leading young sire for Spendthrift. For 2022, the Spendthrift stallion complex houses Into Mischief; his sons Authentic, Goldencents, and Maximus Mischief; and Goldencents’s son By My Standards. Still, with Authentic’s retirement, a horse who had earned more than $7.1 million in the record-setting season was out of the equation as Into Mischief began his chase for a third consecutive sire title in 2021. But at the midway point of the season, the remarkable stallion had still banked more than $12.5 million, more than halfway to his record mark and easily leading Hill ‘n’ Dale’s Ghostzapper – sire of Dubai World Cup winner Mystic Guide – with $11.5 million at that point. Into Mischief’s top earner was Mandaloun, winner of the Grade 2 Risen Star Stakes and second by a half-length in the Kentucky Derby to the star-crossed Medina Spirit, narrowly missing making his sire the first in history to sire consecutive Derby winners. Into Mischief could yet claim that accomplishment pending the results of an ongoing investigation into Medina Spirit’s betamethasone positive. Mandaloun returned from the Derby to win the Pegasus Stakes at Monmouth in June, then recorded his first Grade 1 victory when he crossed the line second by a nose to Hot Rod Charlie in the Haskell Invitational, but was elevated to first on that one’s disqualification for interference. But Mandaloun was ruled out of major fall races with a sore heel, keeping Into Mischief’s continued dominance of the sire list in doubt. “While we would never take Into Mischief for granted, coming into the 2021 season, it would have been unrealistic to expect him to break his own earnings record,” Gustavson said. “Authentic accounted for such a big chunk of earnings at over $7 million that I would have thought it would have been difficult to overcome the 2020 numbers. . . . Midyear, with top earner Mandaloun dropping out, I admit it occurred to me it might now be difficult to maintain the earnings lead. There are too many good stallions with top runners. If a few of them put together a good second half of the year, and Into Mischief’s progeny slowed down it would get tight.” But there was no slowing down for Into Mischief. Life Is Good, who missed the Triple Crown series, came on with a powerhouse second half of the year, winning the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile by 5 3/4 lengths. Gamine won four graded stakes in 2021, including Grade 1 triumphs in the Derby City Distaff and Ballerina Handicap, before finishing third in her defense of the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint. Along with those two and Mandaloun, Into Mischief had a fourth Grade 1 winner on the season in Carter Handicap winner Mischevious Alex. His season also included Grade 2 winners Ain’t Easy, Chess Chief, and Private Mission; Grade 3 winners Bye Bye, Center Aisle, Fulsome, Hibiscus Punch, Mighty Mischief, and Twenty Carat; and stakes winners Call on Mischief, Flash of Mischief, Frank’s Rockette, Gerrymander, Into Mystic, Into the Sunrise, Kiss the Girl, Make Mischief, Man of Promise, Mischievous Kiss, Mundaye Call, Mutasaabeq, Offspring, Rager, She’s My Gem, Sound Machine, Winfromwithin, and Xanthique. :: Get Daily Racing Form Past Performances – the exclusive home of Beyer Speed Figures With that strength across the board, Into Mischief smashed his own earnings mark, with a 2021 bankroll of $25,009,663, according to Daily Racing Form statistics. Ghostzapper finished a distant second, at $16,275,413. “Going back to the very beginning, that very first crop with Goldencents and Vyjack, he has always come with more horses,” Toffey said. “You never know what a stallion is going to do from one year to the next, but he’s never been about one horse, or one huge earner. Across the board, he gets plenty of really good horses, and that’s kept him on top of the list for three years now.” Further showing his quality across the board, Into Mischief has continued as a leader on the Beyer Sire Performance Standings, Daily Racing Form’s exclusive stallion metrics. The standings provide totals and percentages for progeny that surpass specific Beyer benchmarks in North American racing. Traditional sire lists based on earnings can be slanted by one or two major runners who have succeeded in lucrative races or on circuits with casino-inflated purses. The Beyer Sire Performance Standings look beyond these factors, because Beyers are assigned to all runners in a race, and high Beyers can be earned by horses at various levels or purse levels, allowing DRF’s sire lists to reflect all performances. Into Mischief was represented by 45 individual horses who earned 102 benchmark Beyer Speed Figures of 90 or higher, leading all stallions in both those regards. He also led the way with 12 triple-digit Beyer Speed Figures on the year, the most from any stallion. His six runners to hit that mark were led by Mischevious Alex and Life Is Good, who each posted a 109, in the Carter and Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, respectively. “At this point, we can only be thankful for what we have had in Into Mischief,” Gustavson said. “He certainly owes us nothing. I have zero expectations of him. He is already one of the best ever. To expect anything more would unreasonable. “That said, he is coming into the year with some already big-name horses primed and ready to run,” he continued. “So, let’s see what happens. Could be fun.” The fun began on Jan. 22, as Mandaloun returned from his long layoff to win the Grade 3 Louisiana Stakes at Fair Grounds. His camp has designs on the $20 million Saudi Cup on Feb. 26. Meanwhile, Life Is Good is set to start in another rich early-season prize, the $3 million Pegasus World Cup on Jan. 29 at Gulfstream. Hughes “said about this business and this game, it’s a great game because you’re always looking ahead,” Toffey said. “It’s true with every aspect of this game, including with stallions. That was something Wayne really, really enjoyed. . . . Into Mischief always gave you something to look forward to, and always does give us something to look forward to.”