Mitole to join Spendthrift stud roster

Multiple Grade 1 winner Mitole will stand at Spendthrift Farm in 2020.

Mitole, a 4-year-old Eskendereya colt campaigned by Bill and Corrine Heiligbrodt, scored his latest victory in the Grade 1 Forego Stakes on Saturday at Saratoga, establishing a stakes record of 1:20.80 for the seven furlongs. He has now won 9 of 13 career starts, and pushed his earnings past $2 million with the win.

“When Bill tells you he’s won over 1,000 races and this is the fastest horse he’s ever owned, you’ve got to have this horse,” Spendthrift Farm owner B. Wayne Hughes, told Daily Racing Form while joining the Heiligbrodts in the Saratoga winner's circle.

Mitole’s stud fee is subject to change based on the results of his final races, but in a press release issued Sunday, Spendthrift announced that breeders booking to Mitole now can lock in a fee of $20,000.

Mitole, who won a pair of listed stakes in 2018 before being sidelined by an injury, returned in April to win the Grade 3 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap by 2 3/4 lengths over Whitmore. He then captured the first of three Grade 1 scores thus far this season when rolling by 3 1/2 lengths in the Churchill Downs Stakes on Kentucky Derby weekend.

Mitole then defeated multiple Grade 1 winner McKinzie by three-quarters of a length in a salty edition of the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap at Belmont. Two-time Dubai World Cup winner Thunder Snow was another neck back in third in a race in which the top six finishers were all Grade/Group 1 winners. Mitole stopped the clock in 1:32.75 for the mile, less than three-fifths of a second off the track record of 1:32.24 established by Najran in 2003.

The Met Mile is considered a stallion-making race, won through its history by prominent stallions such as Tom Fool (1953), Native Dancer (1954), Buckpasser (1967), Tentam (1973), Cox’s Ridge (1978), Fappiano (1981), and Gulch (1987-88). More recently, it has been won by Ghostzapper (2005) and Quality Road (2010), both top 20 general sires. The acquisition of Mitole's rights gives Spendthrift two of the last three winners of the historic race. Mor Spirit, also a son of Eskendereya, won the 2017 Met Mile and entered stud at Spendthrift this year.

Mitole finished third to the track-record-setting Imperial Hint in the Grade 1 Alfred G. Vanderbilt Handicap on July 27 at Saratoga going six furlongs before bouncing back in the Forego.

"I think the circumstances for the Vanderbilt just didn't suit him; coming off the huge run in the Met Mile and cutting back to three-quarters," trainer Steve Asmussen said. "But he came out of the race in good shape, trained beautifully for [the Forego], and the results speak for themselves."

Mitole is out of the Indian Charlie mare Indian Miss, who is out of the stakes winner Glacken's Gal, making her a half-sister to Grade 2 winner Live Lively.

— additional reporting by Matt Hegarty