More Than Ready accomplished many things in his quarter-century on Earth. He was a Grade 1 winner on the racetrack, and went on to become a leading sire on two continents, with champions around the globe. In addition to those accomplishments, he is the all-time leading sire by Breeders’ Cup victories – a title in the crosshairs this year, as the late stallion does not have a prominent candidate, and several other sires are breathing down his neck. More Than Ready launched his acclaimed stud career at Tom Simon’s Vinery Farm in Kentucky in 2001, and also made the first of his many shuttle trips to Vinery Stud in Australia for the Southern Hemisphere season that year. When Simon announced he was closing his breeding and training operations in the United States in 2012, he arranged to have seven stallions, including More Than Ready, transferred to WinStar in Versailles, Ky. The son of Southern Halo would be based at that farm until his death from the “cumulative effects of old age” in August at age 25. “More Than Ready was an amazing horse who touched everyone he came in contact with,” Elliott Walden, president, CEO, and racing manager of WinStar, said at the time. “He may not have been the biggest horse in the barn, but he more than made up for it in class, balance, and character. His expressions said it all. We will greatly miss him at the farm.” More Than Ready still has time to build his statistics on the racetrack; he was an active stallion in Kentucky this year, and his final Southern Hemisphere foals are yearlings this season. His active runners continue to go full steam, as he is the sire of stakes winners this year in the United States, Canada, Japan, and Australia. His winners in the United States include Pleasant Passage, who is unbeaten in two starts and stamped her ticket to the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf at Keeneland by winning the Grade 2 Miss Grillo Stakes at Belmont Park. Pleasant Passage is the only pre-entrant for the Nov. 4-5 Breeders’ Cup for More Than Ready, who has sired the winners of seven Breeders’ Cup races, giving him more victories than any other stallion in the history of the event. The Breeders’ Cup was inaugurated as a single-day seven-race program in 1984. It made the first addition to its program with the Filly and Mare Turf in 1999 and expanded to two days beginning in 2007 while creating additional races. The current two-day program includes 14 Breeders’ Cup races. More Than Ready won a pair of Breeders’ Cup races in 2010 with More Than Real in the Juvenile Fillies Turf and Pluck in the Juvenile Turf; they helped make him North America’s leading 2-year-old sire that season. He went on to sire 2011 Turf Sprint winner Regally Ready; 2017 Juvenile Fillies Turf winner Rushing Fall; Roy H, who won back-to-back editions of the Sprint in 2017 and 2018; and, most recently, 2019 Mile winner Uni. Roy H and Uni both earned Eclipse Award divisional championships, while Rushing Fall picked one up later in her career. Just behind More Than Ready, with six wins each at the Breeders’ Cup, are the late Sadler’s Wells and Unbridled’s Song, and the still-active Tapit and Into Mischief. Gainesway’s Tapit was North America’s three-time leading sire, establishing a single-season earnings record. That record was broken by Spendthrift’s Into Mischief, who is in pursuit of his fourth consecutive sire title. The two will lock horns in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, as Tapit is the sire of favored Flightline, while Into Mischief is the sire of one of his chief challengers, multiple Grade 1 winner Life Is Good. In addition to his place on the Breeders’ Cup leaderboard, Tapit is the most successful sire in the modern history of the Belmont Stakes, with winners Tonalist (2014), Creator (2016), Tapwrit (2017), and Essential Quality (2021) matching the great Lexington, who had four winners in the post-Civil War era. Unbeaten and unchallenged, Flightline is among 30 Grade/Group 1 winners for Tapit, achieving that status in dramatic fashion. He has won his three Grade 1 starts by a combined 36 3/4 lengths, with his most recent a romp in the Pacific Classic earning a Beyer Speed Figure of 126. “Especially as [Tapit is] older in age, to get what looks like the best of the Tapits at this age is great,” said Ron Winchell, whose operation campaigned Tapit on the track and maintains an interest in the now 21-year-old at Gainesway. Into Mischief is again atop the North American earnings leaderboard, with his progeny banking $22,738,279 through Oct. 23, according to Daily Racing Form statistics, to continue the pursuit of his own single-season earnings record of $25,009,663 in 2021. His leading runner this year has been Life Is Good, who comes into the Classic off consecutive Grade 1 wins in the Whitney and Woodward in New York. While Tapit’s other Breeders’ Cup pre-entrants – the 2-year-olds Congruent and Free Look – will be longshots on race day, Into Mischief has a number of prominent contenders as he looks to climb the wins leaderboard. His eight total pre-entrants include a number of contenders likely to be well supported, such as Grade 1 winner Wonder Wheel (Juvenile Fillies) and graded stakes winners Frank’s Rockette (Filly and Mare Sprint) and Laurel River (Dirt Mile). “We’ve sort of run out of superlatives for him,” Spendthrift general manager Ned Toffey said. “He’s just a tremendous horse, and the story just keeps getting better and better.” Following More Than Ready’s seven wins and the group of stallions with six Breeders’ Cup wins, there are an additional six stallions, none living, with five wins each. That group includes Breeders’ Cup sire earnings leader Galileo, who died in July 2021, and who has several potential runners this year. There are eight stallions with four Breeders’ Cup wins each, and the active stallions in that tier include Dubawi, who had a historic 2021 Breeders’ Cup and appears again poised for a strong 2022 event. The Darley Europe resident became the first sire to have three offspring win Breeders’ Cup races in a single year at Del Mar, with Juvenile Turf winner Modern Games, Mile winner Space Blues, and Turf winner Yibir. Modern Games is expected for this year’s Mile, and Dubawi also is represented in Breeders’ Cup pre-entries by Grade/Group 1 winners Creative Force (Turf Sprint), In Italian (Filly and Mare Turf), Naval Crown (Turf Sprint), and Rebel’s Romance (Turf). “He’s a phenomenon,” Sam Bullard, Darley’s director of stallions, told the British press after Dubawi’s sons Naval Crown and Creative Force swept the exacta in the Group 1 Platinum Jubilee at the renowned Royal Ascot meeting, at which Dubawi also was the leading sire. “He produces winners from across the spectrum – big, small, short or longer distance, and he’s had a remarkable week. He’s a remarkable breed-shaper.” Coolmore’s international titan Galileo leads all sires by cumulative Breeders’ Cup earnings with $14,256,287 entering this year’s event and could add to that total, with possible runners Stone Age (Turf), Toy (Filly and Mare Turf), and Tuesday (Filly and Mare Turf). He is not likely to be dethroned from his position anytime soon; closest to him on the earnings leaderboard is Unbridled’s Song, who died in 2013 and no longer has active runners, with $10,922,400. However, the third through eighth horses on the earnings leaderboard – Storm Cat, Smart Strike, Tapit, Curlin, Street Cry, and Into Mischief – are separated by just more than $1.15 million, total, and a few rich Breeders’ Cup purses could create some movement on the list for living stallions Tapit, Curlin, and Into Mischief. Curlin, who resides at Hill ‘n’ Dale, has a number of prominent contenders this year – most notably multiple Grade 1 winners Malathaat, Nest, and Clairiere in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. Although he can only add one possible victory to his two-win total from that group, strong performances by all would help him move up the earnings leaderboard. Curlin also is the sire of pre-entrants Cody’s Wish (Dirt Mile), Obligatory (Filly and Mare Sprint), Elite Power (Sprint), and Raging Sea (Juvenile Fillies). A stallion who has not yet cracked the Breeders’ Cup leaderboards, but who is in position to make a massive early splash, is Horse of the Year and red-hot young sire Gun Runner. The stallion, who is co-owned by Winchell and Three Chimneys Farm, established a record for freshman earnings last season, when his first crop was led by Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies winner and Eclipse Award champion Echo Zulu. This year, the young stallion has continued turning out top-level winners, and, in addition to Echo Zulu for the Filly and Mare Sprint, is represented by Breeders’ Cup pre-entrants Cyberknife (Dirt Mile), Taiba (Classic), Gunite (Dirt Mile or Sprint), Society (Distaff), Wicked Halo (Filly and Mare Sprint), and Grand Love (Juvenile Fillies). “There’s nothing you can say about Gun Runner,” Winchell said. “He’s like in a whole different atmosphere, different world. . . . What he stamps in his offspring is just phenomenal. That’s the only way I can put it. Their mind and everything is just so perfect for racing.”