Triple Crown winner Justify entered stud last year at Coolmore's Ashford Stud in Kentucky. Joining him in the stallion barn was another talented son of Coolmore's late sire Scat Daddy, the globe-trotting Mendelssohn. Both Justify and Mendelssohn proved exceptionally popular, each covering 252 mares in their first seasons.
With breeding sheds across North America set to open in the coming weeks, Ontario Racing's Thoroughbred Improvement Program has announced that its mare purchase program has ended for the season, with a strong response for the new programs designed to bolster the province's breeding and racing industry.
The races were on turf and dirt, won by horses born in different states, who went off as longshots and favorites. But the winners of the first three races on Saturday’s card at Santa Anita were all bred by H. Allen Poindexter, giving the horseman a rare hat trick.
Last year’s strong freshman sire class seems to have picked up right where it left off with the turn of the calendar, as 3-year-olds from their first crops won two of the three Kentucky Derby points races contested last Saturday, as well as two of the weekend’s three Kentucky Oaks points races.
Undefeated Thousand Words has emerged as one of the West Coast’s leading Kentucky Derby hopefuls. Meanwhile his dam, a multiple graded stakes winner herself, has landed in the hands of the connections of another unbeaten colt from this 3-year-old crop.
Pomeroys Pistol was one of the highest-priced mares at the Keeneland January horses of all ages sale when she sold for $475,000 to bloodstock agent Mike Ryan. He was acting on behalf of the Kindred Stables of Jeff Drown, who co-owns unbeaten Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf winner Structor with Don Rachel.
Perennial leading sire Tapit continues his emergence as a sire of sires, as, for the second year in a row, one of his sons was represented by an Eclipse Award champion.
Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies winner British Idiom, who earned her divisional title, is by the Tapit horse Flashback, who currently stands at Diamond B Farm in Pennsylvania after beginning his stud career in Kentucky. She followed 2018 Kentucky Oaks and Breeders’ Cup Distaff winner and Eclipse champion Monomoy Girl. That champion is by Tapizar, who stands alongside sire Tapit at Gainesway Farm in Kentucky.
The name of champion sprinter and 2020 freshman sire Runhappy was inescapable last week at Gulfstream Park, as owner Jim McIngvale continued his robust marketing campaign for his stable star. Runhappy, who stands at Claiborne Farm, was the title sponsor of both Thursday night’s Eclipse Awards and Saturday’s Pegasus World Cup and Pegasus World Cup Turf. Appropriately enough, Beyond the Waves, dam of 2019 Horse of the Year Bricks and Mortar, delivered a Runhappy colt last year as her son was putting together his championship campaign, which included the inaugural Pegasus Turf.
Primal Force was a foundation broodmare for Frank Stronach's Adena Springs operation, producing two Grade 1 winners who went on to be prominent sires for the farm in Awesome Again and Macho Uno.
Tapit led the general sire list for three consecutive years in the past decade, breaking the single-season earnings record for a North American sire each time. Although he hasn’t led that list since he set the high bar of $19,245,198 in 2016, he has continued to make his presence known among the elite of the continent’s sires.
