Fulleffort
Colt by Liam’s Map – Callmethesqueeze, by Awesome Again
Bred in Kentucky by Athens Woods LLC ($425,000 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga selected yearling purchase by St. Elias Stable and Starlight Racing)
Lovesick Blues, winner of the Grade 1 Bing Crosby Stakes at Del Mar last summer, and the multiple stakes winners Man O Rose and Om N Joy are finalists for the 2025 California-bred Horse of the Year award.
The California Thoroughbred Breeders Association announced the finalists on Wednesday, as well as divisional champions. The Horse of the Year will be announced at the organization’s annual dinner at the Le Meridien Hotel in Arcadia on March 2.
A filly out of CASSIDY'S REWARD born 1/19/2026 at McMahon of Saratoga Thoroughbreds reported John McMahon, "We are really pleased with this first foal, very correct and attractive, she is everything you could hope for."
PROVOCATEUR, by INTO MISCHIEF, is a multiple stakes winner and placed third in the Grade 1 Woody Stephens S. He is a full brother to Graded SW ONE LINER, stakes-placed Roderick and half-brother to Grade 2 winner RODRIGUEZ.
Yaupon dominated the freshman sire list in 2025 by more than a million-dollar margin, becoming the fourth consecutive leading freshman sire for Spendthrift Farm. His task in 2026 will be to keep rolling, as the farm’s other recent young sires have done, with a pair of classmates behind him appearing poised to hit their best stride.
Khozan continued to dominate Florida’s sires by earnings in 2025, but those following him on the earnings list held their own in some other metrics.
Khozan, who stands at Ocala Stud, led Florida’s first-crop and 2-year-old sire lists in 2019 and has led the state’s general sires for six consecutive years since. In 2025, he sired 121 winners from 216 individual runners – a 56 percent strike rate – and his progeny earned $6,291,875.
He’s an Indiana-bred who was a multiple graded stakes winner in Kentucky while racing worldwide. His current runners were conceived while he was standing in Florida. His best performer to date is a New Jersey-bred. And along the way, he’s become the profile of the type of stallion who’s valued in the rising New York market.
A new breeding season and a move to a different state may revive the career of the stallion Straight Fire.
Straight Fire, a 12-year-old by Dominus, will stand at Blue Ribbon Farm in Buckley, Wash., for the first time this year after fading from prominence in California. The sire of four stakes winners, Straight Fire was bred to 61 mares in 2022, according to Jockey Club statistics. The figure fell to 41 in 2023, 12 in 2024, and only three last year. In California, Straight Fire stood at Legacy Ranch in Clements.
Into Mischief and Not This Time were the top two sires in North America for 2025, both recording historic accomplishments. But their story doesn’t just play out over the 12 calendar months of that year. Like many bloodstock stories, their successes, establishing their own branches of a prominent sireline, stretch back over several decades and generations. And, like many stories, their sireline was touched by the late, great D.