Regally bred multiple graded-stakes winner Tacitus will stand at Taylor Made Farm in Nicholasville, Ky., in 2022, with partners including his breeder, Juddmonte Farms, the operations announced Monday.

Tacitus, by leading sire Tapit and out of Eclipse Award champion Close Hatches, was bred by Juddmonte in Kentucky. He has been campaigned by that international operation through a career in which he has earned $3,767,350 to date. His graded stakes victories came in the Grade 2 Wood Memorial and Grade 2 Tampa Bay Derby in early 2019, and the Grade 2 Suburban Stakes last year.

The Metropolitan Handicap has long been considered a stallion-making race, showcasing the brilliance so valued in the American marketplace and the ability to carry that speed beyond a true sprint distance. Now the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, inaugurated in 2007, also has begun to develop the looks of a stallion-making event.

The popular sprinter Firenze Fire, a graded stakes winner in five consecutive years and a 13-time stakes winner overall, will stand stud at Arrow Stud in Japan next year, his current owner Ron Lombardi said Tuesday.

Firenze Fire, 6, will make the 38th and final start of his career in the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Sprint on Nov. 6 at Del Mar.

At Arrow Stud, Firenze Fire will join California Chrome, the two-time U.S. Horse of the Year (2014, 3016), and Shanghai Bobby, the 2-year-old champion of 2012.

Maryland celebrated its state breeding program and stallions on Saturday, with Jim McKay Maryland Million Day at Laurel Park. But Maryland’s brightest star of the year was not in attendance. Maryland-bred Knicks Go was breezing at Churchill Downs on Saturday in preparation for a cross-country trip to Del Mar and the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Goldencents was the busiest stallion in North America in 2021, as sons of Into Mischief took the top three spots on the leaderboard, according to the annual Report of Mares Bred, released by The Jockey Club on Monday morning.

The Jockey Club reported that 1,016 stallions covered 27,829 mares in North America this season, based on reports received through Oct. 18. The breed organization estimates an additional 2,500 to 3,500 mares will ultimately be reported as bred.

Champion Essential Quality will be retired following the Breeders' Cup and will join the Kentucky stallion ranks for Sheikh Mohammed’s international Godolphin racing and Darley stallions operation, along with Maxfield, the farm announced Monday.

Classic sire Distorted Humor, a flagship stallion for WinStar Farm, has been pensioned from stallion duty and will live out his retirement at his longtime home.

WinStar announced the retirement of the 28-year-old stallion on Monday evening, along with that of 21-year-old Congrats, also a successful sire.

Knicks Go, a leading candidate for the Breeders’ Cup Classic, will stand at Taylor Made Farm in Nicholasville, Ky., upon the conclusion of his racing career, the farm announced Monday.

A stud fee for the 5-year-old Paynter horse, who races for the Korea Racing Authority, will be announced following his run in the Classic on Nov. 6 at Del Mar.

Candidates for this year’s Breeders’ Cup were acquired at all levels of price points by the experts scrutinizing the thousands of young horses to pass through public auction each year, looking for the combination of qualities to make a future star. At one end of the spectrum are horses like Corniche, a $1.5 million purchase by Speedway Stables to lead the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co.’s flagship spring sale of 2-year-olds in training. The colt has lived up to expectations attached to that sort of price tag, as an unbeaten Grade 1 winner and an early favorite for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.

Thunderous Affair and Forthegreatergood were selected as the overall champions at the Retired Racehorse Project’s Thoroughbred Makeover, held Oct. 12-17 at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Ky. 

The annual event was dubbed the “Mega Makeover” this year as it comprised two competition years. With the 2020 event canceled due to the pandemic, that season’s entries were rolled over and held alongside the 2021 competition – essentially as separate events, to keep horses on a level playing field based on the amount of post-race training they had received.