Fire At Will

Declaration of War – Flirt, by Kitten’s Joy

Bred in Kentucky by Troy Rankin ($97,000 purchase by Three Diamonds Farm at 2019 Keeneland September yearling sale

Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf winner Fire At Will is expected to make his 3-year-old debut on the main track in Saturday’s Grade 2 Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park in a bid to step onto the Kentucky Derby trail.

Popular dual Eclipse Award champion Covfefe delivered her first foal, a filly by Constitution, on Tuesday in Kentucky.

Co-owner Jaime Roth shared the news Tuesday evening, posting a video of the blaze-faced bay mare and her filly at Gainesway Farm, where they are boarded. Covfefe was campaigned throughout her career by the LNJ Foxwoods of Jaime Roth and her parents, Larry and Nanci.

Sealy Hill, a Canadian Hall of Famer who went on to a stellar career as a broodmare, died Tuesday at Bonne Chance Farm near Versailles, Ky. The daughter of Point Given was 17 and had been pensioned from breeding since 2018.

Coolmore's Ashford Stud, Spendthrift Farm, and Three Chimneys Farm, three prominent Kentucky farms standing some of the nation's most well-known stallions, have together filed a lawsuit challenging The Jockey Club's rule limiting the books of future stallions, the first legal challenge to the first such rule of its kind adopted by North America's governing Thoroughbred breed organization.

Last May, The Jockey Club announced that it was adopting a rule putting a cap of 140 mares bred annually on stallions born in 2020 or after. There is no cap on stallions born before 2020.

Eclipse Award champion sprinter Runhappy recorded his first stakes winner as a sire in February, as Nicky the Vest rolled to an 11 3/4-length score in the Gander Stakes at Aqueduct. With that runner leading a torrid streak for his sire, Runhappy heads toward the close of this month as the leading second-crop sire by individual winners, represented by 10 victors thus far in 2021.

New York-bred Nicky the Vest has won both his starts for Robert LaPenta and trainer Jonathan Thomas. The colt, a May foal, won his debut at Aqueduct in December before stepping up in the Gander.

Forest Music, a foundation mare for the successful Stonestreet Farm breeding program and the dam of classic sire Maclean’s Music, has died at age 20. Stonestreet announced the Unbridled’s Song mare’s passing on Feb. 19. She had delivered a Bernardini filly on Jan. 25.

Triple Crown winner American Pharoah recorded his third Grade/Group 1 winner as a sire, and first on dirt, as when Cafe Pharoah won the February Stakes Sunday in Japan. The colt is bred on the same cross as the stallion’s first son to stud, new Japanese resident Four Wheel Drive, and could give that one a bit of added attention early in his career.

Mandaloun

Into Mischief – Brooch, by Empire Maker

Bred in Kentucky by Juddmonte Farms

Eclipse Award champions Beholder and Untapable have each safely delivered their most recent foals, bolstering the books of young stallions in which their respective owners have vested interests.

Four-time Eclipse heroine Beholder delivered a filly by Bolt d’Oro early Friday morning at Spendthrift Farm. Grade 1 winner Bolt d’Oro, who stands at Spendthrift, is represented by his first yearlings this year.

The Thoroughbred world was rocked in early January with the news of the death of Prince Khalid bin Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the founder and principal of the internationally renowned Juddmonte Farms. But Juddmonte has continued on from strength to strength, with a homebred squarely on the Kentucky Derby trail in the U.S. and one of its most anticipated breedings of the season, which Prince Khalid planned before his death, taking place over the weekend.