The rise of Self-made stallions: from Blue-Collar to Blue-Blood
Words - Alicia HughesIt is standard now for their names to be spoken in tones of reverence and deference, the byproduct of having become synonymous with the highest echelons of achievement in the Thoroughbred marketplace. Though they operate in a space notorious for its fickle nature, their respective legacies have been polished to such a burnish that each is held up as an unwavering standard bearer their brethren will be aiming to reach for years to come.
Candy Ride
For seven straight seasons, no stallion in North America has been able to best Spendthrift Farm’s Into Mischief in the race to the top of the general sire list. Similarly, when it comes to producing the next generation of breed-shaping forces in the stud book, Lane’s End’s indefatigable Candy Ride (ARG) currently sits atop that throne. And while the success of his progeny on the track made Distorted Humor as integral a part of WinStar Farm’s foundation as the property’s brick and mortar materials, the recently departed stalwart will be honing bloodlines for generations to come through the influence of his daughters.
A record-setting leading sire. A sire of sires. A champion broodmare sire. Such are the marks of distinction said trio has earned while splashing their impact all over the metrics used to determine the most sought-after members of a stallion roster.
Into Mischief
That Into Mischief, Candy Ride, and Distorted Humor will go down as three of the most influential sires of their time is an indisputable chapter of the Thoroughbred industry’s lore. Linked as they are by their respective residencies in rarified air, they also share a remarkable layer of mythology behind their ascents – namely, the fact that the last thing each carried with them into their second careers was the belief they would become hallmarks of commercial breeding success.
“When I first came to work at Spendthrift, (founder B. Wayne) Hughes would always have these sales meetings on a Monday…and he walked in there one day and he goes ‘We are so fortunate. You can’t even believe the advantage we have over all our competition. Do you understand how good we have it compared to all these other poor horse farms here in Kentucky?’,” recalled Mark Toothaker, stallion sales manager for Spendthrift. “And he says ‘You know why? Because they all think they know. And we have figured out that we don’t know nothing. Nobody knows how a stallion is going to do when they start.’
“And he was right.”
There is of course a whole subset of the Thoroughbred industry devoted to countering the above sentiment, from nicks to rating systems to pedigree analysis to conformation experts. For every tool used to try and predict which horses will become sires who yield exceptional talents on the track and beyond, there are intangibles that defy conventional assessment and, hence, have paved the way for one-time Cinderella prospects to morph into the most fashionable lords of the ball.
Though the Thoroughbred breeding ranks has no shortage of stallions who built their reputation from the ground up without the benefit of top-level books at the start of their careers – Storm Cat, Malibu Moon, and Tapit to name a few – the individual journeys of Into Mischief, Candy Ride, and Distorted Humor rank near the top in terms of their level of improbability and permanence.
Before he morphed into the stallion that has sired a record-tying three Kentucky Derby (Gr.1) winners and tied the legendary Bold Ruler with his seventh consecutive general sire title in 2025, Into Mischief had the Spendthrift team battling to get any mares they could his way when he stood his initial season in 2009 for just $12,500.
Before he became a perennial top 10 presence himself and the best sire of sires in recent times thanks to his Hall of Fame son Gun Runner, who joins Into Mischief in commanding an advertised stud fee of $250,000 for Three Chimneys Farm, and his Lane’s End heir Twirling Candy, who finished fourth just behind Gun Runner on the general sire list for 2025, Candy Ride stood for $10,000 his first season in 2005 as few would have gambled on a Argentine-bred son of Ride the Rails forever altering the commercial landscape.
When WinStar Farm co-founder Kenny Troutt purchased the former Prestonwood Farm with then partner Bill Casner in February 2000, Distorted Humor was among the four stallions essentially thrown in with the furniture. From standing his first season in 1999 for $10,000, the modest-sized son of Forty Niner would become a giant in the shed, commanding as much as $300,000 at one point and earning the champion freshman sire title in 2002, leading the general sire list in 2011, and being the leading broodmare sire in 2017 – the latter an area where he remains dominant, as evidence by the fact two of his maternal grandsons, Constitution and Practical Joke, finished in the top 10 on the general sire list last year.
While they are each now considered industry royalty, Into Mischief, Candy Ride, and Distorted Humor hold equally crucial roles as beacons for the fact that seemingly blue-collar stallions can end up having an indelible impact on the breed. At a time when the number of stallions and number of mares bred continues to decline in North America, per statistics from The Jockey Club, the adage that a good horse – specifically a great sire - can come from anywhere is worth heeding as stud farms get set for another year of navigating the challenges that comes with getting less commercial stallions the support needed to show their potential, particularly when numbers inevitably drop in their second and third years.
“Absolutely, stallions like Candy Ride are an inspiration, and that’s what concerns me most about these bigger books we are breeding,” said Bill Farish of Lane’s End Farm, which has stood Candy Ride since 2010 after he began his career at Hill ‘n’ Dale. “It is more challenging now both in the sense that those type stallions won’t get enough mares to get a chance, but you’re also up against the commercial nature of things where people are willing to take a shot on a first-year horse, but then the second or third year, they’re kind of on their own, especially in the lower price ranges. That’s going to hurt. But I do think when given a chance, a good stallion is going to make it no matter what level they start at.”
For a horse to get a chance at stud in Central Kentucky to begin with, a measure of on-track ability usually must be prominent, something the aforementioned self-made trio all brought to the table. Though injury limited their careers to six starts apiece, both Into Mischief and Candy Ride boasted Grade 1 wins on their resume. A top-level victory eluded Distorted Humor during his racing days, but the opinionated chestnut was still a four-time graded stakes winner who set a track record for seven furlongs in taking the 1998 Commonwealth Breeders' Cup Stakes (Gr.2) at Keeneland.
There were also clues in each of their bloodlines that hinted at their sire potential. As nondescript as Candy Ride’s sire Ride the Rails was, he was a son of Cryptoclearance, himself a son of a Fappiano, who sired more than 40 stakes winners prior to his death. A son of Harlan’s Holiday, Into Mischief is a great grandson of the commercial game-changer that was Storm Cat while Distorted Humor was a grandson of the iconic Mr. Prospector and out of a Danzig mare.
The lens of hindsight may reveal such evidence, but those revelations only came about due to each sire’s uncanny ability to move up even the most modest of bloodlines. What looks distinct now was certainly not something readily apparent to even the most learned pundits in the industry.
“If you turn back the clock and look at his pedigree, his pedigree didn’t look anything like it does today,” Ned Toffey, general manager of Spendthrift, said of Into Mischief. “It was a very different looking page than what it is today and…since that time (when he entered stud) that pedigree has filled in pretty dramatically.”
> The Reigning King
The numbers were rough to start with, and they only got tougher from there. After getting just 61 mares his first season at stud, resulting in 46 live foals, Into Mischief’s book came in at 44 mares his second season and 54 in 2011.
To try and give the colt who had showed such brilliance in winning the 2007 CashCall Futurity (Gr.1) any kind of a chance, Hughes and his Spendthrift team came up with the innovation known as their Share the Upside program where breeders are offered a lifetime breeding right should they complete two “stands and nurses” contracts during his first two years at stud.
Such thinking beyond the status quo helped provide a pipeline, modest though it was, to keep the bay stallion with something to work with. By 2012, however, with his stud fee having dipped to $7,500, the first glimpse of what would become sire power for the ages flashed before the industry when Into Mischief finished third on the freshman sire list and notched his first graded stakes winner when Goldencents took the Grade 3 Delta Downs Jackpot Stakes that November.
A trademark amongst the rags to riches stallions of modern times is they were able to hit right out of the box despite having decidedly non-commercial books. In 2013, Into Mischief’s remarkable ability to improve his mares became a major talking point when he had a pair of Kentucky Derby starters in Goldencents and Vyjack with the former cementing his spot alongside his sire in the Spendthrift stud barn when he captured the first of what would be back-to-back victories in the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile (Gr.1) that November.
At the same time Into Mischief was putting the first touches of greatness on his profile, his pedigree was getting added shine to it as well. In 2012, his half-sister by Henny Hughes – best known to the racing world as Hall of Famer Beholder – captured the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies (Gr.1) and earned the first of what would be four Eclipse Awards during her storied career.
“For a horse who starts at that level and has limited numbers to come up with two Derby runners is pretty special,” Toffey said of Into Mischief. “The people who really spend time on the numbers in this industry recognized not only that this horse might be really good, but he might really be something special because he was breeding small books, but his percentages were through the roof. Even with the small books, he was doing remarkable things, and no horse is going to be able to maintain those kinds of percentages when the books get much bigger but he’s doing a remarkable job of coming as close to doing that as a horse can.
“He has demonstrated his consistency, his brilliance. He can move mares up and he can take the top mares and have the same kind of results.”
Since the moment his first crop nudged the flood gates open, Into Mischief has been relentless in stamping himself all over the record books. In 2024, he became the first stallion to exceed $30 million in progeny earnings for a single year when he finished with more than $34.6 million that season. His three Kentucky Derby winners are tied for most all time by a sire – a stat he could soon own by himself as his unbeaten son, Ted Noffey, was named champion 2-year-old male for 2025. And with his fellow champion son Sovereignty, the newly-minted Horse of the Year, set to return for his 4-year-old season, and another crop of regally bred prospects on the track, it will likely take milestones on top of milestones for another sire to keep him from an unprecedented eighth consecutive general sire crown.
“The thing I hear from all of the vets and all of the breeders out there who breed to him the most is most of (his offspring) have big, really good throats and most of them have really good minds,” Toothaker said. “They have great throats, very good minds, and they can handle the pressure that they’re put under when they are asked to be a racehorse. You know going into it with an Into Mischief that you’re going to get every opportunity to get a horse with a good throat that is going to have a bunch of try in them and is going to stay pretty sound for you.
“It’s just unbelievable where he is now considering where he started,” Toothaker continued. “There are a lot of people who had things change in their lives because of this horse. I’ve seen all the people who have bred with us who have made lots of money who have been able to go buy tractors and buy a little bit more land because they rode the wave of Into Mischief up the ladder. For our breeders, it’s the biggest thing you want to see. I’m amazed by him just like everyone else.”
Gun Runner
One of the few stallions whose achievements have challenged Into Mischief in recent years is Gun Runner, the all-time talent on the track who has produced such champions as Sierra Leone and Echo Zulu while dominating the public auction arena with his seven-figure offspring. Were it not for a freakish former trainee of Ron McAnally, though, one of the most commercially popular sires of the last decade would have never come to fruition.
> The Kingmaker
The most accomplished stallion on the current Lane’s End roster is also the most deceiving in terms of looks. Surrounded by specimens like Flightline and Quality Road, Candy Ride doesn’t bowl visitors over with his physical prowess, a fact that has long been true and is even more understandable given his veteran status at the age of 27.
“He’s one of those stallions that when people come and see him it’s really just to admire him and what he’s been able to do,” Farish said. “When you look at him, he’s not the obvious physical. People are looking for a certain type to breed to, and it doesn’t always work that way. He’s a smaller guy with little feet and a huge heart.”
What has been obvious where Candy Ride is concerned is that he has become the primary source of one of the most versatile sire lines currently populating the market today.
After standing his first five seasons at Hill ‘n’ Dale, Candy Ride came to Lane’s End still under the commercial radar, but with a healthy dose of early momentum the team was masterfully able to build upon. A champion in his native Argentina and unbeaten in his six career starts, the bay horse was another who immediately made the careers of the mares coming his way. His first crop would yield four Grade 1 winners in Evita Argentina, Misremembered, Capt. Candyman Can, and El Brujo and, the year he joined the Lane’s End roster, his successor Twirling Candy was making his own mark on the track with a victory in the Grade 1 Malibu Stakes.
Now the sire of eight champions and 20 Grade 1 winners from 19 crops of racing age, including 2025 Dubai World Cup (Gr.1) victor Hit Show, Candy Ride’s fee hit a peak of $100,000 in 2020. The following year, he would begin cementing his uber elite status when Gun Runner established an all-time progeny record for a first-crop sire when he led the freshman sire list. In 2024, another son of Candy Ride in Spendthrift stallion Vekoma, who will command a $100,000 fee for 2026, added to that growing legacy when he too topped the North American first-crop sire list.
“You ask about intangibles, that’s what you get with Candy Ride. He passes on class, he passes on balance, he passes on that heart and determination,” said Lane’s End farm manager Peter Sheehan. “He has produced great racehorses and in turn produced great stallions. He had a lot of speed and…when you bring a little bit of stamina in with that speed and class, you get what we’re here for in the stallion barn. Candy Ride passes that on to his offspring. We’re very lucky to have a stallion of his importance to the breed…because he is probably the best sire of sires of the last number of years.”
That he has transferred such aptitude onto his offspring, combined with the fact he and his sons are able to get runners across any distance and surface, no doubt contributed to Candy Ride’s bandwagon filling up beyond capacity. As much as his obscure background caused some breeders pause early in his career, it also was the secret weapon that allowed Candy Ride to cross with a variety of bloodlines.
“No question. When I first started looking at the mares that were being put up to him and looking at our mares, he was open to so many different lines,” Farish said. “It’s amazing that when a stallion is open to so many different lines, obviously the mare pool is much greater and it’s something you don’t always think about. Where another sire might only have two-thirds of the mare base that is eligible to breed to, he had the entire mare base. It was a huge help. He’s just a very unique horse that way.”
Even deep into his 20s, Candy Ride continues to be an all-encompassing force, finishing ninth on the general sire list himself in 2025. Such enduring excellence was a commonality he shared with another stallion about eight miles away who also forced commercial breeders to reassess what they thought a pillar of the stud book was made of.
> Long Live the King
Distorted Humor
As breeders entered the WinStar Farm stud barn on January 11 for the first day of its 2026 open house, the stall closest to the tack room with the red and white flowers hung across the front become a vigil for those looking to pay their respects to the powerhouse who had left a gaping hole in the hearts of the staff one day earlier.
The morning prior marked a somber end of an era as Distorted Humor was euthanized at the age of 33 due to infirmities of his advanced years. Lest there was any doubt about the depth of his impact on WinStar, and the breed as a whole, one needed only to look at the set of bay horses residing next to and across from the empty stall to be reminded that the son of Forty Niner will be present at the highest levels of the sport for years to come.
As the broodmare sire of WinStar’s top stallion Constitution and two of the farm’s leading hopes for the future in multiple Grade 1 winners Life Is Good and Patch Adams, the class and precocity that defined every point of call of Distorted Humor’s career is certain to power more generations of top-level runners. His numbers stand as a marvel of commercial achievement - 174 black-type winners, 76 graded stakes winners, and more than $175 million in progeny earnings worldwide at the time of his death. Considering the expectations, or lack thereof, when he entered stud in 1999, his is a career that ranks as one of the more fantastical achievements of modern times.
“I remember when I first started, I was told to tell everyone he is 16 hands. And I did because I was still young…but there was not a day in his life when he was 16 hands,” said WinStar Farm stallion manager Larry McGinnis, who cared for Distorted Humor the way he would a member of his family. “He was 15.3 all day long but there was that stigma of being 16 hands or higher. We had to promote him because he wasn’t popular like those other horses like Tiznow or Speightstown. He wasn’t a hot commodity, so we had to take what we could.”
Having trained Distorted Humor for most of his competitive career, WinStar Farm president, CEO, and racing manager Elliott Walden had seen firsthand both the devastating speed he possessed and the innate will that was housed in that frame. When his runners began hitting the track themselves, the racing community too witnessed the breadth of his ability as his first crop included Grade 1 winner Awesome Humor and, most notably, dual classic winner and champion Funny Cide.
After topping all freshman sires in 2002 and leading North America’s general sire list in 2011, Distorted Humor completed a statistical trifecta when he ranked as the leading broodmare sire in 2017. His daughters have accounted for more than 80 graded stakes winners, including Bubbler, dam of Hall of Famer Arrogate, and Gaudeamus, dam of Hong Kong’s 10-time Group 1 winner and champion Golden Sixty (AUS).
Fittingly enough, one of the most brilliant crosses going today happens to be Into Mischief over Distorted Humor mares, a pairing of bloodlines that has produced the aforementioned Life Is Good and Patch Adams as well as Grade 1 winner Tappan Street, Practical Joke, and champion and new sire Citizen Bull.
“I think a lot of times you do see good sires become good broodmare sires, but it is so interesting how he is so dynamic on both sides of the pedigree,” Walden said of Distorted Humor. “From a pattern standpoint as a broodmare sire, (his cross) with Into Mischief has just been phenomenal. And I think one of the reasons why he (was breeding) until he was 25 is he was a one jump horse every day of his life. He was easy on himself and obviously enjoyed his job, but he came down and did his thing and it was over and then was back eating grass. He made things easy on himself, he didn’t make it hard on himself. That added to his longevity.”
With Distorted Humor’s death, Candy Ride in the twilight of his career, and Into Mischief now into his second decade, there will be torches to be passed in the foreseeable future. Gun Runner continues to go from strength to strength while Taylor Made Farm’s exceptional Not This Time, who finished second on the general sire list in 2025, is another star who has seen his stud fee rise from $15,000 his first year in 2017 to its current lofty level of $250,000, equaling Into Mischief and Gun Runner for the highest fee in North America this year.
As the 2026 breeding season gets underway, the proven stallions and highly regarded members of the first-year crop like Sierra Leone and Citizen Bull will have no shortage of trips to the shed with blue-blooded mates. They are the obvious attention getters in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately market.
But, as history continues to show, the brightest lights for the future in the commercial landscape might just reside outside of the box.
“We have 60% fewer stallions standing so that means 60% less are getting a chance. It seems so blatantly obvious that it does hurt the gene pool when you don’t have the Candy Rides getting a chance early on and the Into Mischiefs, those kinds of horses,” Farish said. “Like we’ve seen, here’s a son of Ride the Rails that’s really opened up a whole other sire line for breeders. We’ve got to continue to have that opportunity or we’re just going to breed ourselves into a corner.”
The legacy Storm Cat has left on the Triple Crown series
By Alicia Hughes
storm cat - Keeneland Library Raftery Turfotos Collection
They hit the wire in unison beneath one of the most recognizable backdrops in all of sports, a trio of equine athletes calling upon the entirety of their pedigrees and fitness to try and claim the most career-defining of prizes. One, an industry blood blue who had sold for a seven-figure price befitting his breeding. Another, a budding international star carrying with him the aspirations of a country in addition to the 126 pounds on his back.
The one whose nose ultimately landed in front happened to be the most overlooked member of the indefatigable threesome, a colt from a seemingly modest background who produced a result most deemed an upset. The lens of hindsight can reveal many truths in the aftermath, however. And given the enduring influence of a certain stalwart in his sire line, Mystik Dan’s victory in the 2024 Kentucky Derby (Gr.1) over regally bred Sierra Leone and Japan-based Forever Young proved to be the continuation of a legacy that is still gaining strength decades after its initial impact.
In the 30 years that he graced the Thoroughbred industry with his presence, William T. Young’s homebred Grade 1 winner Storm Cat managed to put himself in the conversation as one of the all-time game-changing stallions, both in terms of his impact on the commercial marketplace and prolific output by his offspring on the track. Commanding a stud fee as high as $500,000 at his peak, the son of Storm Bird out of Terlingua twice led the general sire list, producing eight champions, 110 graded stakes winners, more than $129 million in progeny earnings, and 91 yearlings that sold for $1 million or more at public auction.
tabasco cat - storm cat’s only son to win a classic
Included in Storm Cat’s litany of top runners was Tabasco Cat - his only son to win a Triple Crown race. He won two - with the 1994 runnings of the Preakness and Belmont Stakes. Then came champion Storm Flag Flying, and European champion Giant’s Causeway, the latter of whom held the mantle as his best son at stud. While he built a resume that rewrote records in the stud book, one of the few milestones missing for the dark bay stallion was the fact he never sired a horse who captured the Kentucky Derby, the 1 ¼-mile classic that stands the most famous test in Thoroughbred racing.
Despite not having one of his own wear the roses, Storm Cat’s impact on the first Saturday in May has exponentially grown in the years since his passing in 2013. When Mystik Dan won a three-horse photo beneath the Twin Spires of Churchill Downs to annex the 150th edition of the race, he became the fourth Kentucky Derby winner in the last seven years to trace their sire line to the former Overbrook Farm flagship stallion.
The trend got kicked off when Justify, by Storm Cat’s great grandson, Scat Daddy, triumphed in the 2018 Kentucky Derby en route to sweeping the Triple Crown. Since that time, much of Storm Cat’s Derby influence has been due to the overwhelming success of six-time leading sire Into Mischief, who is by Storm Cat’s grandson Harlan’s Holiday. Into Mischief himself sired back-to-back Kentucky Derby winners in Authentic (2020) and Mandaloun (2021) and is the sire of fellow Spendthrift Farm stallion Goldencents, who counts Mystik Dan as his first classic winner.
Having already hit many of the hallmarks that define truly great stallions, those who helped craft Storm Cat’s career are especially heartened by the fact that he is now definitively shaping the outcome of the race that most requires the rarified combination of stamina, speed, and mettle.
Ric Waldman
“(The Kentucky Derby influence) certainly has not been unnoticed by me, although I’m pleasantly surprised with how it has carried through,” said bloodstock consultant Ric Waldman, who managed Storm Cat's stud career for Overbrook. “I mean, that’s the real mark of a successful sire: how long can his line continue to go. When you look at the level that these sons and grandsons and great grandsons of Storm Cat have reached, you realize there is something in that Storm Cat blood. Now, how do you define it? I’ve never been able to. But it’s real. There is something in those genes that just comes through.”
When the list of Triple Crown nominees was announced for 2025, the odds of the Storm Cat line adding to its recent run of Kentucky Derby achievements could have easily been installed as the shortest price.
The two stallions represented by the highest number of offspring nominated to the classics were the aforementioned Into Mischief (21), and Taylor Made Farm stallion Not This Time (14), a son of Giant’s Causeway. As the Kentucky Derby prep season heated up, the pair indeed had their sons stamp themselves as leading contenders for the 10-furlong test with Into Mischief having juvenile champion Citizen Bull, Florida Derby (Gr.1) hero Tappan Street, and Fountain of Youth Stakes (Gr.2) victor Sovereignty while Not This Time boasted Jeff Ruby Steaks (Gr.3) winner Final Gambit and Risen Star (Gr.2) winner Magnitude, who unfortunately was knocked off the Derby trail due to injury.
Adding to the breadth and depth of the Storm Cat sire line this Triple Crown season is Justify producing Virginia Derby winner American Promise and Drefong, another great grandson of Storm Cat, having UAE Derby (G2) winner Admire Daytona (JPN).
Though his name is now synonymous with success at the highest level of Thoroughbred racing and breeding, Storm Cat had a decidedly unglamorous start to his stud career. His precocity was undisputable, having prevailed in the 1985 Young American Stakes (Gr.1) before finishing second by a nose to Tasso in that year’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (Gr.1). But after just two starts during his sophomore season, injury ended his on-track career, and he entered stud at Overbrook for a $30,000 fee.
The fact he was able to make himself into an industry legend without the benefit of an elite book of mares in the first part of his stallion career was indicative of the innate quality housed beneath his coal-colored frame. Fittingly, two of the stallions who are currently pushing the sire line forward into classic territory followed virtually the same script.
“It’s in the makeup of the blood that Storm Cat made it in spite of everything else not going his way as far as establishing himself as a successful stallion,” Waldman said. “That’s the true makings of a stallion."
Not This Time
As the dark bay horse sauntered down the path from the stallion complex and paraded for breeders during Taylor Made Farm’s January stallion open house, those who were fortunate enough to see his grandsire in the flesh couldn’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu.
not this time - jon seigel / pm advertising
From a physical standpoint, Not This Time morphs more into Storm Cat’s doppelganger with every passing year – a near carbon copy, save for having four white feet instead of two. The similarity extends well beyond the resemblance, however, as he also mirrors his grandfather in both his abbreviated career, blue-collar ascent, and versatility of runners.
not this time
Trained by Dale Romans for Albaugh Family Stables, Not This Time came into the 2016 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile as the race favorite off a scintillating triumph in the Grade 3 Iroquois Stakes at Churchill Downs. Like his grandsire, he would come painfully close to victory. Where Storm Cat had a clear lead in the stretch of his Breeders’ Cup outing only to get nailed on the wire, Not This Time was the one doing the chasing over the Santa Anita Park stretch, putting in a determined rally that fell a neck short of eventual divisional champion Classic Empire.
A soft tissue injury discovered in his right front shortly after the Breeders’ Cup would end Not This Time’s career, and he commanded just $15,000 in his first initial season at stud. Though circumstances didn’t allow him to show his full racing potential, the brilliance he inherited from his sire line wasted no time showing up once his runners started hitting the track.
In 2020, he was the third-leading freshman sire by progeny earnings and by 2022, he was in the top 10 on the general sire list. That same season, his son Epicenter, who captured the Grade 1 Travers Stakes and ran second as the favorite in the Kentucky Derby, would become his first champion when he earned the Eclipse Award for champion 3-year-old male.
“We were optimistic but, in this business, you never know where the next great stallion will come from,” Ben Taylor, president of Taylor Made Stallions, said of Not This Time, who currently stands for $175,000. “But he had all the credentials, and we were just lucky to get him.
“Looking back, I remember everyone was obviously devastated when he was injured and couldn’t go on with his career. But if he didn’t have his injury, we might not have ever been in a position to get him, so their bad luck was actually maybe fortunate for us. Strictly from a financial standpoint, it was probably a windfall because it allowed him to go to stud early and achieve what he’s done at a very young age.”
Into Mischief
Twenty years after Storm Cat began his stud career in 1987, the great grandson who would ultimately topple some of his records made his career debut when he broke his maiden at Santa Anita. He would never finish worse than second and captured the Grade 1 CashCall Futurity in his third start. Ultimately, though, injury too would cut Into Mischief’s career short after just six starts, leaving owner Spendthrift Farm with the challenge of how to get enough numbers in his book when he stood his initial season for $12,500 in 2009.
into mischief
“I think we’d all be lying if we said we zeroed in and said, ‘It’s got to be this, it’s got to be that (with regards to the matings)’. Early on it was, we would take what we could get as far as mares,” said Ned Toffey, general manager of Spendthrift Farm. “But it is not uncommon for a stallion to start off with a modest book of mares both in terms of numbers and quality. Those exceptional stallions seem to prove over and over that they can overcome that, and he’s certainly done it. Even with the small books, he was doing remarkable things.”
As the annals of meteoric rises, Into Mischief is due the heftiest of chapters. In 2012, the same year his fee had dipped to $7,500, he would end up third on the freshman sire list and notch his first graded stakes winner when Goldencents took the Grade 3 Delta Jackpot that November.
In 2013, the half-brother to Hall of Famer Beholder would have a pair of Kentucky Derby starters in Goldencents and Vyjack with the former also becoming his first of what is now eight Breeders’ Cup winners when he annexed that year’s Dirt Mile. Into Mischief would begin his now six-year reign atop the general sire list in 2019 and last year became the first stallion to surpass $30 million in progeny earnings in a single season.
“I remember after Into Mischief hit with his first crop, I look back and always ask myself, ‘What did I miss?’,” Waldman said. “Is he truly a fluke that I wouldn't have caught, or did I overlook this? And in Into Mischief’s case, I missed it. But I’m not even sure Spendthrift saw he could be as good as he was, so you have to give credit to that sire line.”
With the ascent of Into Mischief and Not That Time, as well as the exploits of the late Scat Daddy, the sire line has in fact evolved from being known as primarily a speed influence into one that can inject stamina – a necessary component for 3-year-olds going the 1 ¼-miles distance in the Kentucky Derby for the first time.
Into Mischief’s ability to get top-class progeny across divisions has been well documented – from champion female sprinter Covfefe to 2024 Dubai World Cup (Gr.1) winner Laurel River. And when entries were taken for the 2024 Breeders’ Cup, Not This Time’s all-around aptitude was on full display as the 11-year-old stallion was represented by Grade 1 winning turf sprinter Cogburn and graded stakes winning marathoner, Next.
“He’s kind of done it at every level, he’s done it at any distance,” Toffey said of Into Mischief, who commands a fee of $250,000 in 2025. “He definitely leans toward being a speed sire, but he has multiple classic winners. He has demonstrated his consistency, his brilliance.”
“The versatility of a Not This Time - long, short, dirt, turf - it’s like Storm Cat himself,” added Waldman. “The Not This Times probably want to go a little farther than most of the Storm Cats did, although Giant’s Causeway clearly was a classic distance horse. As a result, you can get a horse that can run at a classic distance.”
Just as his stud career steadily gained in momentum, Storm Cat’s influence on the biggest stages shows no signs of slowing. With both Into Mischief and Not This Time having their top books of mares to date coming down the pipeline, as well as the ongoing success of the likes of Justify and Practical Joke, the days of his sire line lording over the race widely regarded as the most consequential in North America don’t figure to conclude anytime soon.
“You never get tired of seeing it, and to see it continue for this many years later…because eventually the veins should die off,” Waldman said. “We’ll see how long this goes with Storm Cat, but it is heartwarming. He helped everybody who touched his life, and everybody’s life was better for having Storm Cat.”
George Weaver - Champagne still flowing!
Article by Bill Heller
Eight years removed from his first unsuccessful starter at Royal Ascot, trainer George Weaver was already a winner when his two-year-old filly Crimson Advocate stepped onto the track to contest the Gp. 2 Queen Mary Stakes June 21. That’s because his love, his partner and his best friend, his wife Cindy Hutter, was able to accompany him and their 20-year-old son Ben to England nearly one year after her gruesome injury on the Oklahoma Training Track at Saratoga Race Course. A horse she was galloping suffered an apparent heart attack and collapsed on her, causing severe brain damage and multiple injuries—changing their lives forever.
Imagine their joy when a photo finish showed that Crimson Advocate and Hall of Fame jockey John Velazquez, had won the Queen Mary Stakes by a fraction of a nose, making Weaver just the third American trainer to capture a race at England’s most prestigious course, in a field of 26. “It was very, very emotional for us,” Weaver said. “ It was kind of miraculous—a beautiful experience much more than winning a race at Ascot. It was kind of spiritual.”
Cindy said after the race, “It was kind of like a dream come true.”
It happened 12 days short of one year after the nightmare at Saratoga.
Weaver was walking back to the barn with another horse when Cindy went down. “By the time I got there, the ambulance was there,” he said. “She was unconscious. She was bleeding. It was a bizarre day. It was a very scary day. It was a very stressful time. We didn’t know if she was going to regain consciousness. We didn’t know what the future would hold.”
Cindy had suffered broken ribs, a broken collarbone and a lung injury besides bleeding on the brain. Though seemingly unconscious, she was able to give a thumbs-up sign after hearing a voice command from a doctor. There was reason for hope.
Hope can go a long way. No one envisioned Weaver and Cindy standing in the winner’s circle at Royal Ascot less than a year later. “We’ve been doing this our whole lives,” Weaver said. “It was an exciting day for us.”
Weaver, 53, was born and raised in Louisville and knew at a very young age that his life would involve Thoroughbreds. He thanks his father, Bill, for that. “My dad took me to the track and told me how to read the Form since I was very little—less than a year old. It was exposed to me early on, and it stuck with me.”
His brother, Scott, went to the track with him, but after working briefly with horses, he turned to business and works for a computer company.
Weaver has never left the business. “I was never really in doubt about what I wanted to do,” he said.
He worked on a farm briefly for Kenny Burkhart but didn’t take long to know he wanted to work at the track. While still in high school, he began walking hots for trainer John Hennig in the summer. “I was 17,” Weaver said. “I told him I didn’t want to be a hotwalker. I wanted to learn. He took me to Philadelphia Park. He taught me how to be a better hotwalker, how to groom and horsemanship.”
When Hennig left to work for Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas at a training center in California, Weaver was given a choice in 1991: go to California and work for Hennig or travel to New York to work for Lukas’ New York operation under Jeff Lukas and Hall of Famer Todd Pletcher.
“Working for Wayne, he had some very, very nice horses,” Weaver said. “It was a source of pride to come out of that program, learning to train horses. It’s a lot of trial and error. That was my schooling as opposed to college. I went to the University of Wayne Lukas.”
Lukas remembers both Weaver and Cindy fondly: “The two of them were both working for me at the same time. It was a treat to have them in the shed row. Both excellent horse people. I never doubted for a second they’d be successful. He’s an articulate, good horseman. I’m very proud of him. I saw him on TV at Ascot. It was a treat to see him over there. If George doesn’t do anything else, he married smart.”
Cindy, a native of Romansville, Pennsylvania, began riding at an early age and began working for Bruce Miller when she was 16. She galloped horses at Delaware Park and, in her early twenties, began working for Lukas in New York.
It was not love at first sight. They knew each other for years before they began dating. They’ve been together ever since. His respect for her horsemanship is considerable: “She could be on her own… attention to detail…perfectionist. Over the years, she could help a horse who was nervous or a head case. She was always our go-to girl. She’d fix them. I can’t tell you how. She has a great instinct for a horse. She’s a great rider. She’s one of a kind. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone like her.”
When they learned Cindy was pregnant, they decided to go on their own in 2002. “It was time to make a go for it,” Weaver said. “It was time for me to give it a go: come together as a family and see how it went. Luckily, we’ve had a lot of success over the years. She managed the barn so I could focus on our clients. We’ve always worked well together and done well.”
Always? A husband and wife together 24/7? “I won’t lie to you; she has strong opinions,” Weaver said. “Obviously, you have clashes. But we have a mutual respect. It starts with that. We both have the same philosophy: keeping the horses happy.”
Cindy agreed: “We keep horses happy. We do little things like take them to the round pen, let them graze, let them walk and do things before they even go to the track. I think little things make a difference. And we do well together. He gets to do more with the owners and the PR part. I’m more the worker with the horses. We both have our say, and it seems to work that way.”
They didn’t take long to find success. After winning one of eight starts in 2002, they topped the million-dollar mark in earnings in 2003 and have been over a million every year, including this year, already, thanks to a solid career win percentage of 15.
His top earner and best horse was Vekoma, whose six-for-eight record included victories in the 2020 Gr. 1 Metropolitan and Gr. 1 Carter Handicap. He earned $1,245,525 and is now standing at Spendthrift Farm.
In 2015, Weaver took a shot at Royal Ascot, sending over Cyclogenesis to contest the Gp. 1 Commonwealth. “He was three-for-three at the time,” Weaver said. “A big heavy horse. He was a nice horse. It just wasn’t his day over there.”
Cyclogenesis finished 14th.
His performance did nothing to diminish Weaver’s appreciation of the experience: “When you get there, it’s clear how special the racing is at Royal Ascot. I was amazed at the place. It’s a hard place to win. I thought when I left in 2015, how cool it would be to win a race there. It’s like a bucket list.”
Crimson Advocate ridden by John Velazquez claimed the narrowest of victories in a thrilling climax to the 2023 Queen Mary Stakes at Royal Ascot.
The filly who would bring him back was Crimson Advocate, a daughter of Nyquist out of Citizens Advocate by Proud Citizen. Crimzon Advocate was purchased for $100,000 at the Ocala Breeders October Yearling Sale by a large ownership group led by Randy Hill, who owned Vekoma and has been sending Weaver horses for 20 years. Other owners are St. John’s University’s new basketball coach Rick Pitino, New York Giants senior personnel consultant and New York Racing Association Board of Directors Chris Mara, Reagan Swinbank, Bill Daugherty of Black Ridge Stables and Jake Ballis of Black Type Thoroughbreds.
Crimson Advocate would make her debut at Keeneland on dirt April 26, well after Cindy had made major strides in her recovery—something she continued after four months in a hospital.
An unending outpour of support and prayers, especially from horsemen, certainly helped. “It’s a tight-knit group,” Weaver said. “We’re motivated by our love of horses. You can’t do this without loving horses. When she got hurt, it’s a hard thing to go through. It was scary for quite a few months. So many people reached out. It felt good to have the racing community reach out and pull for us and let us know how much support we had out there. It’s been a tough road. We couldn’t have done it without help. There’s a lot of love on the racetrack, and we really appreciate it. This happened a year ago. We’re fortunate that Cindy made a good recovery. She’s still Cindy. We take things one day at a time.”
Crimson Advocate finished an okay third in her 4 ½ furlong maiden debut on dirt at Keeneland. Her next start, her turf debut at Gulfstream Park, was in the Royal Palm Juvenile Filly Stakes. Through a unique partnership between Gulfstream Park and Ascot, the winner of that stakes and the Royal Palm Juvenile Stakes became automatic qualifiers for the Royal Ascot two-year-old stakes race and $25,000 in traveling expenses.
Weaver won both stakes. Crimson Advocate won the filly stakes wire-to-wire by 3 ½ lengths. No Nay Mets, whose ownership includes Houston Astros star Alex Bregman, captured the colt stakes. He raced at Ascot the day after Crimson Advocate and finished 9th in the Gp. 2 Norfolk Stakes.
With two starters at Ascot, Cindy had added incentive to make the trip, if she was up to it. “We went to Aspen before Ascot,” Weaver said. She handled that and headed to England with her family.
Crimson Advocate’s new rider would be Velazquez. In a field of 26, his expertise and experience were paramount.
Watching a field of 26 two-year-old fillies racing five-furlongs on a straight course is an interesting experience. There were two distinct groups during the race far away from each other on the course. How a jockey can make judgment calls with that challenging perspective is a skill itself. Fortunately for Velazquez, he was in a sprint with two-year-olds. She would go as fast as she could.
She broke from the rail nearest the grandstand, and Velazquez hustled her to the lead. She seemed in good shape as her group seemed ahead of the other group. But then Relief Rally came flying at her late. They crossed the wire together.
“I didn’t know if I got it or not,” Velazquez said afterwards.
Weaver, as his custom, assumed the worst: “Usually, when it’s that tight, I assume we got beat, just to prepare myself. After that, I watched a slo-mo replay. While watching that, I thought she might have gotten the bob.”
She had. Her number was posted first on the toteboard. “We were just out of our minds, hugging, kissing, on cloud nine,” Weaver said.
Hill told Bob Ehalt of Blood-Horse, “It was great. It was so emotional. Cindy was there, and she was crying. I couldn’t get over it. I am so glad for George. We’ve been together for so long and have won some big races together. I know how much this meant to him.”
Just getting to Ascot meant a lot to Weaver and Cindy. “She saw a lot of people she hadn’t seen in a while,” Weaver said.
Cindy said, “I had to really try hard and be strong to try to make this trip,” she said. “I was just hoping that she wound show up and run a good race.”
While waiting out the results of the photo finish, she said, “If she was second, it was okay. I knew she gave her best.”
So did Cindy.
Thoroughbred Sales Incentives - added value
With global inflation rising, mare owners as well as sales consignors and buyers may be looking harder than ever for perks to plump up their equine investments.
by Annie Lambert
Arguably one of the greatest promoters in history was P.T. Barnum, most remembered for creating the Barnum & Bailey circus, “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Barnum grew up in 1800s America with a natural talent toward publicity and promotion.
Modern-time promotion is more likely to be called marketing. It won’t have all the bells, whistles, fireworks and grifting used by Barnum, but it still requires limitless imagination. Stallion promoters and sales companies in North America and globally have developed marketing programs to entice customers in their competitive markets.
Interested parties can choose from deals on stallion shares, buy auctioned horses with eligibility to restricted races and more.
Advantage breeders
Some breeding farms have put together attractive programs to draw the owners of quality mares to their stallions.
Spendthrift Farm (Lexington, Ky.) provides two options to breeders. Their programs include Share the Upside and Safe Bet.
Share the Upside has been a great program for Spendthrift Farm, according to Ned Toffey, the farm’s general manager.
“You breed a mare in each of the first two years the stallion is at stud, and once your mare has produced two live foals, and you’ve paid your stud fees in a timely manner, you have then earned a lifetime breeding right,” he explained. “After that you breed to the horse free (no charge) for the rest of his breeding career.
“Into Mischief was one of the first horses that we offered on this program, and people paid in the vicinity of $6,500, two years in a row to earn a lifetime breeding, which is now worth $1 million.” “That’s the ultimate example; not every horse is going to be a two-time leading sire,” he added with a laugh.
Ned Toffey - Into Mischief
Toffey explained that the program has helped smaller breeders who are often priced out when stallions become successful. Share the Upside helps those breeders, who helped make the horse successful, by allowing them the opportunity to utilize the horse throughout his career.
While first-year stallions generally don’t need incentives to attract mares, the hope is that they will use that stallion in subsequent years.
Which stallions are offered in the program depends on the market economics at the time. Toffey finds that the $15,000 and under fee levels of the market appreciate, and he enjoys using the program. It is not as appealing to some of the higher-end breeders. Mares are approved for the first two paid breedings, but once owners have earned lifetime rights, they may breed any mare.
“Our hope is that, since people have a vested interest in the horse’s success, that they are going to support him with quality mares,” Toffey acknowledged. “We try to always have some Share the Upside horses for our breeders to be able to utilize.”
The stallions offered for 2022 have not been decided on yet. Spendthrift holds breeding rights in a number of horses, but it is unclear if those will be coming into stud or remain in training. It is a little early.
Spendthrift’s other program option is not geared toward freshman sires, but rather their first crop of two-year-olds. If a breeder sends a mare to the stallion the year his first offspring are two, the contract has two options.
If the stallion does not produce a graded stakes winner by the end of that calendar year, then there is no stud fee owed. If the stallion does produce a graded stakes winner by the end of the year, then the mare owner would owe the agreed upon/advertised stud fee.
“The idea is to try and incentivize breeders who may like a horse but may be apprehensive about using the horse who is unproven,” Toffey explained. “This gives them a reward for taking a chance on one of our horses. If the horse works out, then they owe a very reasonable stud fee; if the horse doesn’t have a very good year, even though he may throw some listed stakes winners, he may throw graded stakes placed horses. But if that is all he does, then there would be no stud fee owed. But once he produces a graded stakes winner, the full fee would be owed.”
Bob Feld’s Bobfeld Bloodstock took advantage of Spendthrift’s Share the Upside program and now has a lifetime breeding right to Temple City. Feld bred and campaigned Miss Temple City’s daughter of Temple City—a winner of three Gr. 1 stakes with earnings of $1,680,091. She sold at the 2017 Fasig-Tipton November sale for $2.5 million.
Miss Temple City - Bob Feld
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