Price Bell

Casa Creed Joins Oscar Performance and Aloha West for Mill Ridge's 2025 Stallion Roster

Casa Creed (Jimmy Creed), a two-time winner of the GI Fourstardave H. at Saratoga and GI Jaipur S. at Belmont Park, will command a $10,000 stud fee in his first season at stud at Mill Ridge Farm in 2025, it was announced Thursday. "He showed up for every race and was beaten only once more than four lengths in his (28) graded stakes--what a brilliant racehorse and one who will contribute to our breed," said Mill Ridge's General Manager Price Bell. With five graded stakes winners this year, Oscar Performance...

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With His Mare Now a Multiple Grade I Stakes-Winning Producer, Clay Has a Strong Incentive to Sell

When Jon Clay bought Strong Incentive for his Alpha Delta Stables for $2.15 million at last year's Fasig-Tipton November Sale, she had already produced Grade III winner and track-record holder Highly Motivated (Into Mischief), now a stallion at Airdrie Stud; two-time Grade III winner Surge Capacity (Flintshire {GB}); and an up-and-coming `TDN Rising Star' named Ways and Means (Practical Joke), who had run second in the Grade I Spinaway Stakes. Within a month of his purchase, Surge Capacity won the Grade I Matriarch, and by the following summer, Ways and...

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Million-Dollar Nyquist Colts Pace 'Vibrant' Book 2 Finale at Keeneland

by Jessica Martini & Christina Bossinakis LEXINGTON, Ky - With a pair of seven-figure colts by Nyquist leading the way, trade remained strong straight through the conclusion of Book 2 during the fourth session of the Keeneland September Yearling Sale Thursday in Lexington. "It was a great day," said Keeneland Vice President of Sales Tony Lacy at the close of business Thursday evening. "We are very pleased. The median is up 25% for the session over last year, which is a metric that we always use. That shows that it...

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Summer Heats Up at Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Sale

If the weather in Saratoga Springs of late is any indication of what's to come at the Humphrey S. Finney Pavilion Monday and Tuesday evenings, the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Sale is poised for a volcanic renewal. In 2023, a total of 154 yearlings sold for $75,055,000, averaging $487,370 with a median of 375,000. The gross jumped from $66,955,000 generated for 143 sold in 2022. "The vibe feels good here," confirmed Taylor Made's Frank Taylor. "Everybody you would want to see in the courtyard, you would have seen walk in. The horses...

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Light Up Racing Launches Phase 2

Following its launch phase in the U.S. in April, 2024, Light Up Racing will launch Phase 2 of its program, which includes further website development and new personnel, the organizers announced in a press release Sunday, "The initial phase highlighted the crucial need for transparency and effective communication within the racing industry, with millions turning to LUR for reliable updates and insights," the company said in the release. "LUR is ready to build on this success, driving further innovation and progress in the months ahead. During Phase 1, Light Up...

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MGISW Casa Creed to Mill Ridge

Four-time Grade I winner and New York favorite Casa Creed (Jimmy Creed--Achalaya, by Bellamy Road), who was retired earlier this month at the age of eight with a minor hind ankle issue, will stand at Mill Ridge Farm near Lexington, the farm announced Tuesday afternoon. Lee Einsidler and Mike Francesa campaigned the Bill Mott trainee over seven seasons to a record of 36-9-5-6 and earnings of $2,691,308. Casa Creed has already arrived at Mill Ridge and will be syndicated. He will stand the 2025 season for $10,000. "Casa Creed is...

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HBPA Conference Kicks off in Des Moines; HISA a Central Topic

Horse owner Brent Malmstrom told Wednesday's opening session of the annual National HBPA Conference that he has spent more than $620,000 "with no end in sight" on fighting the two-year suspension handed trainer Jonathon Wong after one of Wong's horses became the first to test positive in a post-race sample for the widely prescribed diabetes medication Metformin under the HISA era. The comments came during the opening session of the four-day National HBPA Conference at Prairie Meadows. While Malmstrom doesn't own the horse at the center of the case, he...

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Saturday Sires: Oscar Performance

Pop quiz: which North American third-crop sire leads his contemporaries by individual graded stakes winners in the Northern Hemisphere in 2024? It's not Justify, nor Good Magic, who are each tied with three and are the runaway leaders by 2024 progeny earnings. The correct answer is Mill Ridge Farm's Oscar Performance, who has four graded winners in 2024 and also leads the top third-crop sires by percentage of black-type winners to runners at 6.6%. In addition, Oscar Performance secured his first career Grade I winner as a sire Saturday with...

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Early Impressions from Fasig: Whose First-Crop Yearlings Caught Your Eye?

Every year, the Fasig-Tipton July sale offers the first chance for buyers to get a look at a new crop of yearling sires. Many buyers were seeing these sires' yearlings for the first time this week, and while it's admittedly early, we took a little survey to get their first impressions. The group includes: Basin, Beau Liam, By My Standards, Charlatan, Core Beliefs, Essential Quality, Independence Hall, Knicks Go, Known Agenda, Leinster, Lexitonian, Maxfield, Modernist, Raging Bull, Rock Your World, Silver State, Tacitus, Uncle Chuck, and Yaupon. LIZ CROW: Tacitus...

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How a Rangel Earned His Wings

So what happens when you keep pursuing the dream, keep persevering, only to find that it's taken you right to the cliff's edge? At some point you quit, right? Not if you're Ramon "R.J." Rangel, you don't. He was still working with yearlings at Dixiana when he leased his first 10 acres. His wife at the time had quit her own job at Dixiana to care for their little farm and he would come back in the afternoons to put in a second shift on the heavier work. Gradually they...

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Blacker Joins Light Up Racing Board

Racing analyst and reporter Christina Blacker has joined the board of directors of Light Up Racing, an organization formed to enhance the public perception of the Thoroughbred industry. "I am grateful to be a part of Light Up Racing's mission," Blacker said. "It is one that is very close to my heart and one I've put a lot of time and effort into over the years. Horse racing is a beautiful sport filled with equally beautiful, deeply caring and hard-working individuals, but is not actually what we, as a collective,...

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Seeking Solutions When The Rookie Buzz Has Gone “West”

For a stallion farm, it's the equivalent of the "difficult second album" so notorious in the music industry. You've launched a new sire, and profited from the customary stampede of commercial mares. But the vogue proves to be cruelly fleeting. When he returns to the covering shed, the following spring, he offers exactly the same performance history, chromosomes and conformation as before. But suddenly the phone is cold. Precisely the factors that drove his debut book--novelty, plus security from imminent exposure of his competence (or otherwise) to replicate ability--have meanwhile...

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