Take Charge Indy

TIMONIUM, MD - With a $1-million filly leading the way, the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic May 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale concluded its two-day run at the Maryland State Fairgrounds with statistics close to its record-setting 2022 renewal. "It was a great two days in Maryland," Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Sales Director Paget Bennett said Tuesday evening. "There was plenty of competition for the horses people wanted. The ones they want, they all go to battle on." At the end of Tuesday's session, 375 head sold for $34,795,500. The average was $92,788--down just 2.7% from...

Champion Will Take Charge (Unbridled's Song--Take Charge Lady, by Dehere), whose 13 black-type winners includes this year's GI Hollywood Gold Cup hero There Goes Harvard, will join the stallion roster at Darley Japan in 2023, according to a post on the nursery's website. Will Take Charge has stood his first eight seasons at stud at Three Chimneys Farm. Campaigned by the late Willis Horton during his first two seasons at the races and trained by D. Wayne Lukas, Will Take Charge won the 2013 GI Travers S. and GII Pennsylvania...

Jody and Michelle Huckabay's Elm Tree Farm consigned a son of Curlin on behalf of Barbara Banke's Stonestreet Bred & Raised that topped Saturday's fifth session of the Keeneland September Sale in Lexington on a bid of $900,000. Just 48 hours later, the couple sold a colt by leading sire Candy Ride (Arg) for $600,000 to repeat the dose during yet another solid day of trade Monday which saw the sale surpass its turnover from last year with fully five days of selling remaining. Monday's topper was one of 10...

This whole industry, as I've often remarked, turns on a delicate pivot. We need pedigree to hold up sufficiently for the big investors to stay in the game, and incidentally to keep the rest of us in business; but we also need a sufficient number of unaccountable aberrations for the little guy to feel he always has some kind of chance, as well. If the top lot at Keeneland September Book I won the GI Kentucky Derby every year, then almost the whole pyramid beneath would collapse. But nor can...

In reaching the penultimate instalment of our series, once again we are obliged by the steepening commercial gradient to combine different intakes--this time, those who have now launched between four and six juvenile crops--to ensure a suitably competitive podium. For by this stage of their career the majority of Kentucky start-ups will already have packed their bags for regional or overseas programs. One or two are still barely clinging on, their books plummeting, but overall we're now looking at those few who have bravely consolidated to the brink of inclusion...

Speightstown will head the roster at WinStar Farm in 2022 with a fee of $90,000, stands and nurses, the same fee for which he stood in 2021. Right behind the chestnut is Constitution, North America's second-leading third-crop sire, who will stand for $85,000 S&N, also the same as 2021. Among notable changes on the 18-horse roster, More Than Ready gets a trim from $65,000 to $50,000. "Our 2022 roster is suited for breeders at every level," said Elliott Walden, WinStar's president, CEO, and racing manager. "Speightstown, Constitution, and More Than...

Michael Tabor, Mrs. John Magnier and Derrick Smith's As Time Goes By (American Pharoah) aired by 9 1/4 lengths in her latest start in the Apr. 24 GII Santa Margarita S., however, she had to work a lot harder when nosing out 23-1 longshot This Tea (Curlin) in Saturday's GII Santa Maria S. at Santa Anita. Breaking from the outside of a four-horse field, the 4-year-old allowed Miss Stormy D (Tapizar) to assume the helm through opening fractions of :23.83 and :47.12. Given the cue by Mike Smith at the...

Today we come to a final group of stallions whose development we're treating separately, before wrapping up our series with a look at those survivors who made it across the highwire and can be grouped together as "Established Sires." (After which we'll also be taking a tour of regional stallions.) In the last couple of instalments, we've observed the Kentucky talent pool in each intake rapidly drying up, so that our review of third- and fourth-crop options respectively encompassed 18 and just six stallions. And we are left with a...

The first two foals by Take Charge Indy have been born since he returned home to stand the 2020 breeding season at WinStar Farm. The first foal born was a colt out of the multiple stakes-placed mare Northern Smile foaled in Kentucky on Jan. 4 and bred by Jim Ballinger. The second foal was born at WinStar on Jan. 17. Bred by Bob Baron, the colt is produced from the Tiznow mare Tiz Cecile. Take Charge Indy bred 144 mares in 2020 in his first year back at WinStar and...

You know this adage well: "Sell a stallion overseas and he'll catch fire." The latest example is Daredevil (More Than Ready), whose remarkable first-crop daughter Swiss Skydiver put on a show for the ages on Saturday to deny Gl Kentucky Derby winner Authentic (Into Mischief) the Gl Preakness S. at Pimlico. Trained by a daredevil in Kenny McPeek, Swiss Skydiver and Authentic engaged in a protracted head-to-head stretch duel, but the filly never let Authentic get the better of her at any stage and won the Classic by a neck,...

There has been a lot of conversation in these pages over the past few days about the difficulty sires have attracting mares in their third and fourth season. Many of them are sold overseas as a result. Once in a while, one gets off to such a good start in America that they are brought back when it is discovered that people simply gave up on them too soon. Case in point: Take Charge Indy. The son of A.P. Indy is back at WinStar Farm after spending three years in...