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Racing Stalwart B. Wayne Hughes Dies

B. Wayne Hughes, the billionaire businessman and philanthropist who resurrected Spendthrift Farm and turned it into one of the leading stallion farms in North America, died Wednesday at his residence on the farm surrounded by his family. He was 87 years old.

Born Bradley Wayne Hughes on Sept. 28, 1933, in the small town of Gotebo, OK, he was known by his middle name since childhood. The son of a sharecropper who fled Oklahoma's Dust Bowl and resettled in California shortly after he was born, Hughes grew up poor in the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles. Winning a scholarship to the University of Southern California, he graduated with a degree in business in 1957.

Climbing the professional ladder in real estate, Hughes had recently opened his own firm when business associate Kenneth Volk, Jr. brought him an idea in 1972 for buying and renting out private self-storage locations in major cities. Hughes and Volk pooled $50,000 together and founded Public Storage, which became an immense success and established Hughes's business empire. The company has grown to a $40-billion valuation and was the foundation for Hughes to expand into other successful real estate ventures.

Despite his fortune, Hughes was well known for sticking with his middle-class habits, eating fast food–SoCal staple In 'n' Out Burger was a favorite–dressing modestly and hanging out at the track he was raised in the shadow of, Santa Anita.

Introduced to horse racing by his father as a young boy, Hughes was involved in the sport for decades as an adult before making his big splash with the purchase of Spendthrift in 2004. The historic farm, which once stood Triple Crown winners Seattle Slew and Affirmed, fell into bankruptcy when the Thoroughbred market crashed in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was sold at a foreclosure auction in 1993. He purchased Spendthrift in 2004 and traded in his residence in California for a life on the farm in Lexington. Hughes quickly began restoring the historic brand and its land, renovating almost all the farm's signature structures and returning Spendthrift to a viable commercial breeding operation.

The farm gradually returned to prominence and has soared in the past decade with the breakout of superstar sire Into Mischief. Spendthrift has also campaigned multiple champions Beholder (Henry Hughes) and Authentic (Into Mischief) in recent years and dominated last year's Fasig-Tipton November Night of the Stars, buying dual champion Monomoy Girl (Tapizar) for $9.5 million as one of several multi-million dollar purchases to pair with Into Mischief and the rest of the farm's ever-growing stallion roster.

Following Beholder's 8 1/4-length victory in the 2015 GI Pacific Classic, Hughes said: “I've had a few good horses in the past, but she is the first horse that makes me feel lucky to be the owner. I've never had that feeling before. I think it's called pride.”

“It's a very, very sad day for me personally, and for racing in general,” said Beholder and her half-brother Into Mischief's trainer Richard Mandella. “He was such a stand-up guy, trying to make the world better, and a lot of fun.”
Mandella, who said he had known Hughes for 25 years, described him as a bastion of old-school horsemanship.

“He was like those old owners who used to come to the track and see the horses train and have breakfast and talk about them–the old school type.”

Asked what memory of Hughes stands out above all others, Mandella sidestepped a carnival of indelible moments with the likes of Beholder. “She had so many days you could pick–the last race she ran in at the Breeders' Cup. The Pacific Classic just took your breath away,” he said.

“But if I had one day to pick, it's when I asked him for a favor for my son,” Mandella said, reluctant to elaborate in detail. “My son had some health problems, and Mr. Hughes did something that nobody else could do.”

Said Hughes after being honored as the 2020 Galbreath Award winner by the University of Louisville: “Thoroughbred horse racing has been a tremendous passion of mine ever since my father took me to the races as a young boy. It's something he and I got to share together, and I've been fortunate to be able to make it a large part of my life and share it with so many that are dear to me. There are few thrills greater than what horse racing can provide, and it is our responsibility to do a better job of improving this great sport so that future generations can enjoy it as much as I have.”

Hughes devoted a considerable portion of his wealth to philanthropy, almost always anonymously and without fanfare. He gave a staggering $400 million to his beloved USC and committed over $100 million more to pediatric cancer research after his 8-year-old son Parker died of leukemia in 1998. During the wildfires that killed and displaced horses in California in 2017, Hughes gave $50,000 to relief efforts and flew in veterinary supplies and volunteers from Kentucky on a private plane.

In addition to his philanthropy, Hughes will be remembered as one of the great, consistently innovative business minds of the last 50 years and a true rags to riches story who found his way to success in nearly everything he tried. His investment in and expert management of Spendthrift has risen the farm from the ashes and restored its legacy while disrupting the industry by continually implementing new ideas on both the breeding and racing sides.

Hughes was preceded in death by his father William Lawrence, his mother Blanche, and his son Parker. He is survived by his wife Patricia, his son Wayne Jr. (Molly); his daughter Tamara, wife of Spendthrift's Eric Gustavson; his grandchildren Kylie Barraza (Pat), Skylar Hughes, Grant and Greer Gustavson; his sister Sue Caldwell and family, Frank, Bill, Allen; and a host of beloved cousins and friends.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the B. Wayne Hughes Fund at UK HealthCare, P.O. Box 34184, Lexington, KY, 40588.

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Spendthrift’s B. Wayne Hughes Dies At 87

B. Wayne Hughes died peacefully Wednesday in his home at his beloved Spendthrift Farm, with loving family by his side.

The longtime horse racing visionary and leader – best known within the industry for returning Spendthrift to prominence – was 87.

Hughes had been one of the sport's most influential figures of the 21st century, with wide-ranging contributions that will forever impact Thoroughbred breeding and racing. He purchased Spendthrift in 2004 and traded in his residence of California for a life on the farm in Lexington. Hughes quickly began restoring the historic brand and its land, renovating almost all the farm's signature structures and returning Spendthrift as a viable commercial breeding operation.

In 2008, he stood his first four home-raced stallions led by emerging kingpin sire Malibu Moon, who passed away this May at the age of 24. Hughes would revolutionize the business relationship between stallion owner and mare owner through ground-breaking programs, most notably “Share The Upside” which he designed to bonus the breeder with a vested interest in a stallion. Under Hughes, Spendthrift's slogan became “The Breeders' Farm” and he operated under a motto heard often by those who worked with him: 'Breeders are the backbone of our industry'.

“We have to take care of the breeder and level the playing field between stallion owner and breeder,” said Hughes, upon launching Share The Upside in 2010. “You have people here, they have a farm, they need to sell their foal, they need to have a chance of making money. I need to provide the best investment programs I can. Breeders participate in making these stallions, so they should be participating in the success, too.”

The inaugural stallion he offered through the Share The Upside program was his home-raced Grade One winner Into Mischief, who is now one of the most valuable horses in the world after a meteoric ascent to the top of the stallion ranks. Into Mischief is the reigning champion general sire in North America in 2019 & 2020 and is on a record-setting pace again in 2021.

Hughes also experienced his greatest successes as a racehorse owner with close relatives to Into Mischief. Beholder, a younger half-sister to the great sire, campaigned in Hughes' famed quartered purple and orange colors to become one of only three female horses in history to be a four-time champion after taking Eclipse Award honors in 2012, 2013, 2015 & 2016. She was a three-time Breeders' Cup champ and won 11 Grade Ones before retiring to Spendthrift where she currently resides as a broodmare.

After Beholder dominated males by 8 ¼ lengths in the 2015 Pacific Classic (G1) at Del Mar, Hughes said: “I've had a few good horses in the past, but she is the first horse that makes me feel lucky to be the owner. I've never had that feeling before. I think it's called pride.”

Last year, Hughes, in his 50th year as a racehorse owner, achieved the single greatest feat in horse racing by winning the elusive Kentucky Derby (G1) with the three-year-old colt Authentic – a son of Into Mischief. Authentic had become the embodiment of the pioneer spirit of Hughes, whose innovative marketing 10 years prior had given Into Mischief the best opportunity to become a successful sire. Authentic also represented that spirit through MyRacehorse.com, an upstart online horse racing ownership company that Hughes boldly championed by offering anyone with $206 an equity-based microshare of his Kentucky Derby contender.

Nearly one year ago, Authentic won the Derby for Hughes, his partners and 5,314 every-day people who had bought in and came along for the journey. Authentic would go on to win the Breeders' Cup Classic (G1) over older horses last November with Hughes in attendance at Keeneland to accept the trophy in the winner's circle. It would be the colt's final start before retiring to stud duty at Spendthrift and being named as North America's 'Horse of the Year' for 2020.

Born Bradley Wayne in Gotebo, Oklahoma, Hughes was raised the son of a sharecropper. He moved to California as a child and was introduced to horse racing by his father who took him to Santa Anita Park for the first time as an 11-year-old. Hughes was renowned for having an unparalleled work ethic from a young age, starting a newspaper delivery route as a teenager to help pay for college. He served as an officer in the Navy and went on to graduate from the University of Southern California before achieving tremendous success in business, starting such companies as Public Storage and American Homes 4 Rent.

Shortly after retiring as CEO of Public Storage in 2002, he turned much of his focus to horse racing and campaigned his first champion racehorse in 2003 when 2-year-old colt Action This Day captured the Breeders' Cup Juvenile (G1) at Hughes' home track of Santa Anita. It would be his first of six Breeders' Cup wins and six Eclipse Award wins.

To have known Wayne Hughes is to know he loved life, his country, USC and its football team, the horses, and his family. Following the death of his youngest son Parker in 1998, Hughes passionately committed himself to the curing of childhood Leukemia, ultimately accomplishing astonishing results in that area.

Hughes was preceded in death by his father William Lawrence, his mother Blanche, and his son Parker. He is survived by his wife Patricia, his son Wayne Jr. (Molly), his daughter Tamara Gustavson (Eric), his grandchildren Kylie Barraza (Pat), Skylar Hughes, Grant and Greer Gustavson, his sister Sue Caldwell and family, Frank, Bill, Allen, and a host of beloved cousins and friends.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the B. Wayne Hughes Fund at UK HealthCare, P.O. Box 34184, Lexington, KY, 40588.

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Broodmare Of The Year Leslie’s Lady Pensioned From Breeding

Leslie's Lady, the 2016 Broodmare of the Year and dam of some of the most important Thoroughbreds of the past decade, was pensioned from breeding duties earlier this spring, Thoroughbred Daily News reports.

The 25-year-old daughter of Tricky Creek's top-flight produce record includes Grade 1 winner and leading commercial sire Into Mischief, four-time Eclipse Award winner Beholder, and Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf winner and young sire Mendelssohn.

She also produced America's Joy, a daughter of American Pharoah who sold for $8.2 million at the 2019 Keeneland September Yearling Sale. Mendelssohn, by Scat Daddy, sold as a yearling for $3 million, while the Curlin filly Leslie's Harmony brought $1.1 million as a yearling.

Leslie's Lady resides at Clarkland Farm in Lexington, Ky., where owner Fred Mitchell told the TDN that the mare looked as healthy and spry as ever, but he was on the fence about breeding this season her due to her age. She was cycling early in the season, but when she stopped cycling in April after visits to the teaser, Mitchell decided to pension the mare.

Knowing for a while that Leslie's Lady was approaching pensioning age, Mitchell retained Marr Time, a Not This Time filly born in 2019, to one day carry on her dam's legacy in the Clarkland broodmare band. The filly is training for her debut start with Brad Cox.

Clarkland Farm will also retain Leslie's Lady's final foal, Love You Irene, a Kantharos filly born last year.

Though she ended up at the top of her profession, Leslie's Lady came from modest means. She was bred in Kentucky by David Hager II, and she sold as a newly-turned yearling for $8,000 at the 1997 Keeneland January Horses of All Ages Sale. She was purchased later that year by James Hines Jr., for $27,000 at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale.

Leslie's Lady won five of 28 starts for earnings of $187,014. She ran nine times as a juvenile, highlighted by a victory in the Hoosier Debutante Stakes at Hoosier Park. The following season, her campaign included a runner-up effort in the Martha Washington Stakes at Oaklawn Park.

She joined Hines' broodmare band after retiring from the track, and she produced four foals for her owner. Among them was a Harlan's Holiday colt later named Into Mischief.

After Hines' death, Leslie's Lady was cataloged in the 2006 Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale as part of her late owner's dispersal. Offered in foal to Orientate, the mare sold to Clarkland Farm for $100,000. The ensuing ten foals bred by Clarkland Farm have sold from the Clarkland consignment for a combined $12.9 million, and they've earned a combined $8,757,202 on the racetrack.

Leslie’s Lady Living Well In Retirement

“Leslie's Lady is retired,” Clarkland Farm's Fred Mitchell reported. “And she is happy, fat and dappled.”

The 2016 Broodmare of the Year has produced two fillies following America's Joy (American Pharoah), a now three-year-old half-sister to GISWs Into Mischief, Beholder and Mendelssohn and the highest-priced yearling filly in Keeneland sales history.

While Leslie's Lady is now 25, a good deal of thought went into the decision to officially retire her this spring.

“Early on in the season she was all dappled out and looked like a 14-year-old mare,” Mitchell said. “She was cycling but I said, 'I'm not sure if I want to breed Leslie. She's been so good to us.' But when it got to be April, I said if she cycled I might breed her because I looked at her out running across the field, up on her hind feet bucking and kicking with her buddy. I started to tease her after that and she hasn't cycled since so she made up her mind for me and I didn't have to make the final decision.”

The bay daughter of Tricky Creek now has three fillies in the pipeline that have yet to see the starting gate.

The first is America's Joy, the $8.2 million purchase by Whisper Hill Farm. The sophomore has almost a dozen recorded works at Whisper Hill's training center, but Mitchell and his family are still reliving her Keeneland September Sale two years ago.

“When we took the American Pharoah filly to the sales, I was hoping maybe we could top the sale with her because we had done it with Mendelssohn and that was a dream come true,” Mitchell said. “When the sale started the first day, there was a $2.5 million yearling and I said sale topping was now out of the question. Then the next day, a $4 million colt came. A couple people came by the barn and said she was going to bring more than that.”

Mitchell didn't start to believe them until the walkover to the back walking ring.

“There were cameras all the way from the bottom of the hill,” he recalled. “When we got to the sales ring, there was hardly any room with people with their cameras out taking picture after picture. I had never seen so many spectators. Then when she went in the ring and passed the $4 million mark, I said, 'What is going on?' I just couldn't believe it.”

“It was something you never could have dreamed of,” he continued. “It doesn't leave us much to shoot for from now on so I think that's our plateau. It has made life a lot easier for [wife] Nancy and I. We can now be taken care of no matter what age we get to and we know the kids have enough to be taken care of. The American Pharoah filly made that possible, her and Leslie.”

Knowing it would be nearly impossible to top the American Pharoah filly's accomplishments in the sales ring, Mitchell decided that Leslie's Lady's next foal, a daughter of Not This Time, would remain under the Clarkland banner for his family's next generation.

“I thought it would give the girls a nice start on a broodmare band later on and give them something to look forward to,” he explained.

Now a juvenile in training with Brad Cox, the bay filly is named Marr Time in honor of Nancy's ancestor John Wesley Marr.

“He was an old guy that never changed his clocks,” Mitchell said. “He stayed on Central Standard Time year-round. He would say, 'When the sun changes and my horses and I know that the time changed, I'll change. But not 'til then.'”

Marr Time floats over the track at Keeneland.

Mitchell said he found the May-foaled Marr Time to be very similar to America's Joy.

“She was exceptional from the time she was a foal,” he said. “The American Pharoah might have been a little bit bigger as a foal, but Marr Time is a lovely filly and a good-moving filly. Brad [Cox] says he's satisfied every time they breeze her and says she's a classy filly. It keeps you excited and hopefully she'll make it to the races, break her maiden and go from there.”

Marr Time had three recorded works at Keeneland last month.

“We've had her here since February and she's been learning all her basics at Keeneland,” Cox assistant Tessa Bisha said. “She has learned about the starting gate and she can gallop out of the gate pretty well. She has learned about the pony and company, so she's well on her way to her first start.”

Mitchell said he chose to send Leslie's Lady to Not This Time, then a $15,000 second-book sire, because each of the star broodmare's Grade I winners hailed from the Storm Cat line.

“Not This Time wasn't the most popular horse when he went to stud, but he was well-bred,” he said. “I loved him. He was gorgeous. After he came out last year with the 2-year-old runners, I wasn't so dumb after all.”

The next year, Mitchell decided to send Leslie's Lady back to another Storm Cat-line sire in Kantharos. The famed mare produced another filly and again, Mitchell determined that this one would stay with their family. He named the bay Love You Irene after his mother.

Now a yearling, Love You Irene is thriving at Clarkland.

“She's almost a June foal but she's a very nice individual and a very good-moving filly,” Mitchell said. “She's very pleasant to be around except when she gets a little teed off. She will take a hunk out of you, which I like to see out of fillies.”

Mitchell said they're still unsure of where this filly will land when it comes time for her to go to a trainer, noting that he currently has four juveniles in training with four different trainers and will make the decision based off those results.

Clarkland famously purchased Leslie's Lady at the 2006 Keeneland November Sale for an even $100,000. She was offered in foal to Orientate and had a yearling colt by Harlan's Holiday in the pipeline. Just over a year later, that colt won the GI CashCall Futurity.

Love You Irene, by Kantharos, is the last foal out of Leslie's Lady.

“When Into Mischief won his first stake, they came to me and wanted to know if I would sell Leslie,” Mitchell recounted. “They got to throwing out some pretty good figures. I said, 'No, Leslie is not for sale. If I get the money for her, how am I going to replace her?' Nobody knew she was going to have two more graded stakes winners. But after that, nobody has ever tried to buy her from me.”

The last year has been particularly special for the Clarkland team as they've watched Into Mischief's success at stud explode into the stratosphere.

“He might turn out to be one of the greatest sires we've every seen,” Mitchell said. “We root for the Into Mischief every time we see them in a race. It doesn't make a difference whether they're favored or nor, they still come up and win some way or another.”

Of each of Leslie's Lady's foals that Mitchell has worked with, he fails to pick a favorite.

“Beholder, Mendelssohn and America's Joy were very similar,” he noted. “But I would have to say America's Joy was the most overwhelming individual to look at. She was more like American Pharoah where anybody could do anything they wanted with her. But Beholder had a presence to her and with Mendelssohn, I didn't know what kind of racehorse he would make, but I knew he was a breeder's dream. You could take any type of mare to this horse and he would probably suit them. When we were showing him, he never took his eye off whoever was looking at him. All three horses were very similar when it came to that.”

While Mitchell is looking forward to watching these last few daughters of 'Leslie' make it to the starting gate, his greatest pride will always come in showing off the famed broodmare herself. She spends most of her day in a large paddock near the entrance to the historic farm and she naps in one of Clarkland's original barns constructed from trees that once graced the property centuries ago.

“When we bought Leslie for $100,000, you never could have dreamed that she would turn out to be the broodmare she is now,” Mitchell said. “It's indescribable what Leslie has meant to the family. It put us where we can enjoy what we do. We've increased the broodmare band and the girls will have a nice band to deal with now. It's just something that you would have never dreamed could happen to a small farm like Clarkland.”

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