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Juddmonte Farms Announces 2021 Mating Plans For European Broodmare Band

Juddmonte is pleased to announce the 2021 mating plans for some of its high-profile horses.

In 2020, Frankel became the fastest European stallion ever to reach 40 group winners and finished the year on a high with the track record-breaking Group 1 success of 2-year-old Grenadier Guards.

He will receive another exciting book of 24 Juddmonte mares this season, including multiple G1 winner Ventura (already dam of G3 winner Fount by Frankel), G1 winner Emulous, Bird Flown (dam of G1 Irish 2000 Guineas winner Siskin), Nimble Thimble (dam of Frankel's G1 winning 2-year-old Quadrilateral), G2 winners Soffia and Modern Look, G3 winners Big Break, Dandhu and Visit, Flare Of Firelight (dam of G2 winning 2-year-old Threat), Ruscombe (whose first foal by Frankel, Petricor, won her only start as a 2-year-old in 2020, earning 'TDN Rising Star' status), Sleep Walk (a half-sister to Frankel's track record-breaking classic winner Logician), Atone (a sister to Midday), Tendu (sister to Showcasing), Tiadargent (sister to Restiadargent), Very Good News (a daughter of Hasili and dam of Frankel's classic-placed son Weekender as well as promising Frankel 3-year-old Media Stream), and two half-sisters to Kingman in Panzanella and Present Tense.

Kingman sired three G1 winners in 2020, included Timeform's top-rated 3-year-old Palace Pier. The son of Invincible Spirit is set to cover 20 Juddmonte mares, including champion 11-time G1 winner Enable and Frankel's dam Kind, G1 winners Capla Temptress, Passage Of Time, Romantica, Samba Inc and Special Duty, G2 winners Lucky Kristale (a half-sister to Love) and Riposte, G3 winners Hot Snap and Sun Maiden, Helleborine (dam of Kingman's G2 winning 2-year-old Calyx), and Scuffle (dam of G1 winner Logician) and her daughter Battlement.

Expert Eye is the only G1-winning miler by Acclamation, and he retired to stud with a higher Timeform rating than both his sire and his successful stallion sons Dark Angel and Mehmas. Expert Eye covered 50 stakes winners in his first two books of mares, welcoming his first crop of foals in 2020. Among his Juddmonte mares for 2021 are multiple listed winner and G1-placed Principal Role, listed winners Scottish Jig and Swiss Range, Kilo Alpha (dam of G3 winner and G1-placed Juliet Foxtrot), Photographic (dam of G3 winner Shutter Speed, herself out of the legendary Juddmonte mare Prophecy), Palmette (a sister to Showcasing) and Strelka (a Kingman half-sister to Workforce).

Bated Breath enjoyed another great season as the best-value sire of black type performers in Europe in 2020, capped by the G1 win of Juddmonte homebred Viadera in December, who remains in training this year. Bated Breath is also the sire of leading 2021 French Derby hope Makaloun, an Aga Khan homebred who was a Group winning 2-year-old and placed in the G1 Criterium de Saint-Cloud. Juddmonte mares set to visit the son of Dansili include Viadera's dam Sacred Shield, as well as G1 winner Proportional, G3 winner Tested, listed winners Alocasia and Rostova, and Meridiana (an unraced daughter of Galileo and Midday).

Oasis Dream remains a proven source of G1 speed and reached a landmark 200 stakes performers in 2020. He is also making a significant impact as a broodmare sire, with four G1 winners to his name in the last year alone. In 2021 he will cover the Juddmonte mares Bonne Idee (a winning daughter of Frankel and half-sister to Oasis Dream's G2 winner Imaging), Its A Given (a winning daughter of Bated Breath), Occurrence (an unraced daughter of Frankel out of Hasili's G1 producing sister Arrive) and Shared Account (dam of Oasis Dream's Group performing daughter Sand Share as well as G3-winning 2-year-old Pocket Square).

Juddmonte mares visiting outside stallions include G1 winners African Rose (visiting Dark Angel), Announce (visiting Pinatubo), Midday (visiting No Nay Never), Promising Lead (visiting Calyx), Proviso (visiting Wootton Bassett), Quadrilateral (visiting Dubawi along with Goldika, a daughter of Goldikova, and Listed winner Franconia), Timepiece (visiting Night Of Thunder) and Winsili (visiting Golden Horn).

Enable's dam Concentric will return to Nathaniel and Enable's Group-placed half-sister Entitle will visit Sea The Stars. Frankel's G2-winning daughter Obligate will visit Siyouni, along with Headman's dam Deliberate and Midday's listed-winning daughter Mori.

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Grade 3 Winner Killybegs Captain Retired To Mill Creek Farm In New York

Graded stakes winner Killybegs Captain was retired this month and will enter stud in 2021 at Anne Morgan's and Tim Little's Mill Creek Farm in Stillwater, N.Y. The 7-year-old son of Mizzen Mast out of the Holy Bull mare Al Maha will stand his initial season for $2,500 live foal/stands and nurses.

Campaigned by Curragh Racing and trained by John Terranova, Killybegs Captain won seven of 27 starts with five seconds and three thirds for $572,453 in earnings. A $75,000 purchase at the 2016 OBS April 2-year-olds in training sale, Killybegs Captain was a winner at three, four, five and six and rose from the allowance ranks to become a stakes winner in his last two seasons.

Killybegs Captain scored his biggest victory in the Grade 3 Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash at Laurel Park in 2019, defeating a field that included He Hate Me and New York Central in 1:08.10 for 6 furlongs.

Third in the G2 John A. Nerud Stakes at Belmont Park and G1 Forego Stakes at Saratoga Race Course in 2019, Killybegs Captain also won back-to-back editions of the Pelican Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs in 2019 and 2020. He defeated multiple Grade 1 winner Imperial Hint in the 2019 edition of the Pelican, winning the six-furlong stakes in 1:09.66.

Bred by H. Allen Poindexter, Killybegs Captain is the sixth foal out of Al Maha, a half-sister to stakes winner Find the Treasure and the dam of multiple graded stakes winner Pontchatrain from the family of Grade 1 winner Past Forgetting and Grade 2 winner and sire Concerto.

Killybegs Captain is one of six winners out of Al Maha, who is also the dam of a now 2-year-old unnamed filly by Cross Traffic purchased for $50,000 by Tonja Terranova, agent for Curragh Racing at last year's Keeneland September yearling sale.

“He was a beautiful horse – sound horse – he retired sound,” Tonja Terranova, assistant to her husband, told Daily Racing Form. “He beat Imperial Hint, he was third to Mitole. He was just a solid racehorse; ran short, ran long.”

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‘Continuity Is The Key’: Juddmonte Group Chief Executive Says Operation Will Go On After Death Of Founder Prince Khalid

“Juddmonte will continue.”

Those refreshing words came from Douglas Erskine Crum, chief executive of the Juddmonte Group, during a television interview on Saturday with ITV Racing in the UK.

“Continuity is the key for any breeding and racing operation,” Erskine Crum said, four days after the death of Saudi Prince Khalid Abdullah, who developed Juddmonte into an international breeding and racing powerhouse, with farms in England, Ireland and Kentucky.

“No change,” Erskine Crum added. “The family has been for some time and still is very committed to keeping Juddmonte as it is … focusing on the broodmare band, focusing on the home-bred operation.”

Erskine Crum said one of the last things Prince Khalid was involved with was planning the 2021 matings for a broodmare band of about 200. Many will go to Juddmonte's own world-class stallions, including Frankel and Kingman, he added.

“And those horses will be born next year and will race as 3-year-olds in 2025,” he said, “so if we have a champion in 2025 you will be able to say the Prince was actually involved directly in the decision making.”

Erskine Crum added that, several years ago, Prince Khalid made adjustments to the business, cutting back on the number of broodmares he retained.

“Those changes are necessary to keep the business running and also necessary to make sure that essential continuity of the broodmare is enhanced.”

Over the last 40 years, some of the world's best Thoroughbreds have carried the green, pink and white Juddmonte silks, from Dancing Brave to Frankel to Enable. Juddmonte has won five Eclipse Awards as North America's outstanding breeder and four times was voted outstanding owner. Juddmonte Farms has been champion owner on multiple occasions in France and the United Kingdom. Juddmonte is also all-time leading Breeders' Cup owner by money won in championship races.

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City Of Light’s First Yearlings Shined At Keeneland January Sale

City of Light got off on the right foot commercially with a strong performance from his first weanlings during last year's November mixed sales in Kentucky. Now that we're on the other side of the flipped calendar, the Lane's End resident has continued to show up at the top of the lists with his debut yearlings at the Keeneland January Horses of All Ages Sale, completed earlier this week.

The 7-year-old son of Quality Road was the leading first-crop yearling sire of the Keeneland January sale by both gross and average sale price.

Over the course of the four-day sale, City of Light saw eight newly-turned yearlings change hands for revenues of $1,225,500 and an average of $153,188. His average was more than double the next-closest first-year sire with more than one horse sold during the January sale: Mendelssohn, who moved five yearlings for an average of $67,800.

The most expensive offering of City of Light's January draft was Hip 660, a bay filly out of the unplaced Bernardini filly I'll Show Me who sold to Larry Best's OXO Equine for $400,000. She was the second-most expensive yearling of the overall sale, and she was the highest-priced youngster of the auction's second session.

I'll Show Me is a half-sister to champion Proud Spell, stakes winner No Distortion, and Grade 3-placed Proud Pearl. Lane's End consigned the top filly, as agent.

Best's purchase displayed continued high-level support for City of Light after he bought the stallion's most expensive offering during last fall's November sales, as well. At the Fasig-Tipton November sale, Best landed a colt out of the winning Into Mischief mare Breaking Beauty for $600,000.

The commercial performance by City of Light's foals so far is a strong endorsement from a marketplace that has been high on the stallion since he was just a stallion prospect. He was booked full for his debut season at stud prior to his farewell victory in the 2019 Pegasus World Cup Invitational Stakes, and Bill Farish of Lane's End said the farm had to turn away another book's worth of mares after the window closed.

Bloodstock agent Mike Ryan, speaking at the Lane's End Press Pass event earlier this month, said he has a share in City of Light as a breeder, and he was happy with the two homebreds he had by the 7-year-old stallion.

“It wasn't a surprise to me that his foals looked so good because I have found through the years that these magnificent-looking stallions like Alydar, Secretariat, Deputy Minister, they have the gene strength to reproduce themselves,” Ryan said. “When they're really good physicals, it seems to be pretty common that they all transmit that to their offspring and this was no exception in this horse. His foals were very well-grown. They have size, substance, quality, strength, and they had an aura of class and presence about them.”

Between the initial mare bookings and the Keeneland January sale, breeders showed their respect for City of Light by making him one of the top weanling sires of 2020, first-crop or otherwise.

City of Light saw 23 weanlings go through the ring last year for revenues of $2,592,000 and an average of $216,000. That placed him fifth among all North American sires by average weanling sale price, and second only to Triple Crown winner Justify among first-crop sires. He was also second to Justify by weanling gross among all sires.

“It wasn't a fluke, it wasn't just that one or two were big-selling horses,” Ryan said. “They were consistently well-made, well-conformed, quality horses.”

Bred in Kentucky by Ann Marie Farm, City of Light is out of the unraced Dehere mare Paris Notion, whose runners also include stakes-placed Pointsman and Exotic Notion. Champion turf mare Fiji is in his extended family, along with Irish filly classic winner and Grade 1 winners Java's War, Careless Jewel, Subordination, Cacoethes, and Fabulously Fast.

Racing for Mr. and Mrs. William K. Warren Jr. and trained by Michael McCarthy, City of Light won six of 11 starts during his on-track career, earning $5,662,600, and he picked up Grade 1 wins in each of his campaigns from ages three to five. He took home the G1 Malibu Stakes as a 3-year-old, then won the G2 Oaklawn Handicap and G1 Triple Bend Stakes before capping off his 4-year-old season with a triumph in the G1 Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile at Churchill Downs. His swan song came in the 2019, G1 Pegasus World Cup, where he prevailed through stormy weather and sloppy footing to go out on a high note.

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