Into Mischief's standing as one of North America's elite sires is well established, both in the sales ring and on the racetrack. As the numbers show, the resident of Spendthrift Farm is just as exemplary in the space between.
From 2015 to 2020, a total of 1,335 juveniles breezed an eighth of a mile in :10 seconds flat or faster during the three primary 2-year-olds in training sales hosted by Ocala Breeders' Sales Co. Into Mischief led all sires in that time span with 51, which was more than double his next-closest contemporary.
Twirling Candy of Lane's End came in second with 23, while fellow Lane's End resident Quality Road tied with Claiborne Farm's Flatter with 20.
The six seasons counted in the sample feature Into Mischief's fourth through ninth crops, tracing his ascent as he blossomed into an upper-tier stallion and eventually got comfortable in the penthouse.
Explaining why Into Mischief has so drastically distanced himself from the rest of the field in this statistic can venture down a few different threads.
The first is a simple numbers game. Though he had just 35 total foals in the first sampled crop, the juveniles of 2015, his popularity exploded in the ensuing seasons, giving him one of the busiest books in North America.
From his 2014 foal crop (juveniles of 2016) to 2018 (juveniles of 2020), Into Mischief never saw less than 157 live foals in a given crop, and his final year in the snapshot topped him out at 201 foals. With that many opportunities to produce :10-and- under runners, the chances improve that the stallion will get them.
Of course, putting an army of foals under tack doesn't matter if they can't take advantage of those numbers and hit the mark on the stopwatch.
Spendthrift Farm general manager Ned Toffey said the stallion has proven himself uniquely capable of producing juveniles that are not only ready to perform physically at that stage in their development, but mentally.
“They tend to be good-minded,” he said. “They obviously tend to be fast, and I think they tend to stand up to training. There's just so much natural speed there that it's not hard for them to do that kind of thing. That natural ability, combined with soundness and a good mind, I think that really helps them perform that way.”
That mental fortitude and natural ability was also noted by Jimbo Gladwell of consignor Top Line Sales, who consigned two by Into Mischief at this year's OBS March Sale. The process of building up a young horse up to breeze the fastest furlong of its life can be too much for some prospects, but Gladwell said the Into Mischiefs have handled the pressure.
“They have a high cruising speed, which is one of the things that makes them so successful,” Gladwell said. “They have a quick turn of foot. The mind that goes with them is conducive with what they do.”
A big-time breeze often carries with it the stigma that the horse has left its best effort at the sale and may have peaked too early, but the Into Mischiefs that have hit the :10-and-under threshold have performed well, as a group, going against that notion.
Among Into Mischief's notable :10-and-under sale graduates are Grade 2 winner Engage, Grade 3 winners Mischevious Alex and Gas Station Sushi, and stakes winners Claire's Song, Into Mystic, and Offspring. All of the horses on that list won stakes races at three or older, which is a trend Toffey said he expects will roll on as Into Mischief's stock continues to rise.
“I think you're seeing it more and more with all the good horses he's got on the Derby trail this year,” Toffey said. “It's been talked about in the breed for a long time; that precocity, brilliance – in other words speed – and that ability to carry it. He is one that I think for a long time, people thought was just the speed there, but I think you're seeing it as he's being bred to classier mares, he's more than capable of getting a classic horse.”
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