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Grade 1 Winner Vekoma Retired To Spendthrift Farm For 2021

Multiple Grade 1-winning millionaire Vekoma has been retired from racing and arrived at B. Wayne Hughes' Spendthrift Farm, where the 4-year-old son of Candy Ride will take up stud duty in 2021. His fee has been set at $20,000 S&N.

This year's impressive winner of the Grade 1 Carter Handicap and G1 Met Mile, Vekoma was scratched as the morning-line favorite in Saturday's Breeders' Cup Sprint after spiking a fever upon arrival at Keeneland. He will be given a few days to settle in at Spendthrift before being available for inspection.

“Precocious, brilliantly fast, carried his speed around two turns – you name it, Vekoma could do it. On top of that, he is a Grade 1 winner by a Grade 1 winner and out of a Grade 1 winner, so he's truly a rare package in the breeding world. You won't find a more brilliant or better-bred son of Candy Ride. We are extremely excited about his future at stud and look forward to showing him off to breeders after he's been allowed a few days to settle in here,” said Ned Toffey, Spendthrift general manager. “Any time a horse as good and as deserving as Vekoma does not get the opportunity to run in the Breeders' Cup, you are obviously disappointed for the horse and for the connections. There's so much hard work that gets put in. Ultimately, you have to credit George Weaver and his team for having an incredible season and always doing right by Vekoma through some hard luck at the end.”

Trained by George Weaver for owners R. A. Hill Stable and Gatsas Stables, Vekoma was one of the top racehorses in his crop, capturing graded stakes wins at two, three and four. After breaking his maiden at first asking in 1:08 4/5 at Belmont, the talented chestnut stretched out to win the one-mile G3 Nashua Stakes at Aqueduct to complete an undefeated juvenile campaign.

At three, Vekoma jumped onto the Triple Crown trail, finishing third to Code of Honor in the G2 Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream in his seasonal debut. He went on to score a dominant 3 1/2-length win in the 1 1/8-mile G2 Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland, earning a berth into the Kentucky Derby.

This year, Vekoma was perfect with wins at three different racetracks, kicking off his 4-year-old season with a 3 3/4-length victory in Gulfstream's Sir Shackleton Stakes in March. Vekoma earned his first Grade 1 triumph in the form of a dazzling 7 1/4-length win in the Carter Handicap at Aqueduct, earning a career-high 110 Beyer Speed Figure. He validated his Carter performance with a front-running win in the prestigious Met Mile, defeating Grade 1 winners Code of Honor and McKinzie, among others, while stopping the clock in 1:32 4/5 – just .15 seconds off the stakes record for the 129-year-old fixture in New York.

An earner of $1,245,525, Vekoma was bred in Kentucky by Alpha Delta Stables. He is out of the Speightstown mare Mona de Momma who scored her biggest win as a racehorse in the G1 Humana Distaff on the Kentucky Derby undercard at Churchill. Vekoma's second dam, Society Gal, is a half-sister to successful sire Mr. Greeley.

Vekoma becomes the third Met Mile winner in the last four years to take up stud duty at Spendthrift. Mor Spirit, the 2017 winner, and Mitole, the 2019 winner, both stand at the historic Lexington-based farm.

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Global Campaign Remains Under Pegasus World Cup Consideration After Breeders’ Cup Classic Third

Grade 1 winner Global Campaign was aboard a van to WinStar Farm Sunday morning with Improbable and Tom's d'Etat, each with plans to enter stud at the Versailles, Ky., farm in 2021. Unlike the others, though, Global Campaign's first steps off the trailer might end up being for a layover instead of a final destination.

Elliott Walden, WinStar's president, CEO, and racing manager, said the 4-year-old Curlin colt will be assessed during his time at the farm, and he could return to the barn of trainer Stanley Hough in seven to 10 days to prepare for a final start in the Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup Invitational Stakes on Jan. 23. Though the final decision will be made following the assessment period, Walden said he was “leaning that way” toward sending him back into training.

Global Campaign finished third in the Breeders' Cup Classic at Keeneland on Saturday, capping off a 2020 campaign that has included wins in the G1 Woodward Handicap and G3 Monmouth Stakes. WinStar bred the colt, and owns him in partnership with Sagamore Racing.

Walden said Global Campaign's connections entered the Classic with different long-term plans depending on his performance in the race. He also said the early shape of the potential Pegasus field might play well into the upward trajectory of Global Campaign's development.

“If he'd won the Classic, he'd probably been retired, if he'd ran poorly, he'd be retired, but if he ran a good race without winning, we would consider the possibility [of the Pegasus], and that's exactly what happened,” he said. “With Improbable retiring, and I don't know what Authentic's going to do, but he showed himself [in the Classic]. That was a deep, deep Classic field, one of the deepest we've had in a long time. Global Campaign really ran well. Stan Hough told me he was going to run well, told me he was going to outrun his odds.”

Should Global Campaign be given the green light to try for the Pegasus, Walden said he would join Hough's barn wherever he's needed, most likely going to Palm Meadows Training Center in south Florida.

Global Campaign has won six of 10 career starts for earnings of $1,321,080, also including last year's G2 Peter Pan Stakes.

“He's had a big year,” Walden said. “He's won three out of five, with a win in the Woodward and he won going seven-eighths (an optional claiming race at Gulfstream Park on April 25). When he ran the first start of the year in that seven-eighths allowance race, and he ran extremely fast, that's when we said we wanted to stand him, no matter what happens. We made a deal with Kevin [Plank, owner of Sagamore Racing] to do that. We'd owned a piece of him, but we bought up to make that happen.”

Global Campaign's 2021 stud fee is still to be determined.

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Win Win Win To Stand At Ocala Stud In Florida For 2021

Win Win Win, the impressive winner of the Grade 1 Forego Stakes at Saratoga in his last start, will stand the 2021 breeding season at Ocala Stud.

The Live Oak Stud homebred will stand as the property of a partnership between Live Oak Stud, Airdrie Stud, and Ocala Stud, and his fee has been set at $5,000 S&N.

“We are very excited to add Win Win Win to our roster,” said Ocala Stud's David O'Farrell. “He's a big, grand-looking horse with a lot of presence. His record-setting speed, versatility, and classic bloodline which consists of three Kentucky Derby winners give Win Win Win a great opportunity to become a top sire.”

Trained by Michael Trombetta, Win Win Win lived up to his name on the racetrack. He captured five of his 12 starts and placed in four others en route to earnings of $601,600. Win Win Win concluded his accomplished racing career on a high note, finishing with a flourish to take down top prize in the G1 Forego. In showcasing his impressive turn of foot, he won the seven-furlong event in 1:21.71, defeating four Grade 1 winners, including Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile favorite Complexity.

Last season at three, Win Win Win set a new track record at Tampa Bay Downs in winning the Pasco Stakes, an early prep for the G2 Tampa Bay Derby in his sophomore bow. He drew off powerfully in the seven-furlong test, speeding to a 7 1/4-length score in the stakes and track-record time of 1:20.89, earning a 2 on the Ragozin Sheets.

Demonstrating his versatility, Win Win Win also took down the Manila Stakes at one mile on turf at Belmont Park, polishing off the distance in 1:31.56, just one-fifth of a second off the course record set by Oscar Performance. Prior to that impressive score, Win Win Win finished second to multiple Grade 1 winner Vekoma in the G2 Blue Grass Stakes.

A precocious juvenile, Win Win Win won two of his three starts as a 2-year-old, taking a 6 1/2-furlong maiden special weight at Laurel Park in his career debut before crushing allowance foes by 6 1/2 lengths in a lively 1:02.30 for 5 1/2 furlongs in his next start. He also finished second in the seven-furlong Heft Stakes at Laurel to close out his juvenile campaign.

“The combination of Win Win Win's tremendous talent and the opportunity he will receive at Ocala Stud is why we're so excited to partner on his stallion career,” said Airdrie Stud's Bret Jones. “No one will give this horse a better chance to succeed than Ocala Stud and we look forward to doing our part by supporting him heavily in each of his early years at stud. I know the Live Oak team has always believed he was a genuine star, and we are grateful to Mrs. [Charlotte] Weber for letting Airdrie play a role in his exciting future.”

Classically bred with record-setting speed, Win Win Win, by champion miler and Grade 1 winner Hat Trick (JPN), hails from a deep Live Oak family. A descendant of the Halo sire line—his grandsire is Sunday Silence—Win Win Win is out of a stout female family. His dam is the winning Smarty Jones mare Miss Smarty Pants, a half-sister to Graded stakes winner and multiple Graded stakes-placed Unbridled Humor produced from the stakes-winning and Graded stakes-placed Unbridled mare Devotion Unbridled.

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Unknown Commodities: Mark Casse On Bringing Freshman-Sired Runners Into The Breeders’ Cup

Though we can certainly start to form opinions on the talent and preferences of freshman sires by the fall, no stallion's resume is completely written heading into their first crop's Breeders' Cup.

Up to this point, even the most prolific freshman sires only have a small sampling of horses at the distances and class levels seen during the championship races. Though it can help guide a narrative, a strong or poor performance by one or two runners from a debut crop on one day at a single track does not engrave a sire's capability for putting out a precocious foal.

Trainer Mark Casse has two runners by freshman sires entered in this year's Breeders' Cup races for 2-year-olds, meaning he will be part of the real-time focus group learning about their sires' abilities with the rest of the world. Casse will send Gretzky the Great, by Nyquist, to the Juvenile Turf; and Dirty Dangle, by Not This Time, to the Juvenile Turf Sprint.

This is not to say, though, that Casse is going into these races completely blind to how his runners will perform. Aside from the obvious factors of hands-on experience and the horses' own past performance, the trainer prides himself in doing his homework when it comes to pedigree research.

“At the end of every day, I go through and look at the charts at every major racetrack, and I make mental notes of what sires are doing well on different surfaces,” he said. “I pay a lot of attention, too, to damsires. I'm big on buying out of certain damsires.”

Gretzky the Great flies the banner for sire Nyquist, a member of Darley's stallion roster in Lexington, Ky.

Nyquist was himself part of the record-setting freshman crop for sire Uncle Mo. Both Nyquist and Uncle Mo snagged Eclipse Awards as champion 2-year-old male after winning their respective editions of the Breeders' Cup Juvenile, giving plenty of evidence that Nyquist's foals would be early types.

That has proven out thus far, with Nyquist siring a pair of Grade 1 winners heading into Novemver, making him the only North American freshman sire with more than one graded stakes winner. Nyquist's other Grade 1 winner this season was Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies contender Vequist, who took the G1 Spinaway Stakes earlier this year.

Gretzky the Great added himself to that list when he won the Grade 1 Summer Stakes at Woodbine on Sept. 20, clinching a “Win and You're In” berth to the Juvenile Turf in the process. The Ontario-bred has raced exclusively at Woodbine, breaking his maiden in his second start, then taking the listed Soaring Free Stakes before moving on to the Summer.

“We had high hopes on him from the beginning, but I think he's just gotten bigger, and better, and he's thriving,” Casse said. “He looks tremendous. He moves over the ground great. I believe if you can go a mile at Woodbine with that long stretch, you can pretty well go a mile anywhere. I think the two turns will actually be a benefit for him. He's got enough speed, he's going to be fairly close as long as he breaks well, and I think he'll really like this turf course.”

Nyquist raced exclusively on dirt during his own on-track career, and while Gretzky the Great's dam Pearl Turn started her career in Ireland, all of her wins came over the dirt after returning to the U.S.

Casse said the decision to start Gretzky the Great on the turf was part of his overarching program with his Ontario-based 2-year-olds.

“The pedigree obviously is extremely important, but that's what we do as trainers; we try different things,” he said. “With Gretzky the Great, our Grade 1 race for 2-year-olds is the Summer, so I try to get my horses to at least give them a chance on the grass. It turns out the Nyquists can do anything.”

Nyquist leads a tight race as the leading freshman sire by progeny earnings, with $1,108,381. Tracking closely behind him in second is Taylor Made Stallions' Not This Time, with $1,053,867.

Not This Time will be represented in Casse's barn by Juvenile Turf Sprint contender Dirty Dangle, who is unbeaten in two starts, both at Woodbine.

The filly enters the Juvenile Turf Sprint off a 1 1/4-length closing score in the Woodbine Cares Stakes on Sept. 19. She won on debut over Woodbine's all-weather main track in her debut.

“We purchased her after her last race, so I didn't have the privilege of training her before, but her race on turf at Woodbine was extremely good,” Casse said. “That's what made us purchase her.”

Dirty Dangle now races for Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners and Gary Barber, the same connections that campaign Gretzky the Great.

Not This Time's freshman runners are led by probable Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies favorite Princess Noor, who brought $1.35 million at auction earlier this year, and has gone undefeated in three starts, including a 6 1/2-length score in the G1 Del Mar Debutante Stakes and an 8 1/4-length drubbing of the Chandelier Stakes.

Like Nyquist, Not This Time was a fast-starting 2-year-old during his own time on the racetrack, winning the G3 Iroquois Stakes leading into a runner-up finish in the 2016 Breeders' Cup Juvenile.

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