DAVID COYLE
Bloodstock world views
Into Mischief: once available for as little as $7,500, North America’s champion sire today commands a fee of $225,000
age at three. The first, Menifee, was runner-up in the first two legs of the 1999 Triple Crown and the second was Into Mischief’s sire Harlan’s Holiday, who was conceived at a fee of only $5,000. Bred in Ohio, where he was to make some of his early starts, Harlan’s Holiday went into training with Ken McPeek. Whereas Harlan had never raced as a two-year-old, his son made six juvenile starts, five of them at stakes level, and he was never worse than second. Harlan’s Holiday’s four stakes victories earned him a weight of 114 on an Experimental Free Handicap topped by Johannesburg at 126lb. He was even more effective at three, when a ten-race campaign yielded Grade 1 victories in the Florida Derby and Blue Grass Stakes. Another ninefurlong Grade 1 race – the Donn Handicap – fell to Harlan’s Holiday as a four-year-old, but his International Classification of 118 placed him 15lb below top-ranked Hawk Wing. While clearly tough and talented, Harlan’s Holiday fell some way short of the very best, as he showed when only seventh when favourite for the Kentucky Derby. The possibility existed, though, that this son of a sprinter didn’t have the stamina for distances beyond a mile and an eighth. With a less-than-fashionable sire, Harlan’s Holiday was priced at $17,500 when he took up stallion duties at Airdrie Stud in 2004 – a year which saw his fellow newcomers Empire Maker and
Mineshaft command fees of $100,000. On the plus side, his original trainer McPeek was full of admiration for the colt, once commenting that “he’s got so much speed and it’s tactical speed. He’s just a very talented horse, a very easy horse to handle. He’s push-button, no problem.” There was also plenty to admire about the bottom half of his pedigree. In addition to having the Triple Crown winner Affirmed as his broodmare sire, his third dam was Princessnesian, a top-class racemare who was also a half-sister to the important stallion Boldnesian and to some very good broodmares. Airdrie Stud has an enviable reputation for making stallions and Harlan’s Holiday wasted no time in making his mark, going close to first-crop sire honours in 2007, with the help of five individual stakes winners led by Into Mischief. There appeared to be no special reason to expect Into Mischief to be anything out of the ordinary. He was the third foal of Leslie’s Lady, a daughter of the Grade 2-winning stallion Tricky Creek. Conceived at a fee of only $2,500. Leslie’s Lady was sold twice as a yearling, for only $8,000 and $27,000. To her credit, Leslie’s Lady became a stakes winner, but only at Hoosier Park in the backwater of Indiana. In the circumstances breeder James T Hines Jr must have been satisfied when Leslie’s
Lady’s colt by Harlan’s Holiday sold for $80,000 as a yearling at Fasig-Tipton in October. However, that satisfaction was no doubt diminished when the colt was resold less than six months later for $180,000 at Ocala in Florida. The colt’s sale at Ocala was to prove central to Into Mischief’s career, as his purchaser was B Wayne Hughes, owner of Spendthrift Farm, where Into Mischief has been based since the start of 2009. The story goes that Hughes’ team had considerable difficulty choosing between two very similar Harlan’s Holiday colts at Ocala before finally opting for Into Mischief, after reviewing the video of his work on the dirt track. He had worked a furlong in :10 2/5 seconds, just 2/5ths of a second slower than the fastest works. Interestingly, Into Mischief’s buyer was .the sale’s leading purchaser, picking up four youngsters for $1.05 million, with Into Mischief the cheapest of the four. One member of the selection team had pointed out that Into Mischief was a little over at the knee, but trainer Richard Mandella wasn’t concerned, and how right he was! After allowing the colt time to recover from his sales exertions, Mandella was rewarded with two wins and a second from three starts in California. Into Mischief was impressive on his debut on the Cushion Track at Santa Anita on October 21, setting fractions of :21.87 and :44.58 on his way to a final time of 1:14.36 for six and a half furlongs. After a second place in the
THE OWNER BREEDER 59
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