NZRB Turnover and News

Breeders' Cup has announced that 14 countries on five continents will host 'Win and You're In' qualifiers in 2026 as the Challenge Series enters its 20th year. A selection of the premier contests in Argentina, Canada, Chile, England, France, Ireland, Japan, Peru, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Uruguay feature as part of the 2026 Challenge Series. The 45-race international schedule is available to view here, with the North American portion of the Challenge Series, including races in Canada, set to be announced in the spring when racing schedules have been finalised. In addition, Breeders' Cup has allocated a record $6.5 million in free entry fees to this year's 'Win and You're In' qualifiers, with all winners guaranteed a starting position in a corresponding race at the 43rd Breeders' Cup World Championships, which take place at Keeneland in Lexington, Kentucky on October 30-31. “Global participation is a cornerstone of the Breeders' Cup, and the Challenge Series remains the premier pathway for horsemen worldwide to secure automatic qualification for the World Championships,” said Dora Delgado, Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Officer of Breeders' Cup Limited. “We are grateful to the racing authorities and partner organizations spanning five continents for their continued commitment, which is essential to the strength of the Challenge Series, and we anticipate another outstanding edition of the World Championships at Keeneland this fall.” Last year, 46 Challenge Series winners competed at the Breeders' Cup at Del Mar and three won their respective divisional races: Forever Young in the $7 million Longines Breeders' Cup Classic; Notable Speech in the $2 million FanDuel Breeders' Cup Mile; and Ted Noffey in the $2 million FanDuel Breeders' Cup Juvenile. The 2026 Challenge Series launched in December last year, with Obataye winning an entry to the $5 million Longines Breeders' Cup Turf through the G1 Gran Premio International Carlos Pellegrini Stakes in Argentina. On January 6, the international action continued with Herr Kitten securing a berth in the $1 million Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile via the G3 Gran Premio Pedro Pineyrua in Uruguay. Obataye and Herr Kitten, along with every other Challenge Series winner based outside of North America, will be offered a $40,000 travel allowance by Breeders' Cup. In order to receive the reward, each winner must be nominated to the Breeders' Cup programme by the pre-entry deadline of Monday, October 19. The post Fourteen Countries to Host ‘Win and You’re In’ Qualifiers for 2026 Breeders’ Cup appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article

The already struggling racing and breeding industries in New Jersey were hit by potentially devastating news on Wednesday when it was reported that there are bills afloat in the state capital in Trenton that could eventually allow Monmouth Park to reduce its meet to 25 days a year. Is this the beginning of the end for one of the sport's most iconic and picturesque tracks? Not necessarily. (I'll get to that later). But it's hard not to be pessimistic about Monmouth's future. As with so many things that have become the real wheels that now make this sport churn, this is all about alternative sources of revenue from gaming. Monmouth is to the East Coast what Santa Anita is to the West Coast. The first casino opened in Atlantic City, New Jersey way back in 1978. Over the next 48 years, Monmouth, along with the Meadowlands, has fought the good fight. Those in charge have done everything imaginable to try to get casinos or at least slot machines to call their own or to get the Atlantic City casinos to do something to help the horse racing game. But the casinos have immense political power, particularly in the southern half of the state, and their many cronies won't budge. They have protected Atlantic City at all costs. Horse racing be damned. A band-aid was offered in 2019 when then-Governor Phil Murphy approved a $20 million package from the state to supplement purses. Half went to Monmouth and half went to the Standardbred industry. With that money, Monmouth was able to hold a 50-day meet, which didn't include nine extra days of all-turf Thoroughbred racing at the Meadowlands. By today's standards, the purses weren't anything special and the meet was way shorter than it needed to be. But, with the $10 million, Monmouth Park got by. But there have been strings attached. The purse subsidies were often guaranteed for only one year at a time and that left the Monmouth team to return each year to Trenton to all but beg for more help. The other problem is that on Jan. 20, Murphy will no longer be the governor. This is the day that new governor, Mikie Sherrill, will be sworn in. She seems like a reasonable person and, as a fellow Democrat, has never seemed to have issues with Murphy or anything that he has done. She has given no indication that she will be an Atlantic City sycophant. But no one has any idea how Sherrill feels about horse racing and its place in the future of her state. If Sherrill does continue with the purse subsidies, then Monmouth's future will be safe, at least in the short term. The other hope is that, finally, some form of casino gaming will come to the state's racetracks. Legislation that approved casinos in the New York City metropolitan area is now in effect and three casinos are set to open within the five boroughs. The timeline is anywhere from this spring to 2030. One will be at the site of Aqueduct, which will cease being a racetrack later this year and will become a full-fledged casino rather than a “racino” with limited gaming options. Jeff Gural, the owner of the Meadowlands, is as perceptive as they come and has a lot of friends in political circles. He has expressed optimism that, with the new New York casinos just a short drive from the New York-New Jersey borders, politicians in the Garden State will finally wake up and put a stop to the exodus of New Jersey casino gamblers heading to New York and Pennsylvania, contributing nothing to the state they live in. Picnics at Monmouth Park | Sarah Andrew Barring the unforeseen, Monmouth is not going to get a casino. It is too far away from New York City and too close to Atlantic City. But should the Meadowlands get a casino, the conventional wisdom is that it will be required to split the revenue with the Thoroughbred game. The Meadowlands sits in the middle of one of the most densely populated areas in the country, and a casino there would surely be among the most successful on the planet. There's that, but there's also the harsh reality of a possibly dire situation. Dennis Drazin, who heads the management team that runs the racetrack, has said that he does not want to cut dates but has to keep that option open if the purse subsidy goes away. “We have no intention of ever cutting days unless we're forced do so because we don't have revenue,” Drazin told the TDN. “If we don't have revenue, then our choice is do we close down the operation or do we go to the horsemen and ask them to reduce days?” The problem with his logic is that a 25-day meet will never work. The first blow would be to the state's breeding industry, which is already hanging on by a thread. With a guarantee of only 25 days of racing, no one is going to breed a horse in the state. The larger issue is that finding horsemen to stable and race at Monmouth with only 25 days of racing available to them will prove to be an impossibility. What trainer is going to come to Monmouth when there will be so many better options in the Mid-Atlantic region? All they have to do is look some 70 miles to the west at Parx, where there is year-round racing, fat purses and the state's breeding program is thriving. For someone who has lived most of his life within a short distance of Monmouth Park, I find this highly upsetting. It is where my father used to take me to the track almost every Saturday and taught me to love the sport. (You still had to wear a jacket and a tie to get into the clubhouse in those days). It was where I had my first “real job” as a horse racing journalist, covering what was then a robust Garden State-Monmouth- Meadowlands circuit for the Daily Racing Form. It is a beautiful place with an atmosphere not unlike that at Del Mar. It is nestled next to the Atlantic Ocean and an afternoon spent there on a beautiful summer day at the Jersey Shore is an afternoon spent in heaven. If you've ever been there, you know exactly what I mean. But times have dramatically changed, and the sport has lost way too many racetracks in recent years, and there are legitimate fears about the future of racing in California and Florida. Will Monmouth Park be the next to be given its last rites? I hope not. But I fear that it will. The post A Sobering Day For Monmouth Park: An Analysis appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article

Unbeaten in five career starts, Juddmonte homebred Disco Time (Not This Time) will put his perfect record on the line in the $3-million GI Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream Park Jan. 24. “At the moment, he's got a lot of unknown about him,” Juddmonte USA General Manager Garrett O'Rourke said. “He's coming off two impressive performances, he's unbeaten and he's by the hottest stallion out there. Those are all the positives. I suppose the negatives are, well, what has he beaten yet? He's out of a sprinter, does he want to go 1 1/8 miles? We're gonna find out if he's up to that level, we hope he is. At some stage or another, you've got to step up.” O'Rourke continued, “If we didn't have to give him so much time off, you'd like to have answered those questions last year, but that's just the way it happened.” After beginning his career with a pair of victories in the fall of his 2-year-old season at Churchill Downs, Disco Time aced his two-turn debut with a visually impressive, come-from-behind win in the GIII Lecomte S. going 1 1/16 miles in the slop at Fair Grounds last January. Bone bruising, however, subsequently knocked Disco Time off the 2025 Triple Crown trail. “He had a rough race when he won the Lecomte, but we were still moving forward,” O'Rourke said. “You get out a few weeks and you're planning on taking the next step and wondering, 'Which one do we go for?' But then he's not quite the same. Nothing major, but he's got bone bruising. At that stage, you've lost all hopes for the Triple Crown. It's just a bad time of the year for it to happen. He took a little bit longer and we had to give him extra time. When the horse came right, all of sudden (trainer) Brad (Cox) was like, 'Ok, he's turned the corner.'” Disco Time resurfaced with a dominating wire-to-wire tally in the St. Louis Derby at Fairmount Park Sept. 19, then put on a show versus three overmatched rivals in the Dwyer S. at Aqueduct Nov. 8, good for a career-high 107 Beyer Speed Figure. Disco Time has won his last two starts by a combined 15 1/4 lengths. He has been favored in all five of his career starts. Others pointing for the Pegasus include: Disco Time's stablemate and GI Curlin Florida Derby winner Tappan Street (Into Mischief); Pegasus defending winner White Abarrio (Race Day); GI Malibu S. winner Goal Oriented (Not This Time); 2024 GI Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile winner Full Serrano (Arg) (Full Mast); and Louisiana sensation Touchuponastar (Star Guitar). “He's got a lot of questions to answer, but we're sure looking forward to it,” O'Rourke said. Disco Time is one of 33 graded winners for leading young sire Not This Time. He was produced by the Jump Start mare Disco Chick, a four-time stakes winner of $735,250. She brought just $35,000 from RPM Thoroughbreds at the 2022 Keeneland November sale. The 15-year-old had a filly by Yaupon last year and was bred back to Justify. The post Pegasus World Cup Up Next for Unbeaten Disco Time appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article

In this continuing series, we take a look ahead at US-bred and/or conceived runners entered for the upcoming weekend at the tracks on the Japan Racing Association circuit, with a focus on pedigree and/or performance in the sales ring. Here are the horses of interest for this Saturday and Sunday running at Kyoto Racecourse: Saturday, January 10, 2026 4th-KYO, ¥15,620,000 ($100k), Allowance, 3yo, 1800m JUSTIN DALLAS (JPN) (c, 3, Gun Runner–Pink Sands, by Tapit) shaped with much promise on debut over this course and distance Oct. 5, finishing second to Pyromancer (Jpn) (Pyro), who would return to add the Listed Zen-Nippon Nisai Yushun to take the lead on the Japan Road to the Kentucky Derby. The bay, who graduated by 1 1/4 lengths at odds of 1-10 Nov. 22, is out of a dual graded-stakes winning daughter of GISW Her Smile (Include) who fetched $2.3 million in foal to Into Mischief at the 2021 Keeneland November Sale. O-Masahiro Miki; B-EM Planning LLC; T-Haruki Sugiyama Sunday, January 11, 2026 2nd-KYO, ¥12,330,000 ($79k), Newcomers, 3yo, 1800m PETRICHOR (JPN) (f, 3, Justify–Nicest {Ire}, by American Pharoah) is the first foal to the races for her dam, third in the G2 Ribblesdale Stakes and G1 Irish Oaks for Coolmore and Donnacha O'Brien in 2021 before closing that season with a runner-up effort in the GI American Oaks when carrying the silks of Katsumi Yoshida. Irish Oaks victress Chiquita (Ire) (Montjeu {Ire}) is this filly's second dam, and her three winners also includes MGSW & G1SP Emily Dickinson (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}). Third dam Prudenzia (Ire) (Danehill) produced the globetrotting Magic Wand (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}). Petrichor debuts in the Sunday Racing colors on Sunday. O-Sunday Racing Co Ltd; B-Northern Racing; T-Hiroyuki Uemura The post Gun Runner Colt Justin Dallas Goes For Two Straight at Kyoto appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article

It feels like just yesterday that the bloodstock world was lauding the record-breaking achievement of Mehmas in 2024, the year that he sired no fewer than 70 individual two-year-old winners in Europe, smashing the previous record tally of 61 which belonged to his neighbour at Tally-Ho Stud, Kodiac. Time waits for no one in this game, however, and so it is that we now head into the 2026 breeding season with three of those 70 having already found themselves a place at stud. They include Ballyhane's new recruit Magnum Force, winner of the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint, and G1 National Stakes scorer Scorthy Champ, whose arrival at Barton Stud marks its return as a stallion operation after two decades. Completing the trio of newcomers for Mehmas is Aesterius at Terry and Margaret Holdcroft's Bearstone Stud, an ever-present name in the business of standing stallions since the G3 Greenlands Stakes hero Puissance arrived at the Market Drayton farm back in 1991. He went on to be crowned the leading first-season sire in Britain in 1994, a feat which the Bearstone team later repeated with his son, Mind Games, in 2000, Firebreak in 2009 and Indesatchel in 2010. Certainly, if Aesterius is to emulate his sire and prove himself as a reliable producer of precocious juveniles, then he could hardly be in a better place to launch that career than 'the source of speed', as the Bearstone slogan goes. “All of our stallions have been sort of speed horses,” stud manager Mark Pennell says of a modus operandi which sees Aesterius joined at Bearstone by the former champion sprinter Dream Ahead and the Royal Ascot-winning juvenile Washington DC. “That is what we base our results on and every year we have around 60 winners off the stud, which proves that we're breeding good two-year-olds and fast two-year-olds. Hopefully, he [Aesterius] will do the same for us.”     Aesterius himself compiled a race record at two that immediately marked him out as a high achiever, even among his sire's eight stakes-winning juveniles in Europe that year. In a seven-race campaign for Archie Watson and Wathnan Racing, Aesterius won four times over the minimum trip, as well as chasing home the subsequent Group 1 winner Big Mojo (Mohaather) in the G3 Molecomb Stakes. He followed that near miss at Goodwood with a first Group success in the G3 Prix d'Arenberg at Deauville, before turning the tables on Big Mojo, with Magnum Force back in third, when enjoying his career highlight in the G2 Flying Childers Stakes at Doncaster. His first career triumph, meanwhile, by nearly three lengths in a Bath novice, came less than five weeks after his blockbuster performance at the Goffs UK Doncaster Breeze-up Sale, the first opportunity for him to showcase the raw talent that he will be tasked with trying to pass on to his progeny. “He went to the breeze-up sales and he was one of the top lots that year at £380,000, which was a good price,” Pennell recalls. “He'd obviously breezed well and had potential – and he proved that once he hit the track. “He was a great two-year-old. He won the Flying Childers, he was second in the Molecomb and he won the Group 3 in France, so he was very precocious and proved his worth.” He adds, “It [the Flying Childers] has produced some very good stallions over the years, the likes of Ardad and A'Ali, very speedy horses who turned out to be decent sires. There's a good chance that they're going to put that speed into their stock so, fingers crossed, that will work out once again.” Of course, in any mating the characteristics of the mare being covered are just as important, if not more, when it comes to what you might expect of the resulting foal. In this regard, you can rest assured that the Bearstone broodmare band will be doing their own bit to steer things in the desired direction. “He'll be getting some of our top-class, speedy mares,” Pennell reveals. “He'll be getting around 25 of our mares, all very speedy mares and some of our best mares. We'll be promoting him ourselves and hoping to get him off to a good start.” For any stallion that good start is essential, especially in the current climate where so many are written off before they've had the chance to prove themselves. Nor is there the luxury of resting on your laurels with an established sire such as Dream Ahead, who is responsible for four top-level winners in Europe, including Bearstone's homebred champion Glass Slippers, but has struggled to sustain the support he received in his first season at the farm in 2022. Washington DC, meanwhile, made the breakthrough as a Group 1 sire in 2025 when his American Affair won the King Charles III Stakes at Royal Ascot, but he too has found himself lacking in outside support in recent years. “It's become very difficult and it's getting harder and harder,” Pennell says of the challenge of standing stallions as a small independent stud. “When I came into the industry, first-season sires were limited to 40 or 60 mares. Now, they're covering over 200. So, on a stud based in the Midlands like us, it's always been difficult, and it's getting harder and harder. You've got the proven sires who are going to soak up the majority of the mares, so you're just hoping that the smaller commercial breeders will push on and use the stallion [Aesterius] and get good results from him.” Compared to last year, when only three specifically Flat stallions – Bradsell, Isaac Shelby and Vandeek – joined the ranks in Britain, stallion masters can perhaps count themselves unlucky to be launching a sire in 2026 given the apparent abundance of fresh new options. Similarly spoilt for choice are the small breeders who rowed in behind Mehmas in the early days, even if his fee of €70,000 is no longer within their budget. Instead, they can get their fix from one of his eight stallion sons at stud in Europe, with the aforementioned trio being joined by Supremacy at Yeomanstown, Caturra at Overbury, Minzaal at Derrinstown, Persian Force at Tally-Ho and Lusail at Haras de Bouqetot. Too much of a good thing or the beginning of a dynasty for a stallion whose own first crop yielded 55 individual juvenile winners back in 2020? Only time will tell but, at £6,500, Pennell is confident that Aesterius offers exceptional value, whilst possessing all of the attributes required to follow in the footsteps of some of his predecessors at the stud as an immediate hit. “It certainly played a big part,” Pennell says of Mehmas' impressive record and the way in which that influenced the decision to bring Aesterius to Bearstone. “We were at the sales and [Wathnan's racing adviser] Richard Brown approached us and asked us if we'd be interested. We went over to see him and, as soon as we saw him, we knew he was the right article. He's a very classy-looking horse and a great walker. “Obviously, Mehmas has done amazing things and produced some really top-class horses. Aesterius is one of the most exciting of his produce, so it's nice to have some of that blood in England and we've set a competitive price with him for commercial breeders. “We feel that he's very good value for money. He's by the sire of the moment, and he's going to get some perfect mares for him from us, so he should have every chance of being a good first-season sire.” The post Bearstone Stud, ‘The Source Of Speed’, Bolstered by Arrival of Aesterius appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article