Stewart Is Sticking To His Guns, Puca Will Be Sold

[Wandering Eyes]

Coming into the GI Pennsylvania Derby, Puca (Big Brown) may already have been the most valuable broodmare on the planet. But in the 1:48.03 it took to contest that race, she became worth even more. Baeza (McKinzie) won and is now the third son in a row out of Puca to capture a Grade I race.

Puca's owner is John Stewart's Resolute Racing, who announced in August that Puca will be sold at this November's Fasig-Tipton “Night of the Stars” sale. As much as he'd like to keep Puca, he said she will not be pulled from the sale.

“I go into the whole thing with a lot of reservation, just because she's the type of mare that literally loves on you when you go up to her,” Stewart said. “I am very attached to her. But at the same time as a business person, with what just happened with Baeza, there's probably not a better investment that I've made in the industry so far. I love her. I love all the horses on my farm. At the same time, when you make a good investment you have to capitalize on it. Still, It's going to be hard to sell her.”

Stewart bought Puca in 2023 at the Keeneland November Sale for $2.9 million. She had originally RNA'd, but Stewart picked her up post sale.

She had already made her mark as a broodmare as her second foal, Mage (Good Magic) won the 2023 GI Kentucky Derby. Stewart could not have known how much more there was to come.

Her third foal was Dornoch (Good Magic), who won the 2024 GI Belmont Stakes and the 2024 GI Haskell Stakes, increasing Puca's value. Dornoch and Mage have both retired to stud. That left Baeza to be the flag bearer. He had lost four straight, three times to Sovereignty (Into Mischief) and once to Journalism (Curlin). But he never missed by much and made the sport's two best 3-year-olds fight to get the victory. Baeza's win in the Pennsylvania Derby gave Puca three straight Grade I winners, two of them Classic winners.

Puca at Resolute | Sarah Andrew

Stewart said he used AI to look up other dams who have had three straight Grade I winners and said he could only find four worldwide.

“She is such a classy horse. She's fantastic,” Stewart said. “The money we make from this will be reinvested in the future of the farm. You look at what Curlin did for Hill 'n' Dale and what Sadler's Wells did for Coolmore. I'm just fortunate enough that I hit the lottery. That was the first year I bought any horses when I bought her and she RNA'd. There are a lot of people in the industry that should have known a lot better than me. They didn't pick her up when they could have bought her.”

What is Puca worth now? A lot more than $2.9 million. Stewart said he plans to put a $5 million reserve on her. She will not be in foal at the time of the sale. She was bred this year to Into Mischief, but the superstar match did not produce a live foal.

“She's empty right now, so if I were to keep her and breed her I wouldn't see any incremental income for two years,” Stewart said. “A lot can happen as we just saw with Wootton Bassett. She's 13 and if I kept her and bred her one more time then I'd be selling her as a 16-year-old after she had the baby. You have to look at those things. At the end of the day we are definitely sellers.”

Though Puca may soon belong to someone other than Stewart, he owns her next two foals after Baeza. She has a yearling colt and a weanling filly, both by Good Magic which makes them full-siblings to Mage and Dornoch.

“I own both of them, but we haven't named them yet,” he said. “The colt is the one we did the MyRacehorse collaboration with. I own 75% of the horse and the MyRacehorse people own 25%. So I own and control him. The filly, we won't take partners on her and she will not be sold. She's at the farm and we own 100% of here. That's one of the reasons that we look to sell Puca because we have this filly. She's a healthy mare and definitely done some special things.”

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