Bull market on Into Mischief stock continues
The leading sire has another feather in his cap
By Frances J. Karon
There’s not much that perennial leading N. American sire Into Mischief hasn’t already accomplished at stud. And yet, following Citizen Bull’s win in Friday’s G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Del Mar, the sire of 163 stakes winners is finally poised to collect one prize that has eluded him: an Eclipse Award for a 2-year-old champion male.
Into Mischief’s U.S. champions have earned their honors in the 2-year-old filly (Wonder Wheel), 3-year-old male (Authentic, also a Horse of the Year), 3-year-old female (Covfeve and Pretty Mischievous), and female sprinter (Covfefe and Gamine) categories. (In Canada, he’s been represented by champion turf male Conquest Enforcer and champion older female/female sprinter Miss Mischief.) Citizen Bull’s (likely) championship won’t give Into Mischief the complete collection of Eclipse categories, but it certainly adds that much more prestige, if such were even needed, to the illustrious career of a stallion who once covered mares at the blue-collar rate of $7,500 (2011-2012). He achieved the 100 stakes winner milestone in October of 2021 with 10 crops of racing age on the ground, and just three years later, he’s already added 63 more to the tally, so it’s no wonder that Into Mischief, who by year’s end will have his sixth consecutive leading sire title, is about to stand his fourth consecutive season for $250,000 at Spendthrift. (My colleague Sid Fernando wrote about Into Mischief’s “torrid five-year output” here.)
CITIZEN BULL (2022 Into Mischief – No Joke, by Distorted Humor)
B: Robert Low & Lawana Low
O: SF Racing LLC, Starlight Racing, Madaket Stables LLC, Stonestreet Stables LLC, Dianne Bashor, Determined Stables, Robert E. Masterson, Tom J. Ryan, Waves Edge Capital LLC, and Catherine Donovan
T: Bob Baffert
Record: 4-3-0-1, $1,301,000
Highest achievement: Grade 1 winner
Last Auction Price: $675,000 Keeneland September
Citizen Bull is Into Mischief’s eleventh stakes winner from a daughter of Distorted Humor, equating to 14% of all foals of racing age by Into Mischief (a 9% sire of stakes winners) out of mares by Distorted Humor (a 4% broodmare sire of stakes winners). These 11 stakes winners, led by Citizen Bull’s fellow Grade 1 winners Life Is Good and Practical Joke, have 11 different dams. Even the people who claim not to believe in nicks will just stare at the floor when you ask them to explain these numbers.
He may be the first winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile for Into Mischief (and his seventh individual winner of eight Breeders’ Cup races), but Citizen Bull’s immediate family has been there, done that, after Favorite Trick (Phone Trick).
Way back in 1997, when Favorite Trick won the G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile with an ears-pricked 5 1/2-length score under Pat Day, it was the eighth start—and win—of his 2-year-old season, which had begun in April with a maiden-breaking win at the Keeneland spring meet. Joe LaCombe’s colt won seven stakes races that year, including the G1 Hopeful, G2 Breeders’ Futurity, G2 Saratoga Special, and G3 Bashford Manor. So impressive was Favorite Trick that his connections not only took home an Eclipse Award for champion 2-year-old male but also—controversially—the gold Horse of the Year statuette. Favorite Trick was the first (and last) 2-year-old U.S. Horse of the Year since Secretariat in 1972, who’d won seven-of-nine starts as a juvenile, including, like Favorite Trick, the Hopeful.
Now, 27 years after Favorite Trick’s championship campaign in trainer Pat Byrne’s annus mirabilis—Byrne also trained 1997 Breeder’s Cup Juvenile Fillies winner and champion 2-year-old filly Countess Diana (Deerhound)—Citizen Bull is on the verge of becoming the second Breeders’ Cup Juvenile-winning champion 2-year-old colt descending from Evil Elaine (Medieval Man).
Although that time span, 27 years, is a long time in racing—in terms of both horse generations (how many of you remember Favorite Trick?) and number of starts ample enough to earn championship consideration (Citizen Bull has half the starts of Favorite Trick)—in the case of Citizen Bull and Favorite Trick, it’s really not: Favorite Trick’s dam Evil Elaine is the third dam of Citizen Bull. Evil Elaine won only one black-type race, the Coronado S. as a 2-year-old in 1986 at Del Mar, 38 years before her great-grandson Citizen Bull won his Breeders’ Cup race at the same track.
You’re already familiar with the Evil Elaine family, as she’s the fourth dam of Tiz the Law (Constitution), winner of the G1 Champagne at two in 2019 and Classic winner of the Belmont (as well as of the G1 Travers and Florida Derby) at three for trainer Barclay Tagg and owner Sackatoga. Tiz the Law is a hotshot young stallion standing at Coolmore America, with his first crop of 2-year-olds including five stakes winners (two graded), and he will likely be the leading first-crop stallion this year. Grade 1 winner Moonshine Memories (Malibu Moon) is also from the family; she’s a half-sister to the dam of Citizen Bull and is the dam of a winning 2-year-old filly Sadiq (Into Mischief) in Japan.
With Citizen Bull’s trainer Bob Baffert’s Churchill Downs moratorium at an end beginning with the 2025 Kentucky Derby, look for this colt on the Derby trail next year.