Mystik Dan and Thorpedo Anna score big for small stallions
Historic Oaks/Derby double for McPeek and Hernandez Jr.
By Frances J. Karon
Nobody anywhere could have had a better weekend than Kenny McPeek and Brian Hernandez Jr., whose partnership at Churchill Downs on Friday and Saturday elevated them to the same plane as Ben A. Jones and Eddie Arcaro, the dominant trainer/jockey team of yesteryear who had pulled off the Oaks/Derby double together when Calumet homebreds Real Delight won the Oaks on May 2, 1952 and Hill Gail the Derby on May 3, 1952. Prior to 1952, trainer Herbert J. “Derby Dick” Thompson and jockey Don Meade had accomplished the same feat in 1933 with E.R. Bradley’s pair of Barn Swallow (Oaks) and Brokers Tip (Derby).
McPeek and Hernandez won the Oaks lilies this past Friday with Thorpedo Anna some 25 hours before they won the Derby roses with Mystik Dan. Thorpedo Anna and Mystik Dan are the first of the Oaks and Derby winners with the same trainer and jockey combination to have different owners.
McPeek’s initial connection to his Derby winner goes back three generations to the colt’s great-grandsire Harlan’s Holiday (Harlan)—McPeek’s first career Grade 1 winner. The trainer sent Harlan’s Holiday out to Grade 1 wins in the Florida Derby at Gulfstream and the Blue Grass at Keeneland in 2002 before saddling him to a seventh-place effort in that year’s Kentucky Derby and a fourth in the Preakness (after which the colt was transferred to Todd Pletcher). At stud, Harlan’s Holiday sired Grade 1 winner and leading sire Into Mischief, who in turn sired 2013 and 2014 Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile winner Goldencents (who ran 17th of 19 runners in the 2013 Derby for trainer Doug O’Neill), the sire of Mystik Dan.
MYSTIK DAN (2021 Goldencents – Ma’am, by Colonel John)
B: Lance Gasaway, Daniel Hamby, and 4 G Racing, LLC
O: Lance Gasaway, 4 G Racing LLC, Daniel Hamby III, and Valley View Farm
T: Kenny McPeek
Record: 7-3-1-1, $3,741,360
Highest achievement: Classic winner
Last Auction Price: none
Homebred Mystik Dan is the second Grade 1 winner in seven crops of racing age by Goldencents, who stands at Spendthrift alongside his sire for a fraction of the price: $10,000 for Goldencents vs. $250,000 for Into Mischief in 2024. Goldencents, who had a career-high stud fee of $25,000 when Mystik Dan was conceived, has 27 stakes winners, while Into Mischief, the sire of 21 individual Grade 1 winners, is one short of a milestone 150 stakes winners. Into Mischief has Kentucky Derby winners Authentic (a fellow Spendthrift stallion, he has first 2-year-olds) and Mandaloun (at Juddmonte with first foals this year), and now he’s the grandsire of one, too.
Mystik Dan is the first Grade 1 winner from 10 stakes winners as a broodmare sire for Colonel John, a son of Tiznow who won the Travers and Santa Anita Derby (and was sixth in the Kentucky Derby), but the cross itself is a proven one: Goldencents already had five-time Grade 3 winner Mr. Money (a Louisiana-based stallion with first 2-year-olds this year), whose dam is by Tiznow, bred this way. Extending it a generation farther back, there’s champion Wonder Wheel, Grade 1 winner Played Hard, and Grade 3 winner Comical (whose dam is a full sister to Colonel John, so she has multiple similarities to the pedigree of Mystik Dan), all by Into Mischief from Tiznow-line mares; and 2024 Keeneland stakes winner Glengarry, a 3-year-old from the first crop of Spendthrift’s Maximus Mischief bred on the same cross.
Mystik Dan held on at the wire by two noses over $2.3 million yearling buy Sierra Leone (Gun Runner) and Japan’s previously undefeated, ¥107,800,000 ($720,603 USD) yearling Forever Young (Real Steel), both highly regarded colts who share the Grade 1-placed stakes-winning mare Darling My Darling (Deputy Minister) as their second dam, through Grade 1-winning daughter Heavenly Love (Malibu Moon; dam of Sierra Leone) and Grade 2-winning daughter Forever Darling (Congrats; dam of Forever Young). The immediate pedigrees of the second and third horses are in contrast to that of winner Mystik Dan, who is the only stakes winner under his first two dams0.
Mystik Dan’s second dam, the winner Lady Siphonica (Siphon), produced Revamp (Tapizar), a highweight in Greece, where there’s no internationally recognized black type, and she’s also the dam of one-time minor stakes-placed Renaissance Art (More Than Ready). Listed-placed third dam Cherokee Crossing (Cherokee Colony) is the dam of Grade 1 winner Siphonic—a full brother to second dam Lady Siphonica—and is the granddam of Grade 1 winner Laragh (Tapit) and Grade 2 winner Summer Front (War Front). Cherokee Crossing is also the third dam of No More Time (Not This Time), a Grade 3 winner in 2024 who had enough points to scrape into this year’s Derby field until a condylar fracture sidelined him in April.
Through his sixth dam, Mystik Dan shares a family with Carson City (Mr. Prospector) and General Meeting (Seattle Slew).
Ma’am, the dam of Mystik Dan, won four of 23 starts and placed eight times, earning $167,923 from ages three to five. She was originally with McPeek, who trained her for two of those wins, at maiden claiming and claming level. Ma’am is also the dam of 2-year-old filly Yes Ma’am (Unified)—her second foal—and a first-crop yearling filly by Knicks Go, who was represented on the Derby undercard with a listed stakes race named in his honor.
Thorpedo Anna sets the tone
McPeek and Hernandez’s notable double kicked off on Friday, when the blue-collar-bred Thorpedo Anna defeated last year’s champion 2-year-old filly Just F Y I (Justify) by 4 3/4 lengths to give the trainer and jockey each their first Kentucky Oaks win. McPeek had previously run second in the race in 2002 when Take Charge Lady (Dehere)—a multiple Grade 1 winner who would go on to be named 2013 Broodmare of the Year in the U.S.—filled that position.
It would have taken some imagination when scouting sales catalogs to envision Thorpedo Anna as a future Kentucky Oaks winner. Offered as a yearling at the Fasig-Tipton October sale in 2022 by James Keogh’s Grovendale Sales, the filly cataloged with two blank dams. (You can see her page here.) Those first two dams, both unraced, had produced no black-type horses between them (although, to be fair, Thorpedo Anna was only the second foal of her dam Sataves).
Factor in that Thorpedo Anna’s sire Fast Anna—a Grade 1-placed, non-stakes-winning, sprinting son of Medaglia d’Oro and champion 2-year-old Dreaming of Anna (Rahy)—had zero graded stakes winners from his, at the time, four crops of racing age, and Thorpedo Anna’s sale of $40,000 was a home run from a seller’s standpoint, in a year when Fast Anna’s yearling average was $15,427 with a median of $10,000. Fast Anna had stood for an advertised fee of $10,000 in 2020—when this crop was conceived—but it’s unlikely that Three Chimneys, where he stood, didn’t cut a break on that price to get the 65 mares he covered.
THORPEDO ANNA (2021 Fast Anna – Sataves, by Uncle Mo)
B: Judy Hicks
O: Brookdale Racing Inc., Mark Edwards, Judy B. Hicks, and Magdalena Racing (Sherri McPeek)
T: Kenny McPeek
Record: 5-4-1-0, $1,430,663
Highest achievement: Grade 1 winner
Last Auction Price: $40,000 Fasig-Tipton October
McPeek has an eye for spotting inexpensive sale horses by non-marketable sires and that often have light pedigrees, and he’s never been shy to pull the trigger if he likes an individual with a commercially bad page. Take, for example, his Preakness-winning filly, champion and triple Grade 1 winner Swiss Skydiver (Daredevil). He bought her for $35,000 in 2019; she earned over $2.2 million and was sold in 2021 for $4.7 million as a broodmare prospect. McPeek also isn’t afraid of well-bred horses with vet and/or conformational issues, as in the case of Horse of the Year and leading sire Curlin (Smart Strike), who he’d bought as a yearling for $57,000 (but raced only for trainers Helen Pitts and Steve Asmussen).
When Thorpedo Anna—the filly with two blank dams by a sire with no graded stakes-quality horses in four crops—was knocked down to McPeek for $40,000, it seemed a princely sum based on sire performance and pedigree page.
It’s not to say that Thorpedo Anna doesn’t have any pedigree; her second dam Pacific Sky (Stormy Atlantic) is a half-sister to Grade 1 winner Eskendereya (Giant’s Causeway) and Group 1 winner Balmont (Stravinsky), as well as to the winning dam of Grade 3-placed stakes winner Jessica Krupnick, whose sire Uncle Mo is the broodmare sire of Thorpedo Anna.
Fast Anna passed away in February of 2021, so Thorpedo Anna is from his final crop. He’s sired 14 stakes winners in those five crops, and Thorpedo Anna is his sole graded winner from 279 foals.
Her broodmare sire Uncle Mo, on the other hand, has a profile on the rise in this capacity. (Read Sid Fernando on that here.) Thorpedo Anna is the third Grade 1 winner produced from one of his daughters, and the fourth overall stakes winner by a son of Medaglia d’Oro from an Uncle Mo mare; the others include Grade 2 winner Instant Coffee (Bolt d’Oro). Uncle Mo is also represented in 2024 by Grade 1 winner Muth (Good Magic), who is targeting the Preakness later this month.
Thorpedo Anna—whose Oaks win coincided with the 150th the Kentucky Derby*—has a connection to the 100th Derby, won by Cannonade (Bold Bidder) in 1974. Cannonade’s dam Queen Sucree (Ribot)—a half-sister (with one ovary) to Halo, the sire of 1989 Derby winner Sunday Silence, who is the paternal great-grandsire of 2024 Kentucky Derby third Forever Young (Real Steel)—is the sixth dam of Thorpedo Anna. Queen Sucree shared her granddam Almahmoud with Northern Dancer and was herself the granddam of Stephan’s Odyssey (Danzig), who was second in the 1985 Kentucky Derby and Belmont.
*2024 is the 150th year the Kentucky Oaks has been run, but there were two divisions of the race in 1959, so technically, this year was the 151st Oaks.
Odds and ends: McPeek, whose trainee Tejano Run was second in the 1995 Derby, has accomplished a patchwork Triple Crown, with 2024 Kentucky Derby winner (Mystik Dan), 2020 Preakness winner (Swiss Skydiver), and 2002 Belmont winner (Sarava) across a spread of 22 years…Another son of Into Mischief, Audible (at WinStar), was on display at Churchill over the weekend. Audible, whose first foals are three, got his second graded stakes winner when My Mane Squeeze won the G2 Eight Belles on the Oaks undercard. The second dam of My Mane Squeeze is by Carson City, a member of Mystik Dan’s extended family…Into Mischief was also represented as the sire of Almostgone Rocket, the winner of the allowance optional claimer that immediately followed the Oaks; and as the sire of the sire of Raging Torrent (Maximus Mischief), winner of the allowance optional claimer that immediately followed the Derby…Trikari, who won the G2 American Turf on Derby day, is by Mill Ridge’s Oscar Performance (who, as we’ve mentioned before, is having a phenomenal year) out of a mare by Harlan’s Holiday, the great-grandsire of the Derby winner. (Harlan’s Holiday is also the broodmare sire of G1 Derby City Distaff winner Vahva). Oscar Performance is by Kitten’s Joy, whose dam Kitten’s First (Lear Fan) is the third dam of Oaks sire Fast Anna.
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