WHAT a couple of days it was for leading American sire Into Mischief (Harlan’s Holiday), and for Spendthrift Farm in Kentucky where the six-time reigning champion stallion stands.

On Saturday, the farm’s homebred Tommy Jo (Into Mischief) won the Grade 1 Spinaway Stakes for fillies at Saratoga, the first top-flight juvenile contest of the year in the USA, and two days later Ted Noffey (Into Mischief) took the colt’s Hopeful Stakes, ironically sponsored by Spendthrift.

Both were winning for the second time, and on their second start, and became their sire’s 26th and 27th Grade 1 winners. Todd Pletcher trains both.

This is another stellar year for Into Mischief, with three more Grade 1 winners and all from his crop of three-year-olds. Sovereignty won both legs of the Triple Crown he contested, the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes, and in the past fortnight added the Travers Stakes to that tally. He has won more than €5 million, and is now hot on the heels of Laurel River (almost €7 million) and Authentic (just over €6 million) in his quest to become the leading money winner by Into Mischief.

Patch Adams has twice won at Grade 1 level in Saratoga, most recently the H Allen Jerkens Memorial on the same day and the same card that Sovereignty took the Travers. Into Mischief’s other 2025 Grade 1 winner Tappen Street, who beat Sovereignty to win the Florida Derby, is out of action. Hopes are that he will be back later this year. If you want to beat a son of Into Mischief, you need another!

Stud career

Into Mischief has spent his entire stud career at Spendthrift, retiring there in 2009. While he started out at a fee of some $10,000, this dropped to a low of $7,500 for two seasons. Success has seen it rise from 2013 onwards, getting to a high of $250,000 in 2022. It has remained at that since. Now 20 years old, Into Mischief shows no sign of slowing down, and with four Grade 1 winners among his three-year-olds and now two more among his juveniles, he would seem to be getting even better.

Proof of Into Mischief’s continued popularity can be seen from the recent results of the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Select Yearling Sale.

Four of his nine lots sold realised seven-figure sums, Coolmore and White Birch spending $4.1 million for the first foal out of a Grade 2-placed daughter of Tapit (Pulpit). Resolute Bloodstock gave $3 million for a son of stakes winner and Grade 1 runner-up Lady Kate (Bernardini), while Spendthrift bought a son of Grade 1 winner I’m A Chatterbox (Munnings) for $2.6 million.

Watch out for some 70 of his sons and daughters due to sell at Keeneland this month.

Special name for a special filly

I WONDER what the Grade 1 Spinaway Stakes winner Tommy Jo (Into Mischief) would have realised if she went to the sales last year?

She is the second offspring out of Mother Mother (Pioneerof The Nile), and the second sired by Spendthrift’s Into Mischief. Tommy Jo has now booked herself a ticket for the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, though we will see her again before then.

Tommy Jo is named after the only granddaughter of Spendthrift’s owner Eric Gustavson. Her full-sister McKechnie (Into Mischief) has raced three times and shown little ability. As her last start was back in mid-February, perhaps McKechnie has already been to the covering shed. If not, how important it would be to get any type of a winning bracket for her.

Mother Mother was a smart two-year-old who sold to Spendthrift at the end of her third season racing for $1.8 million. She won a listed race at Santa Anita and a stakes race at Churchill Downs, while her placed efforts were headed by a runner-up finish behind multiple top-flight winner Bellafina in the Grade 1 Debutante Stakes at Del Mar. She ran third in a pair of Grade 1 races, namely the La Brea Stakes and Starlet Stakes.

The only stakes winner out of Mother (Lion Hearted), Mother Mother is a half-sister to Commanding Curve (Master Command). A rig, he put up a career-best performance as an outsider to finish less than two lengths behind California Chrome in second spot in the 2014 Grade 1 Kentucky Derby. You then have to go back to Tommy Jo’s fourth dam to find the next stakes winners. She was Proper Miss (Tom Rolfe) and she won a listed race at Oaklawn Park, her best win among five victories.

Winner’s sire plays large role in success

WHILE there is certainly nothing wrong with the families of the Grade 1 Spinaway Stakes winner Tommy Jo or the Grade 1 Hopeful Stakes winner Ted Noffey, it is clear that their sire Into Mischief played a major role in upgrading the pedigrees.

That said, both of these winners are out of talented racemares, even if their back pedigrees would best be described as solid.

Ted Noffey was bred in Kentucky by Aaron and Marie Jones, and sold to Spendthrift as a yearling for $650,000. That was just a fair price, given the cost of the sire’s covering fee, and the fact that the couple paid $620,000 for the colt’s dam Streak Of Luck (Old Fashioned) carrying her first foal. He is the three-year-old colt Fully Authorized (Authentic), and what a disappointment it was when he sold as a yearling for $50,000.

The following spring, Fully Authorized doubled in value when trading on as a breezer. He won two of his five starts last year at two, and contested a couple of stakes races, but he has only managed a single place in 10 starts this year. At least he has been successful, giving his dam Streak Of Light a perfect record with her first two starters. That mare foaled a full-brother to Ted Noffey this spring, and she also has a yearling filly by Munnings (Speightstown) who is Lot 150 at the upcoming sale in Keeneland.

Streak Of Luck is one of four winners out of Valeria (Elusive Quality). That mare did not race until the age of four and failed to even place in six starts. She raced on at five and six, winning a maiden at Hollywood Park and a claiming race at Sunland Park. Streak Of Luck is one of six winners produced by Lindsay Jean (Saint Ballado), a Grade 3 winner who tasted success on seven occasions. Last year, Lindsay Jean’s granddaughter Moment’s Pleasure (Clubhouse Ride) won a stakes race at Del Mar.

As I said earlier, this is a solid but far from top-class female line. Lindsay Jean had two stakes-winning siblings, Honour Colony (Honour And Glory) and Crozet (Charismatic), gaining their biggest wins at Canterbury Park and Bay Meadows.