#US RACING: Another record year for top sire Into Mischief

Spendthrift Farm's multiple leading sire Into Mischief   scored a double last year by earning his second leading North American sire title and breaking the single-season progeny earnings record. Now he's poised to do it all again for 2021.

The 16-year-old son of Harlan's Holiday has already secured the first leg of his 2021 double by cruising past last year's single-season record of US$22,422,602, which made him the first North American stallion whose progeny earnings exceeded US$20 million in a given year.

Into Mischief got a huge bump in progeny earnings during the Breeders' Cup World Championships with Big Ass Fans Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile (G1) winner Life Is Good  and Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Sprint (G1) third-place finisher Gamine  securing a combined US$610,000 in purses, but it was an allowance level win Nov. 7 by a 4-year-old stakes winner at Laurel Park that rewrote the record book.

The Spendthrift stallion had consecutive winners Nov. 7 at Laurel. His 3-year-old daughter Juror Number Four  teed up the single-season record by winning race 7 on the card, a six-furlong allowance race that she won by 4 1/4 lengths. As the bay filly owned by Cash is King and LC Racing exited the winner's circle, her sire needed only US$12,822 to break the record. In the following race was Kiss the Girl, a 4-year-old daughter of Into Mischief and the 6-5 favorite in a US$61,880 allowance optional claimer going nine furlongs on the dirt. The filly, ridden by Feargal Lynch and trained by Michael Trombetta for Three Diamonds Farm, stalked the pace and then blew to the front at the top of the stretch to win by 4 3/4 lengths. She earned US$35,880 for the victory.

Kiss the Girl has now won three times and been second three times out of nine starts this year. She had already won stakes this year at Pimlico Race Course and Laurel ahead of her allowance win Nov. 7, making her one of 26 black-type stakes winners sired by Into Mischief this year, which is also more than any other North American sire for 2021.

Just as Into Mischief's progeny have done since they began racing in 2011, the foot is still heavy on the gas pedal. The sire has been represented by 14 more wins in the past two weeks and his earnings exceed US$23 million as of Nov. 19.

Into Mischief has essentially wrapped up the leading sire title for the year with a winning margin of more than UUS$7.27 million ahead of second-ranked sire Ghostzapper  , who stands at Hill 'n' Dale at Xalapa, on the BloodHorse's general leading sire list. It should be noted that the BloodHorse sire rankings are derived from Northern Hemisphere racing only and standardize earnings for races in Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore due to the large discrepancy in purses compared with North America. Into Mischief has been represented in Japan this year by five runners and a runner in Singapore. When adjustments are made to their earnings, Into Mischief is credited with US$22,467,748 on the BloodHorse leading sires list—still higher than his unadjusted progeny earnings record from 2020 and more than enough to seal his third consecutive sire title by the end of the year.