The real deal

Authentic backed up his Kentucky Derby victory in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

He has helped sire Into Mischief produce “the most spectacular rise through the stallion ranks since his great-grandsire Storm Cat.”

Alan Porter reviews the Breeders' Cup Classic

TWENTY-TWENTY has been quite the year. In the US, in addition to a calamitous handling of the world-wide COVID-19 virus, 2020 has also been marked by more civil unrest than at any time since the Vietnam protests of the 1960s and 1970s, and closed out with a nail-biting presidential election followed by the loser refusing to concede.

Within the microcosm of a microcosm that is North American racing, however, 2020 has been the year of Into Mischief, the 15-year-old sire, who has made the most spectacular rise through the stallion ranks since his great-grandsire Storm Cat, who retired to stud more than 30 years ago.

Into Mischief’s career consisted of just six starts, three each at two and three, scoring in the CashCall Futurity (G1) at two, and in the Damascus Stakes at three. He also took second in the Malibu Stakes (G1), San Vicente Stakes (G2) and Hollywood Prevue Stakes (G3).

By Harlan’s Holiday – also sire of champion two-year-old Shanghai Bobby – Into Mischief started at a very modest fee, and at one point was slated to cover at as little as $7,500.

He was represented by just 140 foals in his first four crops, but his fifth crop, the first sired after his merit first became apparent, was much larger at 161.

That generation saw Into Mischief earn the 2016 title as leading sire of two-yearolds, an achievement he repeated in 2018 and 2019, the latter year when he also took his first overall leading sires’ title.

He looks likely to repeat in both categories this term – he has a lead of over $8,000,000 on the overall table – and he’s been represented by an astonishing 27 individual stakes winners in 2020, 11 of them graded.

By 2016, Into Mischief’s fee had risen to $45,000, and it’s that crop that has taken

Into Mischief to new heights supplying him with his first Classic winner when, in early September, his colt Authentic won the much-delayed Kentucky Derby (G1).

Authentic was upset by the outstanding filly Swiss Skydiver in an epic battle for the Preakness Stakes (G1), but rebounded on Breeders’ Cup Saturday going wire-to-wire to defeat what may have been the most highly credentialed field gathered for the Breeders’ Cup Classic (G1) since the 1998 edition was won by Awesome Again.

What’s more, he accomplished this feat in style, powering away late to score by over 2l from Improbable – almost certain to be voted an Eclipse Award winner as champion older male – in a time that erased American Pharoah’s standard for 1m2f from the record books.

Authentic is out of Flawless, a 7f winner by Mr. Greeley. He is a son of Gone West, a strain frequently found as a successful foil for Into Mischief.

Since Into Mischief has been chiefly identified with speed this doesn’t sound like a formula for a middle-distance runner, but Authentic is another fast, long-striding North American horse who starts out quickly and doesn’t slow enough for the closers to reach him – the equine equivalent of 800m world-record holder David Rudisha.

Flawless ran just twice breaking her maiden by 13l, but bowed a tendon when narrowly defeated in allowance company on her only other outing.

With no black-type in her dam Flawless looked a rather dubious commercial prospect for her owner-breeder Peter Blum, but Flawless’s trainer Bill Mott counselled that Blum shuld “sell all your other mares, but you keep her!”

Oddly enough, advice from Mott regarding another brilliant but unsound filly Primal Force led to her acquisition by Frank Stronach. From her came the previously mentioned Awesome Again, as well as champion two-year-old colt Macho Uno.

Some stamina comes into the pedigree through Authentic’s unraced second dam, a daughter of Wild Again. He was successful in a tumultuous finish to the inaugural Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Authentic’s third dam Really Fancy, a daughter of In Reality, won the Anoakia Stakes (G3) at two. She was dam of three minor stakes-placed horses, but through her daughter Dixie Holiday is ancestress of the Golden Shaheen (G1) winner Reynaldothewizard (by the Gone West son, Speightstown, so bred similarly to Flawless), of the Go For Wand Handicap (G1) and Apple Blossom Handicap (G1) winner Seventh Street and to American Gal, successful in the Distaff Stakes (G1) and Test Stakes (G1).

Authentic’s fourth dam Native Fancy won the Hollywood Lassie Stakes (G2). She might be familiar to Europeans as third dam of Undrafted, who travelled from the US to win the Diamond Jubilee Stakes (G1).

Going right back, the family arrived in the US from England in the early 1880s, and has supplied an earlier US Classic winner – Hasty Road, who took the 1954 Preakness Stakes.

The female line goes back to none other than the great mare Pocahontas. She was dam of Stockwell, who was known as the “Emperor of Stallions”, his brother Rataplan, and half-brother King Tom, broodmare sire of St. Simon.