Spendthrift Farm’s four-time champion & three-time Breeders’ Cup winner Beholder will be bred in 2020 to Bolt d’Oro (USA), who is currently in Victoria standing for Spendthrift Australia.
“We strongly considered breeding Beholder to Bolt d’Oro this past season, so it’s a mating we’ve been excited about for some time. Frankly, Bolt d’Oro has been so tremendously in-demand that we decided to wait until 2020,” said Ned Toffey, General Manager at Spendthrift. “One of the coolest things about this mating is it matches two of the fastest Grade 1-winning 2-year-olds that racing has seen in the last decade.”
Beholder, who is in foal to War Front with a January due date, has produced two offspring to date, including a yearling colt by Uncle Mo – named Q B One – and a weanling filly by Curlin.
Beholder is a half-sister to Group I winner and leading sire Into Mischief and Group I winner Mendelssohn (USA), who is also in Australia at present for Coolmore. She retired from racing in 2016 after an illustrious career that saw her win 18 of 26 starts with earnings of $6,156,600. She captured Eclipse Awards as the outstanding 2-year-old filly of 2012, 3-year-old filly of 2013, and older filly & mare of 2015 and 2016.
Among her 11 Grade 1 victories were three Breeders’ Cup triumphs, including the 2012 Juvenile Fillies, 2013 Distaff, and – in dramatic fashion – the 2016 Distaff over Songbird in what would be her final career start before retiring to Spendthrift. Beholder also scored a memorable win in the 2015 Pacific Classic, facing and defeating males in dominating fashion by 8 1/4-lengths at Del Mar.
Bolt d’Oro, who retired to Spendthrift in 2019, covered 214 mares in his first book with a 94% in-foal rate. The son of Medaglia d’Oro was the only 2-year-old colt of 2017 to win multiple Grade 1 races, including dominant back-to-back wins in the Del Mar Futurity (G1) and FrontRunner S. (G1). In the latter, he earned a 103 Beyer – still the fastest earned by a 2-year-old colt since 2014.
Bolt d’Oro’s North American stud fee will again be $25,000 S&N in 2020. His first in-foal mares have averaged $187,000 from 10 sold through Book 2 at the Keeneland November Sale.
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