Oscar Performance

2nd-GP, 94K, Msw, 3yo, 7f, 11:30 a.m. Gulfstream Park will kick off it's Pegasus World Cup card with a pair of classy maiden special weight races headlined by DISRUPTOR (Gun Runner), a $1,150,000 KEESEP yearling out of the Todd Pletcher barn for the partnership group of Repole Stable, Spendthrift Farm, Big Easy Racing, Titletown Racing, Winners Win, Golconda Stable, Ali Goodrich and Mark Parkinson. The chestnut, out of a full-sister to MGSW Bridgetown (Speightstown), put in a drill at Palm Beach Downs Jan. 18, going four furlongs from the gate...

A turf horse launching his stud career at the age of nine might go against the stallion market grain in Kentucky, but Mill Ridge Farm has already shown a knack for bucking those trends and doing so successfully. After all, it was only three years ago that Oscar Performance was standing for just $12,500 and bred only 63 mares. This year, the 2024 leading third-crop sire of graded stakes winners by percentage of starters has a sold-out book heading into the season as he commands a fee of $45,000. So...

First let's salute two horses in this category just emerging from surely the most competitive freshman title race ever. The lead changed hands between both, as well as McKinzie (now $75,000), through the final hours of 2024, with VEKOMA ultimately seizing the crown--partly through belated processing of a son in Panama--by $22,939 from McKinzie, with TIZ THE LAW breathing down their necks $9,334 behind. In fact, his "extra" winner gave Vekoma a share of the North American record of 39 first-crop juvenile winners. Admittedly he was working from corresponding volume,...

Two years removed from the last time he won a stakes race, and at the same track no less, Rocket Can (Into Mischief) turned his fortunes around with a game victory in the GII Harlan's Holiday Stakes. The three-quarter-length victor of the GIII Holy Bull Stakes in 2023, his connections took a shot at the Derby trail and the race itself, but ultimately had to go on the sidelines after finishing ninth on the big day. Gone until March of this year, when he made a successful return to the...

Oscar Performance (Kitten's Joy) was an outstanding turf horse, winning four Grade I's on the grass. And he's been a quality stallion, with his progeny headlined by the likes of Grade I winner Trikari and four other graded winners. Like most horses labeled `turf sires,' Oscar Performance, who stands at Mill Ridge Farm, was always going to be up against it in a country where breeders and buyers aren't necessarily looking for grass horses. European buyers don't need to buy horses by American turf stallions when they have so many...

Sophomore turfers will enjoy the spotlight in the GIII Commonwealth Turf Stakes at Churchill Downs, one of three graded stakes races on tap Saturday. Frankly Speaking homebred Dashman (Oscar Performance) won two straight in Kentucky this summer, then was a solid fourth with trouble behind MGISW Carson's Run (Cupid) and next-out GIII Hill Prince Stakes winner and 'TDN Rising Star' Deterministic (Liams' Map) in the GIII Jockey Club Derby Invitational going 1 3/8 miles at Aqueduct Oct. 5. The 5-2 morning-line favorite turns back to 1 1/16 miles here. "He...

Mill Ridge Farm extends an invitation to join them starting on Thursday, Nov. 7 through Nov. 14, for their stallion open house from 12:00 to 2 p.m. ET daily, the farm said via a press release on Thursday. The three horse roster on display features MGISW Oscar Performance (by Kitten's Joy), whose stud fee is listed at $45,000 LF. The third-crop sire stands alongside millionaire GI Breeders' Cup Sprint winner Aloha West (by Hard Spun), who is listed at $8,500 LF. Newly-added to the slate this year is four-time Grade...

Casa Creed (Jimmy Creed), a two-time winner of the GI Fourstardave H. at Saratoga and GI Jaipur S. at Belmont Park, will command a $10,000 stud fee in his first season at stud at Mill Ridge Farm in 2025, it was announced Thursday. "He showed up for every race and was beaten only once more than four lengths in his (28) graded stakes--what a brilliant racehorse and one who will contribute to our breed," said Mill Ridge's General Manager Price Bell. With five graded stakes winners this year, Oscar Performance...

NEW KENT COUNTY, VA -- It would have been no surprise had trainer Graham Motion elected to run Amerman Racing's Trikari (Oscar Performance) in Sunday's rescheduled GI Saratoga Derby Invitational Stakes as opposed to the GII Secretariat Stakes at Colonial Downs. After all, the long-barreled bay was exiting a victory in the GI Belmont Derby over a mile and three-sixteenths, but Trikari proved more than capable of handling the step back down in trip with a powerful victory in the eight-furlong Secretariat. The second betting choice when all was said...

When bloodstock agent Bob Feld and his son Sean first saw Trikari (Oscar Performance) at the 2022 OBS October Sale, they pegged him as a definite six-figure yearling and, with no clients for whom to buy the handsome bay, they moved on to the next one. But when the father-son team saw the colt had RNA'd for $30,000, they purchased him privately for just $27,500. Now campaigned by the Amermans, Trikari is a Grade I winner with earnings closing in on a million dollars. "My son and I were at...

Pop quiz: which North American third-crop sire leads his contemporaries by individual graded stakes winners in the Northern Hemisphere in 2024? It's not Justify, nor Good Magic, who are each tied with three and are the runaway leaders by 2024 progeny earnings. The correct answer is Mill Ridge Farm's Oscar Performance, who has four graded winners in 2024 and also leads the top third-crop sires by percentage of black-type winners to runners at 6.6%. In addition, Oscar Performance secured his first career Grade I winner as a sire Saturday with...

California-based Umberto Rispoli was set to ride Amerman Racing's Endlessly (Oscar Performance) in the GI Kentucky Derby about three hours later, and he got the partnership off to a fortuitous beginning on the Derby undercard, guiding Trikari (Oscar Performance) to a massive upset of the $600,000 GII American Turf S. A whopping 47-1 while making his first foray into graded competition, the $27,500 OBS October yearling scratched down into the inside stall and immediately secured the box seat, as 24-1 Formidable Man (City of Light) came across from the four...