Meet Q B One, Son of the Great Beholder

Beholder's two-year-old colt by Uncle Mo, Q B One, is at Santa Anita in Richard Mandella's barn. Zoe Cadman introduces us to him.

“Oh yeah, he walks around telling everyone who his mother is,” said trainer Richard Mandella, about the 2-year-old Q B One, a son of Uncle Mo, who arrived in his barn about two weeks ago. Considering the mother in question is a four-time Eclipse Award winner, three-time Breeders' Cup victor and weaver of infinite racetrack memories by the name of Beholder, there's much to crow about.

But as is the want of the young and the restless, Q B One has a touch of Narcissus about him, full of youthful self-indulgence.

“He's good on the racetrack, but he needs to get a little bit better manners in the stall,” Mandella said, with what sounded like a healthy dose of diplomatic understatement. “He wants to paw the door-get a lot of attention. But he'll get better as we go.”

Make no mistake, Q B One is used to attention. He's a recurring subject of Beholder's website, with blog posts detailing when he officially became a yearling, for example, and when first ridden under tack. When it came time to find him a name, owner-breeder Spendthrift Farm turned it into a public competition, with the tagline, “Help Name the Prince!” His grand arrival at Santa Anita-he's currently in Beholder's old stall, opposite Mandella's office-was met with fanfare on social media.

Read more on the TDN.