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For her first three matings, we have leaned heavily into the turf influences contained in Super Mama’s pedigree and picked stallions who are themselves pretty exclusively turf types. In 2022, we will try something new and send Super Mama to the very well-bred and talented dirt sprinter Honest Mischief.
As a stakes-winning son of the country’s leading sire from an incredible Juddmonte female family, we believe Honest Mischief has a huge shot to be a major stallion from his base at Sequel NY (home of perennial leading NY stallion Freud, and the farm that started Laoban prior to his recent move to Kentucky on the back of a first-crop Grade 1-winning offspring).
Honest Mischief is a half-brother to 3 stakes winners, including the G1-winning dirt sprinter First Defence, who went on to sire Eclipse Champion Close Hatches (who ran exclusively on dirt, and is the dam of dirt star Tacitus). Their dam, Honest Lady, was a G1-winning dirt sprinter who also finished 2nd against males in both the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint and Met Mile. Honest Lady is out of Grade 1 winner and Broodmare of the Year Toussaud, whose offspring include five graded stakes winners, four of them Grade 1 winners, and two of those are Belmont winner Empire Maker (sire of Grade 1 winners like Pioneerof the Nile (in turn sire of American Pharoah) and Bodemeister (sire of Kentucky Derby winner Always Dreaming)) and his half-brother Chester House (sire of Grade 1 winners like Ventura and Divine Park). For those keeping score, that’s 3 incredibly successful stallions under Honest Mischief’s second dam.
Into Mischief and his sons have had loads of success with Gone West-line mares like Super Mama. G1 winners Authentic, Mia Mischief and Mischevious Alex, plus G2 winners By My Standards, Engage, Phantom Currency, etc, are all bred this way. In total, there are 17 stakes winners from 156 runners (11%) sired by Into Mischief and his sons out of mares by Gone West or his sons or grandsons, good for an “A” rating by TrueNicks.
Although we think there are reasons to believe Super Mama can throw a good dirt horse by a dirt stallion (her own sire, Elusive Quality, sired Kentucky Derby winner Smarty Jones and multiple G1 winner and sire Quality Road, among others, while her broodmare sire Giant’s Causesway handled either surface with aplomb and sired plenty of top class dirt runners, and her dam’s stakes-winning half-brother Aces Again won scored all his black-type on the dirt), there is also enough turf in Honest Mischief’s family to think the foal from this pairing could be plenty versatile. And the Into Mischief/Gone West cross has also produced graded turf winners Phantom Currency and Sombeyay.
Physically, Super Mama is a big, strapping mare (as you’d expect from a $150k yearling purchase by Steve Young), and should complement Honest Mischief very nicely — and produce a talented foal over whichever surface it ends up preferring!
Honest Mischief wins the City of Laurel Stakes at 3