Our friends at Wasabi Ventures Stables recently purchased their own farm in Kentucky, and as such will plan to have predominantly homegrown Kentucky-bred foals going forward and starting in 2025. But with the New York state-bred program continuing to go great guns, and with an interest in the very exciting freshman sire Honest Mischief to make the increased bonuses for state-sired runners there even more enticing, the quarter-million dollar earner Unrequited Love will be one of a handful of mares that Wasabi has in New York this spring to visit that Juddmonte product.
Unrequited Love is of special interest to Wasabi as their first “generational” broodmare. That is to say, her dam, Maryland Million winner Wild For Love by long-time Maryland leading sire Not For Love, is also a member of Wasabi’s broodmare band (although Wild For Love foaled Unrequited Love the year prior to the former’s acquisition by Wasabi).
Unrequited Love is by the one-time Maryland stallion and Grade 3-winning turf Speightstown son Despite the Odds, and she placed third in her class at the MHBA Yearling Show (judged by Michael Stidham). She then won seven races during her racing career, including a 4-1/2 furling maiden special weight at 2YO, a 6-1/2 furlong “a other than” allowance race at 4, a trio of starter allowance races, and two other races. She won each year from 2-4YO, up to a mile, on fast, muddy and sloppy dirt surfaces, often going wire-to-wire. She also placed in 11 additional races from her 35 career starts, and earned a total of $228,311.
She is one of five winners from five to race out of Wild For Love, including three six-figure earners led by the multiple black-type winner Local Motive (the first such runner (co-)bred by Wasabi). And while Local Motive is by a Tapit-line stallion, Wild For Love has also produced a six-figure earner by the Storm Cat grandson Imagining and a $120,000 yearling who has earned $90k so far by Into Mischief’s son Maximus Mischief.
These latter two successful half-siblings are what makes Honest Mischief an intriguing mate for Unrequited Love in 2025, especially for a filly whose appeal as a broodmare comes more from her hard-knocking record than her commerciality — if she can produce a New York-bred runner by a New York sire with her own talent, those breeder and owner bonuses will be quite significant.
A son of perennial leading sire Into Mischief, Honest Mischief earned a place at stud as a black-type winning half-brother to Grade 1 winner and stallion First Defence (sire of Eclipse Champion Close Hatches), out of a Grade 1-winning half-sister to Grade 1 winners and stallion Empire Maker and Chester House. Given ample chance at Becky Thomas’s Sequel NY, his first crop sold very strongly for a regional stallion as both yearlings and 2YOs, and he has followed through on the racetrack in 2024: his eight winners have all graduated in maiden special weights or stakes, including two black-type winners (8% to runners) and two more runners that have earned black-type (for a total of 16% black-type horses to runners).
We love this precocity for Unrequited Love, given her own 2YO ability and her status as a half-sister to a black-type winning 2YO. And the cross is good for an “A+” on TrueNicks, Into Mischief over Speightstown having produced the likes of G1Ws Mia Mischief and Mischevious Alex, plus four additional graded winners from 13 total black-type winners. No fewer than four other sons of Into Mischief have already sired a black-type winner from a Speightstown-line dam.
Physically, Unrequited Love is a balanced, medium-sized mare and very attractive (as witnessed by that Yearling Show placing), and should be a very nice like-to-like physical match with the quick-looking Honest Mischief.