Longtime Mid-Atlantic breeder R. Larry Johnson passed away in February of this year, but his legacy (his farm of that moniker in Bluemount, Virginia, is thus aptly named) will live on in the pedigrees of hundreds of Thoroughbreds in the coming years thanks to the female family that he spent some forty years cultivating, which traces to his foundation broodmare, Ran’s Chick.
Though she had little, if anything — especially once she injured herself before reaching the races — to recommend her as a broodmare, Johnson nevertheless bred and raced dozens of black-type runners from Ran’s Chick and her descendants, including the likes of Street Magician, who took the Grade 3 Hirsh Jacobs Stakes in 2007 and was a useful Maryland stallion upon his retirement.
But 2024 saw Johnson’s breeding program ascend new heights, thanks to the achievements of Future Is Now and Mindframe, both fourth-generation descendants of Ran’s Chick via her daughter Special Kell. Future Is Now and Mindframe were named Maryland-bred champions of their respective divisions last year — as was Future Is Now’s half-sister Call Another Play, while Johnson himself was named Maryland’s Breeder of the Year. And now, with Johnson’s daughters Tracy Mulroy and Kelly Caraballo having taken over management of the breeding and racing operations following his passing, those two horses have already lifted Johnson’s legacy even higher this season: Mindframe has scored in a pair of Grade 1 stakes to be ranked the leading contender for Eclipse Horse of the Year at the midway point (though an absurd trip in the recent Jockey Club Gold Cup makes the Breeders’ Cup Classic paramount to his chances of obtaining that honor), while Future Is Now has doubled her own tally of Graded Stakes victories to four, and presumably is also targeting the Breeders’ Cup at year’s end.
The pedigrees of Mindframe and Future Is Now, plus several of other black-type and stakes winners bred by Johnson, demonstrate a variety of tactics he pursued in planning his matings.
Mindframe is the sole black-type winner of 2025 that Johnson bred but did not initially race in his own black and white colors. Rather, Johnson sold him at the 2022 Keeneland September Sale for $600,000 to the partnership of Mike Repole and Vinnie Viola, who now campaign him with trainer Todd Pletcher.
https://x.com/WinStarFarm/status/1570492285233790976
Mindframe was the fourth foal from the Johnson-bred and -raced black-type winner Walk of Stars, who counted the Pink Ribbon Stakes at Charles Town among her five victories from 19 starts. But at the time Mindframe sold, his two older sisters had just three minor wins between them, only one of which was not in claiming company. The colt that would become Mindframe, however, was possessed of a fantastic physical, and his sire, WinStar Farm’s Constitution, was one of the hottest young stallions in the country and sired three other offspring that brought seven-figures in that same sale.
Mindframe was conceived when Constitution’s first crop of runners was 3-years-old, the spring after he had finished second to American Pharoah on the Leading Freshman Sire List. Constitution’s stud fee was increased to $40,000 for that 2020 breeding season, but it had risen again to $85,000 for ‘21 and ‘22, and would be $110,000 in ‘23. Johnson owned a share in Constitution and used the stallion yearly, but he regularly used such stallions who were early in their breeding careers and appeared to be on an upward trajectory after strong early results.
In Mindframe’s case, Johnson capitalized on Constitution’s commerciality to take some cash off the table, as it were, even if he was more regularly known as someone that would breed to race. Indeed, he sold a Gun Runner filly at the same sale as Mindframe for $200,000, and RNA’ed a Hard Spun colt there for $140,000 — demonstrating his lack of opposition to testing the commercial market in some circumstances. And in fact, Johnson stated in a January 2024 piece in the TDNthat he was lately focusing more on breeding for the commercial market than he had previously done.
But — as well as it worked with Constitution and Mindframe — patronizing young stallions before their future is assured can sometimes backfire and leave a breeder with an unmarketable foal.
Mindframe’s 6-year-old half-sister Hollywood Walk picked up her first black-type win this year for “The Estate of R. Larry Johnson” and trainer Mike Trombetta, having previously been 2nd or 3rd in seven such races. She is another that was conceived after her sire’s first foals had raced as 2-year-olds. In her case, that stallion was the Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom. His first juvenile runners had not been quite as successful as those of Constitution, but they did include a Grade 2-winning turf colt that was 2nd in a Breeders’ Cup race among a trio of black-type winners, and his offspring were expected to show marked improvement as they aged. As such, breeding to Animal Kingdom at his $30,000 stud fee (unchanged from the prior year) in the season that Hollywood Walk was conceived seems like a reasonable gamble.
However, by the end of 2019 (the year that Hollywood Walk was foaled), Animal Kingdom had been sold to Japan, and thus deemed a failure at stud in the U.S. with just eight black-type winners (three Graded) to his credit. That would’ve marked Hollywood Walk as pretty non-commercial heading into a yearling sale the following summer — though keeping her worked out pretty well for the racing stable as she now has earnings of over half-a-million dollars (not to mention a promising future as a broodmare, being a half-sister to a multiple Grade 1 winner by an outcross stallion).
The aforementioned Call Another Play, who was voted Maryland-bred Champion 3-year-old filly of 2024, is another by a young Kentucky stallion that would have theoretically had a commercial profile (though she was not offered for sale). She is a member of the first foal crop sired by the Grade 1 winner Audible, who stands alongside Constitution at WinStar and is another stallion in whom Johnson owned a share.
Call Another Play is the product of the sixth mating for her dam, Past as Prelude, whose previous five breeding seasons had coincidently included three visits to Constitution (which produced two foals, one (Originalist) that placed on the racetrack after RNA’ing for just $45,000 as a member of Constitution’s second crop, and another (Continentalcongres) that was a black-type placed earner of over $300,000).
A member of the same Legacy Farm foal crop as Mindframe, Call Another Play’s dam would have had a similar record to that of Mindframe’s dam as a sales yearling had she been offered as such: her three prior foals to race had but a single victory between them, and one restricted stakes-placing. With 123 of Audible’s first crop yearlings having sold at public auction that year, Call Another Play presumably would not have been the commercial proposition that Mindframe was.
Yet again, though, Johnson was rewarded by keeping Call Another Play to race in his own colors, as her six wins in 19 starts for Trombetta have included a pair of black-type events, and she finished 3rd in the Grade 2 Black-Eyed Susan. Her earnings are over $370,000.
Interestingly, in another TDN article prior to the 2024 Black-Eyed Susan, Johnson noted that his use of Audible and Constitution in the matings that produced Call Another Play and Mindframe was part of a conscious decision to breed horses that might run a distance of ground, whereas his program had previously produced predominantly sprinters.
Doubtless Johnson was not knocking the sprint success that his homebred Future Is Now achieved a bit later in 2024, and which has carried over into ‘25. A year older half-sister to Call Another Play (though she got a later start than her more precocious sister), Future Is Now is a daughter of the perennial leading Maryland stallion Great Notion, and demonstrates Johnson’s continuing commitment to the Mid-Atlantic stallions on which his own program was predominantly built.
Again for Trombetta, Future Is Now has amassed ten victories in her 18 career starts to this point, including a pair of Grade 2 stakes and another two Grade 3’s, for earnings just shy of a million dollars. All ten of those wins have been at five or five-and-a-half furlongs on turf. That tracks with Great Notion’s influence overall (and indeed, he himself was a very fast horse, as were his sire (Elusive Quality) and broodmare sire (Dayjur)) — though his 44 career black-type winners include the odd miler or two-turn runner, speed has always been his forte, whether on dirt or turf. And it also is in line with the black-type success achieved by Johnson’s earlier homebreds by local stallions like Red Monk, Parfaitement, Turn To Reason, Two Smart and Partner’s Hero, who mined restricted races like the Jamestown, the Oakley, the Camptown, the Ben’s Cat and the M. Tyson Gilpin — turf sprints all — to darken the catalog pages of the Ran’s Chick family.
Another of the Johnson-bred stakes winners of ‘25 (though of the non-black-type variety) is Great Notion’s daughter Noquestionaboutit, who was a debut-winning 2-year-old early in ‘24 then returned as a sophomore to score in the recent Glenn Petty Stakes for Virginia-breds, going five-and-a-half furlongs over Colonial’s turf course — yet one more example of the family’s propensity for success in such events.
Noquestionaboutit’s broodmare sire is the Johnson homebred Street Magician. As discussed above, Johnson raced Street Magician to a Grade 3 victory sprinting on the Preakness undercard back in 2007, and he is also from the Ran’s Chick family — meaning that Noquestionaboutit’s dam, Magician’squestion, has Ran’s Chick appearing in her pedigree 4×3 for what is known as “Rasmussen Factor” inbreeding to a superior female.
While Magician’squestion was only a winner on the track and has not yet produced any black-type offspring, her full-brother Mr. Magician was black-type-placed, and Johnson has actually bred a pair of black-type winners by Street Magician that carry Rasmussen Factor inbreeding to Ran’s Chick: 2017 M. Tyson Gilpin winner Do What I Say (who has Ran’s Chick 4×3), plus the last ‘25 black-type winner from the Ran’s Chick family, back-to-back Ben’s Cat winner Whenigettoheaven.
Bred and initially raced by Johnson (though he was claimed away by Ken Ramsey for $62,500 early in ‘24), Whenigettoheaven is out of Heaven Knows What (by Holy Bull), who did her part for the family legacy on the track by winning or placing in three separate editions of the Oakley Stakes.
At over $440,000, Whenigettoheaven is the leading earner inbred to Ran’s Chick, and this Rasmussen Factor inbreeding is a pattern that Johnson was not afraid to try and with which he actually achieved solid statistical success: from a total of 29 foals by Street Magician and out of granddaughters or great-granddaughters of Ran’s Chick, 19 have run and 14 of those are winners (73.7% winners/runners), with the aforementioned pair of black-type winners (10.5% BTWs/runners) plus another black-type placer (15.8% BTHs/runners).
All of those percentages are excellent, and pay homage to the amazing job that Larry Johnson did developing the Ran’s Chick family — a family whose influence is only set to spread further in the coming years with Mindframe heading to Claiborne Farm for the ‘26 breeding season as one of the most sought-after stallion prospects of the year, and with the mares from this family getting chances with more proven, highly-commercial stallions lately than they ever did before.