Beholder to Visit Bolt d'Oro in 2020

Spendthrift Farm's four-time champion and three-time Breeders' Cup winner Beholder will be bred to Bolt d'Oro  in 2020, the Kentucky operation announced Nov. 14.

"We strongly considered breeding Beholder to Bolt d'Oro this past season, so it's a mating we've been excited about for some time. Frankly, Bolt d'Oro has been so tremendously in demand that we decided to wait until 2020," said Ned Toffey, general manager at Spendthrift. "One of the coolest things about this mating is it matches two of the fastest grade 1-winning 2-year-olds that racing has seen in the last decade."

Beholder, who is in foal to War Front  with a January due date, has produced two offspring: a yearling colt by Uncle Mo  named Q B One and a weanling filly by Curlin .

Beholder retired from racing in 2016 with 18 wins in 26 starts and earnings of $6,156,600. She won Eclipse Awards as the outstanding 2-year-old filly of 2012, 3-year-old filly of 2013, and older mare of 2015 and 2016.

Among her 11 grade 1 victories were three Breeders' Cup triumphs: the 2012 Grey Goose Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies (G1), 2013 Breeders' Cup Distaff (G1), and 2016 Longines Distaff over Songbird in her final start before she was retired to Spendthrift. Beholder also scored a dominating 8 1/4-length win in the 2015 $1 Million TVG Pacific Classic Stakes (G1) against males at Del Mar.

Bolt d'Oro, who retired to Spendthrift in 2019, covered 214 mares in his first book with a 94% in-foal rate, Spendthrift said in a news release. The son of Medaglia d'Oro  was the only 2-year-old colt of 2017 to win multiple grade 1 races, scoring back-to-back wins in the Del Mar Futurity (G1) and FrontRunner Stakes (G1). In the latter, he earned a 103 Beyer Speed Figure, still the fastest by a 2-year-old colt since 2014, according to Spendthrift.

Bolt d'Oro's stud fee will again be $25,000 stands and nurses in 2020. His first in-foal mares averaged $168,888 from nine sold through Book 2 at the Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale.