PEDIGREE ANALYSIS BEHOLDER

With her runaway destruction of the field in the $1 Million TVG Pacific Classic Stakes (gr. I), Beholder gained admission to an exclusive club, consisting of performers that have won grade I events at 2, 3, 4, and 5. Beholder has also garnered Eclipse Awards as champion of her sex at 2 and 3, and  is going to be hard to deny an Eclipse as champion older female this year.

As well as brilliance, Beholder has also showed rare versatility, scoring at 5 1/2, six, eight, 8 1/2, nine, and 10 furlongs.

Although she brought $180,000 as a Keeneland September yearling, it would have been hard at the time to have predicted Beholder would have scaled such lofty heights, nor have carried her speed so far. Her sire, Henny Hughes, was an early season juvenile sensation, winning his first three starts, including the Tremont Stakes and Saratoga Special Stakes (gr. II). Darley acquired him from his original owners between the two stakes. The train derailed in the Hopeful Stakes (gr. I), when odds-on Henny Hughes was outrun early by Too Much Bling   and couldn’t stay with First Samurai   late. The three met again in the one-mile Champagne Stakes (gr. I), and, again, although Henny Hughes gained the ascendency over Too Much Bling early, he couldn’t resist First Samurai. In the Bessemer Trust Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (gr. I) Henny Hughes pressed the pace before driving clear at the head of the stretch and repelled the challenge of First Samurai, but Stevie Wonderboy ran down the duo to claim both the race and the championship.

At 3 Henny Hughes, who had moved from Patrick Biancone’s barn to Kiaran McLaughlin’s, was restricted to sprints, and for much of the year he appeared as if he might be the nation’s top speedster. He opened with a 10-length victory in the Jersey Shore Breeders’ Cup Stakes (gr. III) in July, then took the King’s Bishop Stakes (gr. I) and the Vosburgh Stakes (gr. I). Henny Hughes was the favorite for the 2006 TVG Breeders’ Cup Sprint (gr. I) but stumbled at the start and finished 14th.

Retired to stand at Darley, Henny Hughes was a hot item when his first yearlings reached the sales, but he quickly fell from favor and was sold to stand in Australia—where he had been shuttling in 2012. He returned to the U.S. for 2013, then back to Australia, before standing the 2014 Northern Hemisphere season in Japan. Though he didn’t prove the font of precocious juvenile stakes winners that might have been hoped for, Henny Hughes has sired 35 stakes winners including fellow graded winners Merry Meadow, Keiai Leone, Chitu, Henny Hound, Honey Hues, She Digs Me, and Academic.

If Henny Hughes appears an unlikely sire of a superstar who is a grade I winner at 10 furlongs, there is also a stage where the same might have been said of Beholder’s dam, Leslie’s Lady. By three-time grade II winner, but modest sire, Tricky Creek, Leslie’s Lady was a hard-knocking sprinter who gained a black-type victory at 2 in the Hoosier Debutante Stakes. Leslie’s Lady first showed the ability to outproduce herself with her 2005 foal,Into Mischief  . By Harlan’s Holiday—like Henny Hughes a grandson of Storm Cat—Into Mischief ran only six times but won the CashCall Futurity (gr. I) at 2 and at 3 won the Damascus Stakes and ran second in the Malibu (gr. I) and San Vicente (gr. II) stakes. Retired to Spendthrift (in whose colors Beholder runs), Into Mischief is now a successful young sire.



Most of the black-type in Leslie’s Lady’s first and second dams is relatively minor, but her granddam, stakes-placed One Last Bird, is a half sister to the Californian Stakes (gr. I) winner Roanoke and to graded stakes-placed Last Cause, the third dam of the 2012 dual classic winner I’ll Have Another.

We can note Beholder is a product of a cross—that of Hennessy and his sons with mares by Clever Trick, his sons, and grandsons—that has significantly outperformed opportunity, earning an A++ TrueNicks rating. Hennessy’s great-grandsire, Northern Dancer, and Clever Trick’s sire, Icecapade, are closely related, and Beholder has two other crosses of Northern Dancer, one through Nijinsky II, who has pedigree similarities to Storm Cat’s sire Storm Bird. The other is through One for All, the sire of Beholder’s third dam. He is by Northern Dancer out of champion 2-year-old filly Quill where Henny Hughes is a Northern Dancer-line stallion whose dam is from the male line of Quill’s close relative, Prince John.



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