The Sires Behind the Last Five Breeders’ Cups
We traced all 775 starts in the 70 Breeders’ Cup races from 2021 through 2025, then compared the leading sires’ records with the horses they have entered at Keeneland this week.
Before every Breeders’ Cup, the sire conversation begins with counting runners. No Nay Never leads this year’s entries with seven of the 170 horses drawn for Keeneland, followed by Not This Time with six. Gun Runner and Into Mischief, the two names that have dominated so many recent conversations about the Kentucky yearling market, have three each.
Those counts tell us whose offspring made the championships. I wanted to know what happened after they got there. We went through every starter in the last five Breeders’ Cups, from Del Mar in 2021 to Del Mar last year, and credited each start and finish to its sire. Across 70 races there were 775 starts, 70 victories and 210 top-three finishes.
Eleven sires had at least 12 starts apiece. Collectively, they accounted for 187 of the 775 starts and 30 of the 70 wins. Gun Runner had the most starts and placings. Curlin’s six wins were concentrated in four horses, while Dubawi’s eight came from six, all trained by Charlie Appleby for Godolphin. No Nay Never and Not This Time, the two sires with the most runners this weekend, have two wins between them over the five-year period.
There are limits to what these numbers can tell us. Every horse in this study was good enough to reach the Breeders’ Cup, and someone decided to run it there. We can compare what sires’ runners did at the championships, but measuring how often a sire produces a championship runner requires a different denominator: foals or runners by crop. A repeat entrant contributes one start each year, which matters for sires whose records were built around exceptional returning horses.
To make the results more comparable, we also account for field size. Turf races averaged 12.6 runners over these five years, versus 9.5 on dirt. We give every horse an equal share of its field, 1 divided by the field size for a win and 3 divided by it for a top-three finish, then total those shares by sire. The resulting field-size baseline accounts for opportunity by field size alone.
| Sire | Starts | Horses | Wins | Baseline wins | Top three | Baseline top three | Runners in 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gun Runner | 26 | 20 | 3 | 2.8 | 14 | 8.3 | 3 |
| Into Mischief | 24 | 22 | 4 | 2.5 | 8 | 7.4 | 3 |
| Curlin | 22 | 15 | 6 | 2.3 | 10 | 7.0 | 1 |
| Dubawi | 17 | 12 | 8 | 1.3 | 12 | 3.9 | 1 |
| Not This Time | 17 | 16 | 1 | 1.5 | 2 | 4.6 | 6 |
| Nyquist | 15 | 14 | 2 | 1.6 | 5 | 4.7 | 4 |
| Quality Road | 14 | 12 | 1 | 1.3 | 6 | 4.0 | 0 |
| Tapit | 14 | 13 | 2 | 1.3 | 5 | 4.0 | 1 |
| No Nay Never | 13 | 13 | 1 | 1.0 | 3 | 3.1 | 7 |
| Speightstown | 13 | 12 | 0 | 1.3 | 3 | 3.9 | 1 |
| Frankel | 12 | 12 | 2 | 1.0 | 3 | 2.9 | 4 |
Figure 1 · Leading sires against the field-size baseline
Wins and top-three finishes against the field-size baseline, 2021–2025
Show the data
| Sire | Starts | Wins | Baseline wins | Wins less baseline | Top three | Baseline top three | Top three less baseline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dubawi | 17 | 8 | 1.31 | +6.69 | 12 | 3.93 | +8.07 |
| Curlin | 22 | 6 | 2.34 | +3.66 | 10 | 7.02 | +2.98 |
| Into Mischief | 24 | 4 | 2.48 | +1.52 | 8 | 7.43 | +0.57 |
| Frankel | 12 | 2 | 0.95 | +1.05 | 3 | 2.86 | +0.14 |
| Tapit | 14 | 2 | 1.34 | +0.66 | 5 | 4.02 | +0.98 |
| Nyquist | 15 | 2 | 1.57 | +0.43 | 5 | 4.70 | +0.30 |
| Gun Runner | 26 | 3 | 2.76 | +0.24 | 14 | 8.29 | +5.71 |
| No Nay Never | 13 | 1 | 1.04 | -0.04 | 3 | 3.13 | -0.13 |
| Quality Road | 14 | 1 | 1.33 | -0.33 | 6 | 3.98 | +2.02 |
| Not This Time | 17 | 1 | 1.52 | -0.52 | 2 | 4.56 | -2.56 |
| Speightstown | 13 | 0 | 1.30 | -1.30 | 3 | 3.91 | -0.91 |
Dubawi, Godolphin and the Charlie Appleby Record
Dubawi’s offspring made 17 starts, all on turf, and won eight times. They finished in the top three on 12 occasions, against a field-size baseline of 1.3 wins and 3.9 placings. Dubawi had at least one winner every year.
The victories covered several ages and distances. Space Blues won the Mile in 2021, followed by Modern Games in 2022, Master of The Seas in 2023 and Notable Speech last year. That is four Mile victories in five years for sons of the same sire. Modern Games also won the Juvenile Turf in 2021, and Rebel’s Romance won the Turf in 2022 and 2024 before finishing second in it last year. Yibir added the 2021 Turf. Six individual horses supplied the eight wins, across juvenile racing, the Mile and the longer Turf.
Then look at the connections. All eight wins were for Godolphin and Charlie Appleby. We have the trainer of every starter, so we can examine that relationship a little more closely. Appleby had 12 Breeders’ Cup starts with Dubawi progeny and won eight of them, against a field-size baseline of 0.9 wins. He had another 13 starts with offspring of other sires, winning once, with Mischief Magic in the 2022 Juvenile Turf Sprint. Those 13 starts did produce six top-three finishes, compared with a baseline of 3.1.
Dubawi’s other five Breeders’ Cup starts, for trainers other than Appleby, yielded no wins and one placing, In Italian’s second in the 2022 Filly & Mare Turf for Chad Brown. Appleby’s runners by other sires reached the first three about twice as often as the field-size baseline. His Dubawi runners supplied eight of his nine victories.
Figure 2 · Dubawi and Charlie Appleby
Charlie Appleby’s Breeders’ Cup starts by sire, and Dubawi’s starts for other trainers, against the field-size baseline
Show the data
| Group | Starts | Wins | Baseline wins | Top three | Baseline top three |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Appleby, by Dubawi | 12 | 8 | 0.92 | 11 | 2.76 |
| Appleby, by other sires | 13 | 1 | 1.04 | 6 | 3.11 |
| Dubawi, other trainers | 5 | 0 | 0.39 | 1 | 1.18 |
The comparison leaves a question for breeders and trainers alike: how much of the result comes from Dubawi, the mares behind these horses and Godolphin’s approach to developing and placing them? The race records cannot separate those contributions. They do establish that all eight wins came through one racing operation.
Notable Speech is the combination’s only runner at Keeneland this week. He finished third in the Mile in 2024, returned to win it in 2025 and is back for another attempt.
Gun Runner’s Breadth, Curlin’s Repeat Champions and Into Mischief’s Juveniles
Gun Runner had more starts than anyone else, 26 from 20 horses, all on dirt. Fourteen of those starts ended in the first three, and 12 different horses contributed a placing. His three winners were Echo Zulu in the 2021 Juvenile Fillies, Sierra Leone in the 2024 Classic and Super Corredora in last year’s Juvenile Fillies.
His 14 top-three finishes compare with a field-size baseline of 8.3. Seven horses ran second. Echo Zulu, Society and Vahva each finished runner-up in the Filly & Mare Sprint, in three different years, while Sierra Leone was second in the Classic in 2025 after winning it in 2024. His three wins were close to the field-size baseline of 2.8, while the 14 top-three finishes were spread across 12 horses.
Curlin’s 22 starts came from 15 horses, and his six wins from just four. Cody’s Wish won the Dirt Mile twice, in 2022 and 2023, and Elite Power won the Sprint in both years. Malathaat took the 2022 Distaff and Idiomatic won it in 2023. Two of those four horses came back to repeat.
The calendar matters here. All six Curlin wins occurred in two championships. His progeny made seven starts in 2024 and 2025 without a victory, and their only top-three finish was Raging Sea’s second in the 2024 Distaff. That shift is real within this dataset, though seven starts are far too few to declare a change in the stallion’s capacity to produce a Breeders’ Cup winner. Much of the earlier success came from a particular group of elite runners whose careers overlapped.
Figure 3 · Wins and placings by year
Breeders’ Cup wins and other top-three finishes by year, 2021–2025
Show the data
| Sire | 2021 starts, wins, top three | 2022 starts, wins, top three | 2023 starts, wins, top three | 2024 starts, wins, top three | 2025 starts, wins, top three | Five years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dubawi | 4, 3, 3 | 5, 2, 4 | 2, 1, 1 | 3, 1, 2 | 3, 1, 2 | 17, 8, 12 |
| Curlin | 3, 0, 1 | 7, 3, 5 | 5, 3, 3 | 4, 0, 1 | 3, 0, 0 | 22, 6, 10 |
| Into Mischief | 4, 1, 2 | 4, 1, 1 | 5, 0, 1 | 4, 1, 1 | 7, 1, 3 | 24, 4, 8 |
| Gun Runner | 2, 1, 2 | 7, 0, 4 | 6, 0, 2 | 4, 1, 2 | 7, 1, 4 | 26, 3, 14 |
| Ghostzapper | 0, 0, 0 | 2, 1, 1 | 2, 1, 2 | 1, 1, 1 | 2, 0, 1 | 7, 3, 5 |
| Tapit | 2, 0, 1 | 3, 1, 1 | 3, 0, 1 | 4, 0, 1 | 2, 1, 1 | 14, 2, 5 |
| Nyquist | 3, 0, 0 | 4, 0, 1 | 2, 0, 1 | 2, 1, 2 | 4, 1, 1 | 15, 2, 5 |
| Frankel | 0, 0, 0 | 1, 0, 0 | 6, 1, 1 | 1, 1, 1 | 4, 0, 1 | 12, 2, 3 |
| Deep Impact | 2, 1, 1 | 0, 0, 0 | 2, 1, 2 | 1, 0, 1 | 0, 0, 0 | 5, 2, 4 |
| Justify | 0, 0, 0 | 1, 0, 0 | 3, 2, 2 | 2, 0, 0 | 1, 0, 0 | 7, 2, 2 |
| Quality Road | 4, 1, 2 | 1, 0, 1 | 4, 0, 1 | 2, 0, 1 | 3, 0, 1 | 14, 1, 6 |
| No Nay Never | 1, 0, 0 | 2, 1, 1 | 5, 0, 2 | 2, 0, 0 | 3, 0, 0 | 13, 1, 3 |
| Not This Time | 0, 0, 0 | 2, 0, 0 | 2, 0, 1 | 6, 0, 0 | 7, 1, 1 | 17, 1, 2 |
| Speightstown | 3, 0, 0 | 4, 0, 3 | 4, 0, 0 | 1, 0, 0 | 1, 0, 0 | 13, 0, 3 |
Into Mischief had 24 starts from 22 horses, second only to Gun Runner by volume. Three of his four wins came from only six juvenile starts: Wonder Wheel in the 2022 Juvenile Fillies, Citizen Bull in the 2024 Juvenile and Ted Noffey in last year’s Juvenile. The other 18 starts, in races for older horses, produced one win, Life Is Good in the 2021 Dirt Mile, and four additional top-three finishes.
Those juvenile victories came from three different horses across three championships. All won at two, giving buyers a specific record of early achievement among Into Mischief runners that reached the Breeders’ Cup.
All three have runners this week. Gun Runner sends Foxiest to the Juvenile Fillies, Further Ado to the Dirt Mile and Super Corredora back for the Distaff. Curlin has Golden Tempo in the Classic. Into Mischief has Hughes in the Juvenile, American Stage in the Sprint and Sovereignty in the Classic. Their 2026 representation reaches different ages and divisions, just as their five-year records do.
What the Current Entries Say About No Nay Never and Not This Time
The two sires with the largest groups of 2026 entrants have relatively modest win totals over the preceding five years. No Nay Never and Not This Time have 13 horses drawn between them this week. Their progeny made 30 starts from 2021 through 2025 and won twice. On its own, that comparison is likely to mislead.
No Nay Never’s Breeders’ Cup record is overwhelmingly one of juvenile turf racing. Twelve of his 13 starts came in Friday races, and all 13 came on turf. Meditate won the 2022 Juvenile Fillies Turf; the full record is one win and three top-three finishes, almost exactly the field-size baseline of 1.0 and 3.1. Five of his seven entrants this week are juveniles, and three of the seven are trained by Aidan O’Brien. He has been represented in a particular part of the Breeders’ Cup program, with fields that are generally larger than those on dirt.
Not This Time’s 17 starts came from 16 horses, 13 of them on turf. Cy Fair’s win in last year’s Juvenile Turf Sprint was his only victory, and Up to the Mark’s second in the 2023 Turf his only other placing. The field-size baseline is 1.5 wins and 4.6 top-three finishes. Taylor Made described him on October 15 as the leading general sire of 2026, with 15 Grade 1 winners from seven crops to race and a newly announced $300,000 fee for 2027.
The crop years matter. Every Not This Time horse in the five-year Breeders’ Cup study was conceived in 2022 or earlier. Taylor Made initially announced a $45,000 fee for 2022 and raised it to $75,000 during that season, then set his 2023 fee at $135,000. His first foals from that $135,000 season are only two-year-olds now. Among his six 2026 Breeders’ Cup entrants, Damavand in the Juvenile is the only one from that crop.
Figure 4 · Not This Time’s fee and his runners’ crops
Not This Time’s advertised fee by breeding season, with each of his 2026 Breeders’ Cup runners in the season it was conceived
Show the data
| Breeding season | Advertised fee | Fee source | 2026 Breeders’ Cup runners conceived that season |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | $12,500 | Taylor Made, Oct 24, 2019 | In Our Time (TS), Rhetorical (MILE), Time to Dazzle (TS) |
| 2021 | $40,000 | BloodHorse, Oct 15, 2020 | Magnitude (CLA) |
| 2022 | $75,000 | TI Kentucky stud fees | Cy Fair (TS) |
| 2023 | $135,000 | TI Kentucky stud fees | Damavand (JUV) |
| 2024 | $150,000 | TI Kentucky stud fees | – |
| 2025 | $175,000 | TI Kentucky stud fees | – |
| 2026 | $250,000 | TI Kentucky stud fees | – |
| 2027 | $300,000 | TI Kentucky stud fees | – |
Breeding decisions take years to work through to racing results. The older, less expensive books have supplied Not This Time’s entire 2021–2025 Breeders’ Cup record, while his more highly priced crops have barely begun racing. Higher fees may change the type of mares a stallion receives, but assessing that properly would require studying the individual books. The timing alone gives us good reason to be cautious about treating his historical Breeders’ Cup placings as a verdict on the current horse.
His runners this week also span more than one type of race. Cy Fair, Time to Dazzle and In Our Time contest the Turf Sprint, Rhetorical runs in the Mile, Damavand is in the Juvenile and Magnitude goes in the Classic. Magnitude won both the Dubai World Cup, beating Forever Young, and the Stephen Foster this year. He is a product of a 2021 mating, two seasons before the $135,000 book, and arrives with a race record that has already contributed considerably to Not This Time’s standing.
Vekoma illustrates a different timing issue. He has four runners this week, all four-year-olds from his first crop, and five previous Breeders’ Cup starts without a top-three finish. There simply isn’t much history there yet. His record will have more context as subsequent crops mature.
The Others Worth Looking At
Ghostzapper had seven starts from four horses and won three races, all with two mares. Goodnight Olive took the Filly & Mare Sprint in both 2022 and 2023. Moira finished third in the 2023 Filly & Mare Turf and returned to win it in 2024.
Deep Impact had only five starts from four horses, yet two of them won: Loves Only You in the 2021 Filly & Mare Turf and Auguste Rodin in the 2023 Turf. Shahryar added two third-place finishes in the Turf. Deep Monster represents him in this year’s Turf.
Tapit offers a different sequence. Essential Quality ran third in the 2021 Classic, Flightline won the 2022 Classic and Proxy finished third in 2023. Three consecutive Classics, three different horses, with Flightline’s win between the two placings. Tapit’s full five-year line is 14 starts, two wins and five top-three finishes. Coach Pope is his runner this week, in the Juvenile.
Among the sires with four 2026 runners, Nyquist, Justify and Frankel each won twice over the study period. Nyquist won the 2024 Juvenile Fillies with Immersive and the 2025 Dirt Mile with Nysos. Immersive returns in Saturday’s Distaff. Justify’s two victories came on the same afternoon in 2023, when Just F Y I won the Juvenile Fillies on dirt and Hard to Justify won the Juvenile Fillies Turf. Frankel’s came from Inspiral in the 2023 Filly & Mare Turf and Lake Victoria in the 2024 Juvenile Fillies Turf. El Cordobes, third in last year’s Turf, is among his runners returning to that race.
The Classic, and What to Watch at Keeneland
Saturday’s Classic brings several of these lines together. Sovereignty runs for Into Mischief, whose 18 older-horse starts in the five-year study produced one victory. Golden Tempo represents Curlin, whose last Breeders’ Cup winner came in 2023. Magnitude runs for Not This Time and Knightsbridge for Nyquist. Godolphin owns both Sovereignty and Knightsbridge, and Bill Mott trains them.
I’ll be watching Magnitude particularly closely. His Dubai World Cup and Stephen Foster victories have already made him one of Not This Time’s most accomplished runners, and he was conceived before the stallion’s fee reached $135,000. The next generation of Not This Time progeny is only beginning to appear.
Methodology. The study covers every starter in the 70 Breeders’ Cup championship races run from 2021 through 2025: 775 starts, at Del Mar in 2021, 2024 and 2025, Keeneland in 2022 and Santa Anita in 2023. All 70 races are included, including the 2021 Juvenile Turf Sprint, which was a Grade 2 that year. Starters and order of finish come from the Breeders’ Cup’s official charts, checked against Horse Racing Nation’s results: the number of starters matches in every race, and the top three match in all 70. Each starter’s sire and trainer come from Horse Racing Nation’s race pages. For 182 of the 185 horses that finished in the top three, the sire also matches netkeiba’s pedigree records or a sale company’s results; for Pleasant, Pleasant Passage and Restrainedvengence, the independent pedigree check was unavailable and sire attribution rests on Horse Racing Nation. One unplaced 2025 Distaff starter has no sire listed and is excluded from sire counts. Sire names exclude country suffixes.
Rates and baselines are per start: a horse that ran in more than one year counts once for each start, and the Horses column counts each horse once. The field-size baseline gives each starter a chance of 1 divided by the number of starters in its race for a win, and 3 divided by it for a top-three finish, summed over a sire’s starts and rounded to one decimal place. It takes no account of individual horse ability, field strength or race placement. Not This Time’s standing and Grade 1 count are as reported in Taylor Made’s October 15, 2026 announcement. His fee history is drawn from Thoroughbred Intelligence’s Kentucky stud fee records and farm releases, as of October 21, 2026. Runners in 2026 are the 170 horses drawn on October 26 for the 14 championships at Keeneland, also-eligibles excluded. Figures are anchored to that draw and may change with scratches.
Primary research sources: Breeders’ Cup official charts, Horse Racing Nation, netkeiba, Keeneland, Fasig-Tipton, Ocala Breeders’ Sales, Taylor Made Stallions and Thoroughbred Intelligence’s Kentucky stud fee data.
Corrections. This piece credits 775 Breeders’ Cup starts to their sires from official charts and race records, and we checked every figure we could against a second source. An error is still possible. If you find one, let me know through our contact form or @TB_Intel on X, and I’ll correct it quickly.