BH Interview: Becky Thomas

Just months after six-time leading New York sire Freud was pensioned, a new stallion has emerged at Sequel Stallions New York, the farm that stood the blue-blooded son of Storm Cat.

Sequel's Honest Mischief  , with progeny earnings of more than $1.62 million through Dec. 29, holds a commanding lead in the New York freshman sire standings and has broken into the top 10 nationally at No. 8.

Like Freud, a full brother to European Horse of the Year and champion sire Giant's Causeway, the Juddmonte Farms homebred Honest Mischief hails from uncommonly strong bloodlines. By five-time leading sire Into Mischief  , he is a half brother to grade 1 winner and sire First Defence . His dam, grade 1 winner Honest Lady, by Seattle Slew, is a half to 2003 Belmont Stakes (G1) winner and successful sire Empire Maker, plus grade 1 winners Chester House and Chiselling, and grade 2 winner Decarchy.

Honest Mischief made a splash Dec. 14 at Aqueduct Racetrack when his son Sacrosanct  won the $500,000 New York Stallion Series Stakes (Great White Way Division) and his daughter Stone Smuggler  won the filly equivalent Fifth Avenue Division, with Honest Mischief fillies also grabbing third and fourth place.

Sacrosanct is undefeated in four starts and a three-time stakes winner. Sequel owner Becky Thomas—who co-bred, raised, and trained Sacrosanct up to his appearance at the juvenile sale—sat down with BloodHorse to talk about how she weaves the many skills she has honed during a 30-plus-year career in the Thoroughbred industry into her businesses as well as New York's hottest sire.

Also an experienced bloodstock agent, Thomas, as agent for longtime client Chester Broman, purchased Hip 73, a Gun Runner   colt out of grade 1 winner Harmonize  for $1.15 million and Hip 836, a $325,000 Constitution   colt, at this year's Keeneland September Yearling Sale.

BloodHorse: What does your professional life look like on a daily basis?

Becky Thomas: Well, I live in Ocala and I train horses.

I've had the privilege of training for Mr. Broman—Chester and Mary Broman—for many, many years. Mrs. Broman passed away this past year.

As well, I assist with Mr. Broman's farm manager Greg Falk and (pedigree consultant) Alan Porter, and we do the matings for Mr. Broman's mares. It has been an absolute thrill to be involved with that kind of bloodstock from start to finish—from assisting in the matings to raising the babies. They come to me in Florida when they are weaned, and I raise them. And then we usually discuss which horses go to yearling sales, which ones go to 2-year-old sales, and which go to race.

Right now, Mr. Broman at 89 years old would like to participate in the Kentucky Derby, so he also has been on a mission purchasing some additional colts to go the Derby.

BH: So you have your breeding and stallion farm Sequel New York and your training/raising operation Sequel Bloodstock in Florida, correct?

BT: Yes, in addition to Mr. Broman's babies, I raise all of Sequel's babies, which most of them are regional horses that are born at our New York farm, where we also stand stallions, and then they ship down to Florida.

With my own horses, I operate based on cash flow. I don't have the luxury of operating as Mr. Broman does. I am financed by the bank, so, for example, I will have horses selling in January at the Keeneland sale. I sell horses opportunistically as we go along, as well as pinhook with a few partners. I also train and sell my homebreds at the 2-year-old sales.

So that's what I do in Florida. I train horses and raise babies. I train 50-60 head of horses a year and have very few outside clients but those people that are very well known to me. I'm not really an outside agent. I have the thrill of training for some good, long-term clients.

BH: As an opportunistic seller, what are your thoughts on the liquidity the digital sales have created?

BT: The digital sales are amazing. They have been great for us to capitalize on the top end as well as to move horses along that no longer fit our program.

At first, I sold because Boyd (Browning) was doing it. The first year that Fasig-Tipton started their digital sales, I put a horse in as one of the first offerings to support that venue. I've been a big Fasig-Tipton fan for many, many years.

We only have three remaining sales companies that we sell at, and all those companies are working hard for our loyalty and to provide a product in a changing environment, and it's a product that is not always as marketable as you would like.

This past year when Mr. (Lewis) Lakin and I had our dissolution because of his passing, we had 36 horses in the Fasig-Tipton July Digital Sale. We were dividing assets, and with one of my mares I had to go to $310,000 to buy her back because there was an active bidder situation. I was like oh my gosh, I had no intentions of paying that much. It was crazy. There's certainly some highly skilled horsemen buying at the digital sales, but there's also an arena of keyboard warriors who are bidding.

My biggest praise for these sales is that even at the bottom end, we've been able to find homes for horses that did not even receive bids. I have been able to place horses out of the digital sales that I was looking to rehome.

BH: How does your breeding program operate?

BT: We only breed in New York or Kentucky, and all the horses I breed are foaled in New York. I can tell you exactly how many mares I have because I just went over their matings. There are 46 mares   that I own part or all of. That number changes between 40 and 50. Our outside matings for 2025 are done... We plan on going to the (Keeneland) January sale and certainly maybe we'll pick up something in February also.

BH: What are some of the most important factors you consider when matching mares to stallions?

BT: I am a huge supporter of Alan Porter's work for Mr. Broman.

For us personally how I mate mares, I'm a genotype-phenotype breeder. I use the services. I use Alan Porter. I use True Nicks. I use Jack Werk. But my deciding factor is truly, if it's a mare I know, what her progeny have been. 

With our stallions in New York, I literally look at physical attributes. I do not breed short, dumpy mares to short, dumpy stallions. You know, that kind of thing. That's definitely how I breed my mares. It's a predominantly physical mating. In New York if I am breeding to in-house stallions, I get the luxury of seeing what the foals look like out of different mares.

BH: You seem to breed and sell a lot of athletic horses. How do you prioritize athleticism in your program?

BT: Well, this is my biggest thing about breeding, because I train. I love to train and I have zero use for untalented horses. When I am training something and I don't see talent, I'll give a first produce a pass, but if her second horse cannot run, either, that mare does not stay in our breeding program. That doesn't mean we produce nothing but winners, because we certainly produce our share of horses who can't run, but that is something I always strive for—to be able to produce racehorses.

I just met with our CPA. My CPA is Len Green, of DJ Stable, the most phenomenal of all. He hammers on me all the time to get rid of non-producing assets and hope they work out better for someone else.

BH: It seems you have found a pretty good match for your goal of producing racehorses with the financial rewards built into the New York program?

BT: The New York program has been phenomenal in the amount of money that we potentially can earn based on breeding a good horse, and that is my goal for everything we do. 

The lower end of the market has become totally economically not viable. There is an awareness that you can't just breed a mare that you thought was worth $30,000 to a $30,000 stud and think it's going to work out commercially.

With the New York awards program, we can actually just try to breed winners. The amount of money we can earn simply by foaling in New York is extraordinary. For my breeding program, I want to breed a racehorse, and I look at these awards as a way to offset my costs of breeding a racehorse. That doesn't mean it's not tough commercially on our New York sires. You have to actually breed winners and placers; but if you do, you can help fund the operation of your farm.

I think that's one of the things that makes the New York program unique. NYRA has done a brilliant job of joining with the breeders. They need us to fill races, and we need them to provide those races. The fact that foals of 2024 are now going to be eligible for purse parity is amazing. In 2026 at Saratoga we probably will be running for $110,000 or $120,000 for open horses. Well, we will be running for the same amount for our New York-breds. That is unparalleled in any other state with the exception of what Kentucky is doing. I think Kentucky has been a driving force of what is happening in New York in terms of what the purse structure is and how to keep horses in their home state.

BH: What did Freud mean to your farm for the last 20-plus years?

BT: We bought Freud as a 3-year-old and stood him as a 4-year-old. He is a 1998 model, and he is going to be so disappointed this year to not be able to breed. He is an amazing horse. I call our farm "the farm Freud built." You might need to verify this number, but we have earned over $3 million and close to $4 million in stallion awards for that stallion.

He is not pensioned because of old age or any infirmity. He is pensioned simply because I feel like if something were to happen to him, I don't want to feel like I jeopardized his health because he is old and a mare kicked him.

BH: When you decided to stand Freud, was that largely a gamble based on his pedigree?

BT: Yes, pedigree. Freud's race record was marginal. He had an airway issue that did not allow him to enjoy his highest level of competition. I felt like, with his pedigree—he is obviously a full brother to Giant's Causeway—he had a chance. And I'm a pedigree disciple in so many ways. I also was always a huge Storm Cat fan and a huge (broodmare sire) Rahy fan. 

Freud was owned by Coolmore and they were incredibly gracious to let us start him. They maintained ownership for a number of years and later let us purchase the remaining portion of him. Freud exceeded everything we could have thought, really.

BH: So just three months after Freud was pensioned, Honest Mischief is running away with the New York freshman sire title. How did you wind up standing him?

BT: My very dear friend (stallion sales manager at Spendthrift Farm) Mark Toothaker called me about Honest Mischief. Mark said, 'Becky, you need to go look at him. He doesn't fit Spendthrift's program, but you have to go look at him.'

I was like, 'uhhhhh.' It's very hard to make a stallion and it takes a lot of commitment for me, because I don't just take it lightly.

But I made the appointment. When I saw him, I went back in the office, and (Juddmonte USA general manager) Garrett O'Rourke spent a lot of time going over the whole family—everything from Empire Maker to First Defence to Honest Lady—and we discussed various races. He told me how special he was and that everybody believed in him. 

I called Chad Brown. He told me in his first start as a 3-year-old Honest Mischief ran a 2 (Ragozin), a 2! Chad also was influential in me deciding to stand him. He's a beautiful, very, very athletic horse that looks super fast, and he obviously was super fast.

I loved that he has got good length in his back. I loved the pedigree, and I loved that he doesn't look like a typical sprinter.

BH: You were the co-breeder of Sacrosanct and you trained him and consigned him to the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale. You must know that colt pretty well.

BT: Sacrosanct was a homebred for myself and Len Burleson as well as Jack Sims. That was a horse I absolutely loved. He was not entered in a yearling sale, went to the 2-year-old sale, and brought $260,000. He has very little pedigree. He just made his own pedigree. He was a brilliant mover. His dam, Vibrato, is a big scopey Unbridled's Song mare. Sacrosanct himself is a big horse. 

That stake he won, 1:24.10 was a very solid number for the day. And he ran the three-quarters in 1:10.46, and he worked hard to hang on at the end. It was his hardest race, and he showed a lot of grit and another dimension there to be able to fight on.

And there are more talented, fast Honest Mischiefs out there. He had multiple horses go :9 4/5 at the 2-year-old sales who haven't emerged yet. I believe those horses want to get more ground. We expected him to be early, but they were not as early as we thought, and they have won from five furlongs to a mile. 

I want to be able to breed those horses that can step out of the comfort zone of New York. We've seen enough in his progeny and their numbers that our hope for Honest Mischief is to be able to break out of the regional market and have winners on a national and international basis. I do think that is possible. We've already seen a winner from him in Dubai (Arigatou Gozaimasu). It's very exciting.