Meet two of the world’s greatest sports dads. They’re horses

Gun Runner, ridden by Florent Geroux, won the Breeders' Cup Classic in 2017. Now, his offspring are on the tracks, while he's become one of the greatest stallions ever. Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images

By Graham CornwellJune 19, 2026 Updated

Two of the world’s greatest dads are unlikely to receive many monogrammed mugs or touching cards from their kids on Father’s Day. This is mainly because they’ve never actually met their kids, but also because they’re horses.

In the picturesque horse farms outside Lexington, Kentucky, two of the greatest stallions of our time, maybe of all time, have retired from racing, but they’re still hard at work. Into Mischief and Gun Runner are likely to spend their Father’s Days in the breeding shed, trying to become dads yet again.

In the world of thoroughbred racing, stallions reign supreme, as owners and leading farms try to create champion sire lines that can sustain a breeding enterprise for decades. If you look at the Daily Racing Form on any given day at any of the country’s top race tracks, you’ll probably see their names a few times. If you look at the program or your preferred betting app on the biggest racing days — Kentucky Derby, Belmont Stakes, Breeders’ Cup — you’ll definitely see them.

In a sport that is all about parents and their progeny, that’s a big deal. Hardly a major stakes race takes place without one of their kids — or even their grandkids — in the starting gate. Three of the past six Breeders’ Cup Classic winners are theirs. This year’s Kentucky Oaks winner, Always a Runner, is a daughter of Gun Runner. Last year’s Kentucky Derby winner, Sovereignty, is a son of Into Mischief.

Sovereignty crosses the finish line to win the 151st running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

This is obvious to devotees of the sport, but for newcomers, watching horse racing from the perspective of a dad (or mom, of course) changes everything. Suddenly, you’re not just watching a race; you’re watching cascading generations of horses to see how they act or look like their folks. It’s oddly warm and familial.

But plenty of champion horses do not produce champion kids, and plenty of lesser racehorses turn out to be outstanding sires. Coolmore Stud famously bought Kentucky Derby champ Fusaichi Pegasus for a figure between $60 and $70 million after his Derby win, but he produced only a few successful descendants and was widely regarded as a huge bust as a stallion. Success in racing is about much more than just speed and power, and so it’s hard to determine which colts will produce great kids.

Into Mischief is a prime example. A quality racehorse, he ran only six times but won three races. He retired to Spendthrift Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, and started to breed as a relatively unheralded stallion.

“He did it the hard way,” explained Dean Roethemeier, Director of Sales Operations at Keeneland.

Into Mischief produced his first crop of foals for a relatively modest $12,500 stud fee. But those first few crops of kids exceeded expectations in their 2-year-old seasons, and so owners started bringing him higher-class mares. Into Mischief’s stud fee is now 20 times that amount, and he has been the leading sire in North America for the past seven years. Only two other horses have ever held the top spot for seven consecutive years: one was in the 1960s (Bold Ruler), the other was in the nineteenth century (Lexington).

“He’s not too much to look at, just 16 hands, a pony-looking horse, but he is pure presence,” said Wayne Howard, stallion manager at Spendthrift Farm, where Into Mischief stands to stud, now at the age of 21.

Into Mischief takes a stroll at Spendthrift Farm. (Graham Cornwell)

Among Spendthrift’s many quality stallions, Into Mischief exercises a kind of casual dominance around the barn. Spendthrift folks often refer to him by the respectful diminutive “Chief,” and other horses seem to recognize that he’s the boss. He spends his days flitting among barn, grassy field and breeding shed, where the best mares in the world arrive a few times a day between February and the end of June. His spring calendar is a busy one.

Gun Runner followed a different path. As a 3-year-old in 2016, he won the Louisiana Derby and then ran third in the Kentucky Derby, but he really came into his own as a 4-year-old. He won five straight Grade 1 races to end his career, including the 2017 Breeders’ Cup Classic and the Pegasus World Cup, and retired as Horse of the Year. He returned to Three Chimneys Farm, a bucolic complex in the rolling hills just west of Lexington, where he grew up.

Many stallions see a dip in stud fees after the first couple of years into a horse’s stallion career, as owners and breeders wait to see if the first crops will race well as juveniles. Gun Runner’s stud fee started at $70,000 in 2019 but has climbed steadily since. His year of runners included a Preakness Stakes winner, Early Voting and the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies champion, Echo Zulu. Like Into Mischief, his stud fee is now a quarter of a million dollars.

Gun Runner’s stable still has the brass nameplate of its former occupant, legendary 1977 Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew, who also sired an impressive line of runners. His great-great-grandson, California Chrome, was nearly a Triple Crown winner but got upset in the 2014 Belmont by Tonalist, himself a great-grandson of Seattle Slew. Legacy and lineage are everywhere.

Although both Into Mischief and Gun Runner often produce athletic and well-balanced horses, the first notable trait most people in racing almost always mention isn’t physical but mental.

“People tend to think working with horses is about getting them to do what we want, but with a horse like Gun Runner, you are constantly learning from him,” Veronica Reed, Three Chimneys’ stallion manager, said. “He teaches us to work with him and not against him.”

A Day in the Life of Gun Runner (Graham Cornwell)

It’s not that Gun Runners and Into Mischiefs – using the dad’s name as a reference point is common in the horse business – are unimpressive specimens. Some Into Mischiefs, for example, can have shorter, tighter, muscular builds like this year’s Florida Derby champ, Commandment, while others are leggier and longer, like 2020 Kentucky Derby winner Authentic. But it’s really the attitude that sets them apart. “They just plain run,” Spendthrift general manager Ned Toffey declared.

Jockey Florent Geroux, who rode Gun Runner to his biggest wins, describes his former mount as not especially fast but extraordinarily adaptable. But after a good 3-year-old season, Geroux found him with a growing appetite for training and work.

“A lot of horses move forward from (ages) 2 to 3,” Geroux said. “But a lot stay the same from 3 to 4. Gun Runner was just constantly moving forward, physically and mentally, so much stronger, always ready to run.”

Their kids tend to be focused, hard working and eager to compete. “They’re not too big or heavy,” said Joe Miller, co-owner of Kern Thoroughbreds. “The most important attribute that they seem to pass along to their offspring is their temperament and how hard they try.”

Neither Into Mischief nor Gun Runner are particularly imposing specimens, and neither are most of their kids. But stallions have no contact with their offspring, so whatever resemblance their kids show is purely genetic.

Both Gun Runner and Into Mischief are also impressively good at their retirement gigs. Breeding thoroughbreds is complicated and can be mentally and physically exhausting for the horses. Not all stallions take to the task, and few are as virile and, frankly, efficient as these two. Broodmare owners willing to pay Gun Runner’s and Into Mischief’s hefty stud fees at least do so with more confidence that they’ll have a sound foal roughly 11 months later.

But even $250,000 is not necessarily enough to get a baby from these prized stallions. Three Chimneys and Spendthrift are selective about the mares they’re willing to pair with Gun Runner and Into Mischief.

“It’s really tough to maintain a sire line,” Roethemeier explained. To keep a stallion’s value high, a farm will try to increase the chances that his kids are great runners by breeding with high-class broodmares.