Ashford Stud · Versailles, Kentucky
Kindle foaled this filly on April 11, 2026 and is being pensioned this month. At eighteen she retires to HnR Farm in Versailles, alongside Living the Life (IRE) and Randie’s Legend. There will be no more foals out of her.
What came before her is the argument. HnR bought Kindle out of Keeneland September in 2009 for $50,000, and in her owner’s own account she was affordable because she was a bit short. She then won four races from eleven starts including two stakes, finished second or third in three Grade 2s and a Grade 3, and earned $243,370 for Gary Mandella.
In the breeding shed she has done better still. Four of her five runners have won. Palazzi is a Grade 2 winner with $642,410 who was still winning at eight in 2026. Made in America won the Forego Stakes at Turfway Park. And her foals have grossed $3,820,000 in the ring against that $50,000 purchase price.
Kindle with her final foal
Quality Road stands at Lane’s End in Versailles for $100,000 in 2026, sixteen seasons into a stud career that has produced 17 Grade 1 winners. From 1,237 foals of racing age he has 101 black-type winners, 53 of them graded, and six champions. His lifetime Average Earnings Index is 2.06 against a Comparable Index of 1.77 for the mares he covers.
He is not living off an old book. In 2026 alone his runners won six graded stakes: Prom Queen the Gulfstream Park Oaks (G2), Zihnal the West Virginia Derby (G3), Heroic Move the Steve Sexton Mile (G3), Nafisa the La Canada (G3), Marjoram the Senorita (G3), and Speed Shopper both the Bewitch (G3) and the Christophe Clement (G3). His chief earner, Emblem Road, won the Saudi Cup and banked $12,021,492.
Quality Road · Lane’s End
TrueNicks rates this cross A+ with a variant of 4.48. Werk rates it A, the grade it calls Outstanding, at plus 400 percent above the norm. Both ratings are on the direct sire and broodmare sire cross, not on a wider approximation.
The record behind the letter grades is thin in volume and strong in rate. Thirteen foals of racing age, eleven starters, ten winners. Two of those eleven are stakes winners, and both are fillies: Park Avenue and Breaking Bread, from five filly starters that have reached the track. The six colts to start on the cross have all won and none has won a stakes. Cullum Road, a gelding, is Grade 3 placed.
Buyers have paid accordingly. Nine yearlings bred on this cross have sold at public auction for an average of $278,889 and a median of $275,000.
Dosage profile 10-14-20-0-0, for a Dosage Index of 3.40 and a Center of Distribution of 0.77. Inbreeding is close enough to matter and loose enough to be safe: Mr. Prospector four by four, through Gone West on the sire’s side and Carson City on the dam’s, with Northern Dancer five by five and Raise a Native three times at the fifth generation. The inbreeding coefficient is 3.20 percent to ten generations.
Lane’s End’s own mating analysis by Sid Fernando identifies the Caro line, which reaches Quality Road’s mares through Indian Charlie, as a source of six of his black-type winners, three of them graded, and names his existing black-type winners out of Indian Charlie mares as evidence the cross works.
Bay mare, foaled March 14, 2008, by Indian Charlie out of Carson’s Vanity, by Carson City. A stakes winner, multiple graded stakes placed, and a graded stakes producer. Bred by Caldara Farm and bought by HnR out of the 2009 Keeneland September sale for $50,000. Gary Mandella trained her for all eleven starts and she ran her entire career in HnR silks.
She won on debut at Golden Gate Fields in September 2011, at three, rallying from fourth at the quarter pole to win by a length and a half as the favorite. She won again at Hollywood Park in December under Mike Smith. Then she ran two flat races in midwinter allowance company at Santa Anita, and disappeared for seven months.
She came back on September 21, 2012 a different racehorse. Edwin Maldonado was aboard, she wore front bandages for the first time, and she went straight to the front. She was first at the opening call, the second call and the stretch call in every one of her last six starts, without exception. Two of those six she won: the Bangles and Beads at Fairplex by three lengths, and the Cool Air at Hollywood Park by two and three-quarters.
The other four were graded stakes, and she was never beaten off in any of them. Second in the Senator Ken Maddy (G3) by a half length. Second in the Monrovia (G2) by a half length. Second in the Monrovia (G2) again a year later, at six, off a 344-day layoff, by three-quarters of a length. Those three graded seconds add up to one and three-quarter lengths.
Her four best Equibase figures all came on turf, topped by the 108 in the Cool Air and a 107 in the Monrovia forty-four days later. Indian Charlie is the broodmare sire of Flightline and Mitole. That is the market context her daughters sell into, and this filly is one of them.
Cool Air Stakes · Betfair Hollywood Park · November 23, 2012
Kindle · Santa Anita Park, 2014
Bay gelding, 2018, by Pioneerof the Nile out of Kindle. Bred by HnR in partnership with the Pioneerof the Nile Syndicate and sold for $510,000 as a yearling at Fasig-Tipton Saratoga in 2019 to Team Casse. Mark Casse has trained him ever since, seven seasons and 38 starts, for Gary Barber.
He is the runner who turned Kindle from a stakes producer into a graded stakes producer. That happened on September 9, 2023 in the Pattison Singspiel Stakes (G3) at Woodbine, where he was last of seven at the quarter and the half, eight and a half lengths off the lead, and still fourth with a quarter to run. Sahin Civaci brought him between horses and he ran down Chad Brown’s Rockemperor, the 1.30 to 1 favorite, inside the sixteenth pole. His closing quarter of 23.94 was the fastest fraction run at Woodbine that afternoon.
Nine months later he won the bet365 Eclipse Stakes (G2) off the same trip, and from further back. Casse saddled three of the seven runners and Palazzi was the least regarded of them at 6.55 to 1. Bumped at the start, he was last at the half, eleven lengths adrift, and last again at the three-quarters. Civaci fanned him seven paths wide turning for home and he got up inside the final seventy yards to beat the favorite by a half length.
He is still going. At eight, in May 2026, he was sent off favorite at Gulfstream Park, settled eighth of ten, came four wide and won by a head. Seven wins, $642,410, a top figure of 107, on turf and on synthetic from a mile and a sixteenth to a mile and a quarter.
Palazzi · Woodbine
The bottom line runs back through a Grade 3-placed producer to a listed stakes-winning Nureyev mare and then to a French champion. It is a family that has produced juvenile class in Europe, graded turf horses in North America, and Group winners in Germany and Italy.
Four of her eleven starts, in order: the Hollywood Park allowance under Mike Smith, both stakes wins, and the Grade 3 she was run down in at Santa Anita.
Hip 91 at Keeneland September 2018, the opening session topper, sold to Godolphin with Sheikh Mohammed on the grounds.
The 2007 Keeneland September sale ring, the 2010 Metropolitan Handicap, a career retrospective, and the horse as he stands at Lane’s End today.
Kindle ’26 is offered as a weanling filly at The November Sale in Lexington, Kentucky on November 2, 2026, consigned by Ballysax Bloodstock. Catalog page and hip number to be announced. For inspection, video or veterinary information before the sale, contact HnR Nothhaft Horse Racing.