Coolmore’s Ashford Stud continues to build its roster for 2026, as the farm announced Sunday that champion juvenile Citizen Bull will retire to the Kentucky farm following the Breeders’ Cup.
Citizen Bull, who currently races for the partnership of SF Racing, Starlight Racing, Madaket Stables, Stonestreet Stables, Dianne Bashor, Determined Stables, Robert Masterson, Tom Ryan, Waves Edge Capital, and Catherine Donovan, is expected to make his final start in the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile on Nov. 1 at Del Mar.
Citizen Bull, by leading sire and sire of sires Into Mischief, won three of four starts in 2024 for Bob Baffert, with Grade 1 victories in the American Pharoah and the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile sealing his divisional Eclipse Award. This year, he has won twice from five starts, with a victory in the Grade 3 Robert B. Lewis to start the year. He is training into the Breeders’ Cup off a win in the Shared Belief on Aug. 31.
“The only Eclipse Award-winning 2-year-old male by Into Mischief, Citizen Bull will make a fantastic addition to our roster,” Ashford’s Dermot Ryan said in a release. “He is from that very potent Into Mischief – Distorted Humor cross that has already given us the proven Grade 1 sire Practical Joke, and hails from the family of up-and-coming young Ashford sire Tiz the Law."
Coolmore announced last week that fellow 2024 Eclipse Award champion Sierra Leone will arrive at Ashford following his final start in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. The son of Gun Runner won the 2024 Classic for Coolmore, Peter Brant, and Brook Smith.
Coolmore holds the stallion rights to two other leading contenders for this Classic – 2023 Eclipse champion juvenile Fierceness, who was second to Sierra Leone in last year’s edition, and this year’s Preakness Stakes winner Journalism. Specific plans for the retirement timelines of those colts have not yet been announced.
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