Pedigree Profile: Citizen Bull

The Breeders' Cup Juvenile winner is bred on proven patterns for his elite sire

Citizen Bull’s win in the 2024 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile was his second G1 of the season, as the two-year-old Bob Baffert trainee had also taken the American Pharoah last month. Citizen Bull went to the front in the Breeders’ Cup - a feat likely helped by the poor start of favored East Avenue - and led throughout over stablemate Gaming to prevail by a length and a half on the wire.

A $675,000 Keeneland September purchase for an extensive ownership group that includes SF Bloodstock, Starlight Racing, and Madaket Stables, Citizen Bull is a son of the breed-shaping stallion Into Mischief and out of an unraced daughter of Distorted Humor. He’s bred on the exact sire/damsire cross as 11 other stakes winners by Into Mischief, including G1 winners Life Is Good and Practical Joke. In 150 starters with Into Mischief on the top half of the pedigree and Distorted Humor on the bottom, there have been 18 stakes winners (12%).

Thanks to the racetrack success, this Into Mischief/Distorted Humor cross has been a very popular one in the sales ring, as well. This past August, an Into Mischief colt out of the Distorted Humor mare Distorted Music sold for $1,000,000 at the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Select sale. In 2023, there were three seven-figure Into Mischief yearlings out of mares by Distorted Humor, as well as a $1.2 million yearling out of Serengeti Empress, a daughter of the Distorted Humor stallion Alternation.

Citizen Bull is the first winner out of his dam, who is a half-sister to G1 winner Moonshine Memories (Malibu Moon), stakes winner Indian Evening (Indian Charlie), and stakes placed winner Mo For the Money (Uncle Mo). Another sibling, Town Tour (Speightstown), is the dam of multiple graded stakes winner Souper Hoity Toity by Uncle Mo.

This branch of Lowe family 9e tracing to Citizen Bull’s third dam Evil Elaine is responsible for 12 stakes winners, including fellow G1 winners Favorite Trick and Tiz the Law. Nine of the 88 starters from the family since 2011 are stakes winners (10.2%).

Interestingly, this is not Into Mischief’s first elite runner from the 9e family, which shares a mitochondrial haplotype with Citizen Bull’s damsire Distorted Humor (a member of Lowe family 9f). Into Mischief’s G1 Florida Derby winning son Audible is also a member of this family, as are graded stakes winners Mutasaabeq and Accede. Into Mischief is also the sire of the stakes placed full siblings Dangerfield and Madame Vestal out of a Distorted Humor mare from family 9e.

Citizen Bull will have to overcome the same questions of distance that his elite brethren Life Is Good and Practical Joke failed to, but he’s proven that he is just the latest success story for a cross that continues to produce dividends in the sales ring and on the racetrack.