Monday Morning Message with Jason Beem Dec. 8, 2025

Jason discusses the New York Stallion Series races and state-bred programs as state-bred stakes season winds down. 

A good Monday morning to you all! Hope everyone had a good weekend. 

We had our first stakes races of the season at Tampa, and I was particularly impressed by the effort of Solitude Dude in winning the Inaugural S. by eight lengths, stopping the clock in 1:09.07 for the six furlongs. The track was playing a bit fast, so the speed figures didn’t come back too big, but I still thought visually he looks like a pretty nice horse. I suppose we’ll see as things stretch out for him. 

The Cigar Mile (G2) card took center stage this weekend at Aqueduct, and it was nice to see some video footage from NYRA honoring the Big A as we begin the final stretches of racing there. I said on my show today that any track closing is a sad thing, but when it’s being replaced on the same circuit by a newer facility, it’s not nearly as devastating as when racing leaves an area, as we just heard about with Hastings Race Course this weekend. I’ll write more about that on Thursday.  

One tweet I saw from a friend on Saturday was talking about how the two New York Stallion Series races were running for double the money of the Remsen S. (G2), even though obviously the Remsen runners are superior racehorses in most cases. The answer of course is obvious, but I wanted to talk about the state-bred and stallion programs in general, and how they’ve grown on me over the years. 

There was a time when jaded Jason used to get so annoyed when a horse would win, and people’s first reactions were about where that horse was born or who its parents were. It always felt diminishing to the horse and what he or she just did on the track on that day. I remember back in the day at Portland Meadows, we’d have Oregon Championship Day, and it was all too common for maidens, first-time starters, or just $4,000 claimers to win stakes races and get a ton of press. Looking back, I feel so stupid for not thinking as much of those connections and horses as I do now. 

Working in Florida and Virginia the last couple of years, I’ve had chances to go to some of the local farms and meet with local breeders and owners and gain some much-needed appreciation for their plying their trades in their home state. The jobs and economic benefits are awesome, but having these strong state-bred programs gives a lot of these local connections a chance to make some real money and keep owning and breeding horses in these states. 

Not to mention these horses often run much longer than their “superstar” counterparts at the national level, who often get whisked away to breeding duties far too early in their lifetime. We have a Virginia-bred runner at Colonial Downs named Embolden who ran on the first day of the track re-opening back in 2019! He’s also run back in 2020, 2022, 2023, and he hit the board in a stakes race again in 2025. Horses like him won’t get the headlines, but man, what a feat that is, and how great is it that we’ve gotten to see him over this six-year span still competing at a high level.  Just awesome. 

So kudos to the New York Stallion Series races for producing some local winners who turned in good performances and good prices for players who were able to come up with the winners. State-bred season tends to reach its peak just before the Breeders' Cup, but it continues on for a while longer, this weekend at Fair Grounds with Louisiana Champions Day.