This article first appeared in the December edition of Owner Breeder: Not This Time ended 2025 in second on the leading US sires’ list with 30 stakes winners to his credit.
There is no hotter name in the US right now than Not This Time, a horse who has risen off inexpensive crops to become one of the world’s premier sires.
Not This Time is due to stand at Taylor Made Farm in Kentucky for $250,000 in 2026, making him the joint most expensive American stallion alongside Into Mischief and Gun Runner. Justify follows on a reduced $200,000.
One of Not This Time’s major strengths is his ability to upgrade mares. Whereas Justify and Gun Runner have always been priced out of reach of the average breeder, Not This Time never stood for more than $15,000 in his first four seasons. Over 40 stakes winners emerged out of those crops including eight at Grade 1 level, ranging from a flagship first-crop dirt two-year-old in Princess Noor, to top turf sprinters Cogburn and Sibelius, champion turf horse Up To The Mark and Travers Stakes winner Epicenter.
That group provides a snapshot of Not This Time’s versatility. It doesn’t seem to matter if short or long, turf or dirt, two-year-old or older – like his sire Giant’s Causeway before him, his stock can seemingly do it all.
Naturally, it didn’t take the market long to latch on. Rather like War Front as he rose from his own original level of $10,000, Not This Time’s march swiftly made him commercial hot property and a help to those smaller breeders who had had the foresight to use him early on; for instance, yearlings bred off his final $12,500 crop foaled in 2021 averaged around $250,000 at the 2022 Keeneland September Sale.
Today, the market can’t get enough of the horse. The 74 yearlings that sold through the ring this year averaged around $670,000 for a median of $575,000. Mares in foal to him averaged $1.985 million at last month’s Fasig-Tipton November Sale and close to a million at the following Keeneland November Sale. The group included the sale-topping mares at both sales, namely the $6.2 million topper Streak Of Luck at Fasig-Tipton and the $2.3 million offering Buchu at Keeneland.
At the same time, a share in Not This Time sold for $3 million to John Sikura of Hill ’n’ Dale at Xalapa at the Keeneland Championship Sale ahead of the Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar. The transaction theoretically valued the horse at $150 million.
The drive behind this explosion in popularity has been results from the past 12 months. His progeny head into December with over $21.5 million in earnings for 2025, second to only the perennial champion sire Into Mischief. However, he leads all stallions in terms of stakes winners – 25 – and by stakes winners to runners (17.4%). He also has the measure of Into Mischief on the two-year-old sires’ listing by all metrics; winners (32 at the time of writing), stakes winners (7) and stakes horses (15).
The key fact here is that Not This Time’s current two-year-olds were bred when the horse still stood for $45,000. Obviously his Time to hit rarefied air 2022 book consisted of an uptick in quality against his $15,000 years but it still pales into comparison against the depth covered by Into Mischief, who has stood for a six-figure fee since 2018, and Justify among others. It begs the question what could happen once the first $125,000 crop, now yearlings, kick in.
Not This Time’s dominance was brought into sharper focus during the Keeneland Fall meet in Kentucky. He was already a top three stallion by the time the meeting came around thanks to a three-year-old crop that included Troubleshooting, winner of the Grade 1 Franklin-Simpson Stakes on the turf at Kentucky Downs, and the Grade 2 winners Magnitude, Giocoso and Clock Tower.
The Keeneland meeting took matters to another level, however.
During opening weekend, Imaginationthelady led home a Not This Time trifecta in the Grade 2 Jessamine Stakes for two-year-old fillies on the turf. The following day, four-year-old gelding Rhetorical won the Grade 1 Coolmore Turf Mile, defeating a pair of European Group 1 winners in the process. And a day later, two-year-olds Final Score and Schwarzenegger won the Grade 2 Bourbon and Listed Indian Summer Stakes.
When racing resumed the following weekend, Time To Dazzle headed a Not This Time one-two in the 5 ½ furlong Grade 2 Franklin Stakes. And if that wasn’t enough, he was represented by seven of the ten runners in the Grade 3 Bryan Station Stakes and duly supplied the first four home led by the aforementioned Troubleshooting.
In the midst of all this, two-year-old Cy Fair won the Listed Algonquin Stakes at Woodbine to set her up for a crack at the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf. She was ultimately one of nine Breeders’ Cup starters for her sire and went on to hand him a landmark success at the event, powering clear of a field that included the Middle Park Stakes runner-up Brussels and Cheveley Park Stakes winner True Love.
Cy Fair storms to victory in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint – Photo: Bill Selwyn
Just for good measure, three-year-old Tempus Volat also won the Listed Let It Ride Stakes that same week at Del Mar.
Since then, the two-year-old crop has been bolstered by Behold The King, winner of the Armed Forces Stakes at Gulfstream Park, and Balboa, successful at Listed level at Laurel, while among the three-year-olds, Juddmonte homebred Disco Time recently made it five from five in the Listed Dwyer Stakes on Aqueduct’s dirt. He is now reportedly being campaigned by trainer Brad Cox with an eye on next year’s Saudi Cup.
Not This Time’s own racing career was restricted to just four juvenile starts for Dale Romans. He won two of those, including the Grade 3 Iroquois Stakes at Churchill Downs, and also ran Classic Empire to a neck in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. He would have been a leading fancy for the Kentucky Derby off the back of that performance but he came out of the race with a soft tissue injury and was retired to Taylor Made for the following season.
He’s well-bred, being a Giant’s Causeway half-brother to Grade 1 winner Liam’s Map, himself a highly successful sire, and good-looking, so although he stood for comparatively little at the beginning, he has always attracted the volume of interest to be effective.
What is notable is that despite only running four times himself, a number of Not This Time’s better runners are durable, a seemingly increasingly rare attribute within the American breed; for example, Grade 1 winners Sacred Wish and Sibelius ran 49 times between them while Grade 2 winner Next, a marathon dirt runner, packed in 13 wins from 24 starts.
Not This Time is by far the most successful American-based sire son of Giant’s Causeway and interestingly, his half-brother Liam’s Map boasts a similar distinction in terms of his sire Unbridled’s Song, whose list of disappointing sire sons is far-reaching.
The pair are out of Miss Macy Sue, a daughter of the End Sweep stallion Trippi who possesses strong ties to Tartan Farm, a leading operation of its time which bred and raised the likes of Dr Fager, Unbridled and Fappiano under the eye of John Nerud. Champion Dr Fager was the crowning achievement of the Florida farm but his sister Ta Wee, another champion on the track, also did plenty to further its brand at stud. That plays out in this instance through her presence as the fourth dam of Miss Macy Sue. Indeed, it might be of significance that Miss Macy Sue’s dam Yada Yada is inbred 2×3 to Ta Wee as a daughter of Ta Wee’s high-class son Great Above, himself a successful sire. She is also inbred three times to Intentionally, another former Tartan titan.
All in all, Taylor Made is in possession of a stallion who is well on his way to being the best sire in the US, and possibly in time further afield. His ability to throw good turf runners makes him appealing to European eyes and indeed his 2022 crop includes last year’s Group 2 Norfolk Stakes winner Shareholder. Various European outfits are supporting him, among them Coolmore, Juddmonte and Blue Diamond Stud, and hopefully we will see more compete in Europe in due course.
Meanwhile, the next chapter is about to be written via his various early sons to stud. They include Coolmore’s Epicenter, who has a first crop of 203 representatives to run for him next year.
