By admin 
Opening day of the Keeneland September Yearling Sale sees plenty of breeders realize a return on investment that began with a broodmare purchase made years earlier. Few, though, have seen a turnaround as dramatic as Bret Jones has witnessed since Street Mate joined the Airdrie Stud broodmare band 14 years ago.
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Jones secured the winning daughter of Street Cry as a broodmare prospect for $35,000 at the 2012 Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale. Since then, she has added Grade 1 winner Bell’s The One and Grade 3 winner King Cause to her produce record.
Just as notable, her yearlings have sold for a combined $3,437,000, with the latest contributor to that figure being a $425,000 Life Is Good colt who sold on Monday to CHC Inc., Maverick Racing, and Light Post Ventures.
There are life-changing scores, and there are scores that actually change lives. For Jones, Street Mate and her progeny have filled both cups.
“I will think of her probably for the rest of my life, because she has been unbelievably good to our family,” Jones said. “Literally selling one of those horses, I was able to use to buy my house to raise my children. So, Street Mate is unbelievably important to us. Whenever we’re at the farm with the kids, that is mentioned, and every time we’re petting her, we always say, ‘Make sure you say a big thank you to this girl.’”
A Virginia-born product of the late Edward P. Evans breeding program, Street Mate raced as a homebred before selling as part of Evans’ record-setting dispersal at the 2011 Keeneland November Sale, going to Jerry Jamgotchian for $25,000. Her racing career was modest on both sides of that transaction, winning once for Jamgotchian and dropping into the claiming ranks before she was cataloged for the 2012 November Sale.
Bloodstock folks spend their entire lives scouring catalogs for just one broodmare prospect that will earn the kind of bona fides that Street Mate owns as she reaches the later stages of her breeding career. Jones has done plenty of scouring himself, but he admitted this one snuck up on him.
“Honestly, it was one of those where I had not done my homework, frankly,” he said. “I was sitting in the pavilion and saw that a well-bred Street Cry mare from a Ned Evans family that we’d always really liked was coming up, so I ran to the back ring.
“She had a beautiful body on her, just as big and strong a mare as you’d ever want to see,” Jones continued. “She was not good in front, frankly, but I don’t know that that was completely unexpected. Street Cry was not the most correct horse, but he was such a brilliant horse and has been such an important horse, so we took a chance on her.”
Airdrie Stud had just added Grade 1 winner Creative Cause to its roster for the upcoming breeding season, and Jones saw Street Mate as a solid match to help both young horses prove themselves in their new careers
The plan worked beautifully. Their first mating produced stakes-placed Running Mate, and the second begat Grade 3 winner King Cause.
Street Mate’s third foal, though, would be the one that truly tipped the scales.
Jones sent the mare to support another Airdrie stallion, Majesticperfection, for the 2015 breeding season, and received the filly Bell’s the One. She became the mare’s first six-figure yearling when she sold to Lothenbach Stables for $155,000, then she became one of the country’s top female sprinters, taking down the Grade 1 Derby City Distaff Stakes and earning more than $2 million.
Bell’s the One prevailed by a hard-fought nose in the Derby City Distaff, and Jones said that willingness to dig in was something
“She’s definitely very, very competitive,” Jones said of Street Mate. “She’s got a wonderful mind herself. She looks incredible. I know she’s starting to get a little bit of age on her now, but she’s all dappled out and just looks incredible. Great weight at the farm. I sure hope she’s got some more foals in her future, because they’re very competitive, very much like Bell’s the One. They want to do their job.”
With two graded stakes winners on the page, buyers started fighting harder for Street Mate’s foals in the sale pavilion. From barely clearing the six-figure bar, the mare’s yearlings began appearing in more select books of the Keeneland September catalog and commanding prices to match that market.
Up to that point, Jones had used Street Mate to help prove young stallions on the Airdrie stallion roster, but the track record the mare built opened her up to the top of the commercial market, and the breeder took a swing in 2021, sending her to the fast-rising Not This Time. The ensuing foal, a colt later named Highlands Way, sold to Robert and Lawana Low for $1.35 million at the 2023 Keeneland September sale. Then, Jones bought a house.
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“A mare like this can change your life, and when it goes right, there’s nothing in the world more fun,” Jones said.
Though Highlands Way has been hit with setbacks, he has gotten back on course, winning three of his four starts this season for the Lows with trainer Todd Pletcher.
“They had very bad luck with him,” Jones said. “He fractured his pelvis as a 2-year-old. He was training by all accounts very, very well down in Florida, at J.J. Pletcher’s, and had that bad luck.
“A lot of horses don’t come back,” he continued. “To his credit, he’s come back and now is turning into the racehorse we all kind of hoped that he could be. He was very impressive winning at Saratoga last time. I’ve been told he’s going to stakes company next, and I think he’s got every chance to put some more important type on the page.”
The fireworks continued the following year, when Street Mate’s colt from the debut crop of Charlatan sold to Spendthrift Farm and Repole Stable for $775,000.
“I think early on we were a little apprehensive to maybe put a larger stud fee into her until she proved to us that she was throwing horses that were better in front than she was, and horses that could really appeal to the commercial market,” Jones said. “But none of that is as important as the fact that she’s thrown runners.”
When a broodmare does so much for a program, every filly they produce creates a forking path to continue either the commercial momentum in the sale ring or the lineage of the female family by keeping them as a broodmare. For the most part, Jones has sent the fillies through the ring, but he did hold on to Summer Clothes, a Summer Front filly who was a little too much like her mother.
“Summer Clothes was really the only one of all the foals that she’s had that had her front end, so we didn’t even take her to a sale,” he said. But, she was a talented race filly. She actually won a nice maiden special weight, and was very competitive in allowance company, so she had enough talent to see what she could do with the next stage.”
Once again, Jones was rewarded for believing in the family. In her still-early broodmare career, Summer Clothes has already produced Cairo Caper, a Grade 3-placed stakes-winning son of Airdrie stallion Cairo Prince.
The Life Is Good colt who sold on Monday, Hip 55, is the 10th for Street Mate, and next year, he will aim to become the ninth winner from as many of the mare’s foals to race. Jones thought so highly of the colt, he sent the mare back to Life Is Good for the 2026 breeding season.
“We like that cross very much and you always want a healthy foal,” he said. “It sure wouldn’t hurt my feelings if it was a filly.”
While he waits to find out, Jones said he was hopeful the runners from his bargain-priced mare could continue to provide him and his family with more unforgettable moments.
“The amazing thing about this game is when you can not only have that financial success, but all the memories that have come as a result of all these foals, all these big races,” he said. “All the graded races on the page, there’s a memory attached to every single one of them – where you watched it with your family, how loud you cheered.
“I remember, my wife and I, we had another commitment when Bell’s the One won the Grade 1, and gets up by a nose,” he continued. “We were in Lexington, but they would have heard us screaming in Louisville. We’re yelling and hugging, and you just never forget exactly where you were during those races, and that’s what makes this thing so incredibly fun.”
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