A & A Ranch's grade 1 winner and second-crop sire Sporting Chance sired his first black-type winner May 11 when his son Higher Ed captured the Kendrick Stakes by 4 1/2 lengths at Sunray Park.
Higher Ed is a homebred for J. Kirk and Judy Robison. Trained by Todd Fincher, the gelding has not finished out of the money in six career starts. He won at first asking in June 2023 in a five-furlong trial for the Mountain Top Thoroughbred Futurity for New Mexico-breds. He ran third in the Mountain Top Futurity and went on to be runner-up in the Rio Grande Senor Thoroughbred Futurity.
The Robisons bred Higher Ed out of their homebred multiple stakes winner African Heat (Southwestern Heat). The mare's immediate family has produced graded stakes winners Ubiquity, Elaborate, and Yahilwa. Higher Ed is African Heat's first foal. The mare has a 2-year-old and a yearling by Sporting Chance.
Sporting Chance is a 9-year-old son of Tiznow out of the grade 1-placed stakes winner Wynning Ride. He was bred in Kentucky by Hunter Valley Farm. He sold as a weanling for $275,000 to Lapis Bloodstock, and then for $575,000 to William Mack and Robert Baker during the Keeneland September Yearling Sale. Mack and Baker won the 2017 Hopeful Stakes (G1) with him and banked $409,790 for his career.
Sporting Chance stands at A & A Ranch for $5,000.
