Triple Crown Shows Top Stallion Honors Far From Settled

Not even a week and a half beyond the Belmont Stakes (G1) and the conclusion of the Triple Crown, and the only thing settled about the race for top sire in North America is that it's far from settled. 

Not This Time , who has been perched atop the General Sires List for most of the year, entered the five-day Belmont Stakes Racing Festival with a nearly $2.1 million advantage over longtime leading sire Into Mischief . A gap of $2 million-plus might seem insurmountable, but when you are breathing the rarified air of a legendary stallion such as Into Mischief, who has been the top sire the last seven years, the battle is far from over.

Since the start of the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival, Into Mischief's progeny have cut about 25% of their sire's deficit. Into Mischief now trails Not This Time by $1,502,223. Even when one looks at the different statistical categories, except for average winning distance, one of these two sires leads.

Even with a summer full of racing ahead, anyone hoping to declare a winner of this clash of the stallions will likely have to wait until the Breeders' Cup World Championships at the end of October, at the earliest.

Elsewhere in the top 25, it's not unusual for two sires to swap positions. Usually, the swap is a move up or down one spot. Occasionally, that change ends up being two positions.

This week we have two pairs of sires who exchanged positions, with the difference being one up or down, and we also have sires who swapped five positions. Twirling Candy  moved up to No. 15 after occupying the No. 20 position, which now belongs to Oscar Performance .

Twirling Candy, who stands at Lane's End near Versailles, Ky., for $75,000, is a son of No. 19-ranked sire Candy Ride , who also stands at Lane's End.

His top runner this year is West End Kid, a 3-year-old colt out of the Scat Daddy mare To a Friend. West End Kid is 3-0-0 from four starts in his rookie season. The highlight is a 1 1/4-length victory in the June 4 Pennine Ridge Stakes (G3T) as part of the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival at Saratoga Race Course. He's already banked $304,954.

Another of his 2026 standouts is the 4-year-old filly Sweet Treasure. She had a slow start to her third campaign, opening with a sixth and a third in listed stakes races. But she's turned things around, getting herself right in an allowance race before winning the Mint Julep Stakes (G3T) by 1 1/2 lengths. 

Litigation, a 4-year-old Twirling Candy colt, hasn't had a graded win to hang his hat on this year, but he's been very consistent with two wins in listed stakes to go with a competitive fourth in the Shakertown Stakes (G2T), a third in the Turf Sprint Stakes (G2T), and most recently sixth in the Jaipur Stakes (G1T).