Blood Horse: The race between Not This Time and Into Mischief for the leading sires of the two-year-old title has been particularly exciting in recent weeks and this weekend. Did you get nervous about how close this was?
Jason Loutsch: I’d say excited rather than nervous. It’s clear that we’ve come a long way with Not This Time in the last five years. We have to give a big compliment to Taylor Made for doing everything for us and doing a great job of managing the stallion. It was great fun every year to see how his runners got better and better. We started a little slow (this year), but when the 2 year olds kicked off in May and June it was a steady stretch of many wins. I looked at his stats this morning. He had 83 2-year-old runners and 40 winners. I think that’s incredible, and it’s dirt, grass, synthetic, short and long. It was just so much fun.
JL: (December 21st) was a big day for us. We were only $34,000 ahead yesterday with what we thought was a live day with a couple of 2 year olds running at Turfway Park and Gulfstream. We had runners in four first special weight races and an allowance yesterday and won four. We still have a week to go. We were a little nervous going into Sunday because it’s hard to fend off the champion. Into Mischief is so strong and perhaps the best dad of our time, and we knew he was coming for us.
We would love to take the title of leading 2-year-old sire just to see his success, because the stallion means so much to us and our family. It’s just cool to see where we’ve come from with the mare (Not This Time’s mother Miss Macy Sue) and now Not This Time. I don’t normally miss a race for one of Not This Time. My wife will ask, “How many racehorses do we have?” I’ll tell her, ‘Well, this isn’t ours, it’s not this time.’ I know how difficult and rare it is to have a stallion of this level. I enjoy it because everything in this business can change on a daily basis.
BRA: Not This Time had a remarkable fall competition at Keeneland. What was it like for your team to see all its stake winners?
JL: It really started at the Kentucky Downs meet, the success he had there, and then the Keeneland meet was something we’ll remember forever, only in the two-year-old division, winning that stakes. We all sat around the TV together, watching and just hoping that we could win and then he would hit the superfecta and the trifecta. The whole meeting was just crazy.
BRA: Sunday was a good day to run in Kentucky, where the purses are stronger, right?
JL: Absolutely, two first special races and a $100,000 stipend, and then you win all three, and then he got the exacta at Gulfstream (Wine On Sunday and Nonconsecutivetrms). It was a whole day for Not This Time, very nice.
BRA: Are you surprised at how well the Not This Time runners performed on the grass?
JL: Not really. Giant’s Causeway was one of my favorite horses growing up and one of the reasons we went to Giant’s Causeway with (Miss Macy Sue) was because his runners are so varied. I think that’s one of the things that’s so special about Not This Time. You don’t want to be labeled as one or the other, but the special ones make you run on all surfaces, and I think he’s proven that. We took her through the mud with Miss Macy Sue and then she ran at the poly at Presque Isle (in which she won the 2007 Presque Isle Downs Masters Stakes). She didn’t care about the surface. Trainer Kelly Von Hemel said she would run on glass. She is all heart and that transferred to Not This Time. If he doesn’t run his runners on dirt the first time, you should try them on artificial grass because you will find a surface that they like.
BRA: And maybe a runner like Giocoso, who likes both?
JL: That has been the case with some of them. Right now we are very excited about the future. I think the next crop of two-year-olds will be great, and the book of mares that Taylor Made has put together for us next year is really exciting. Knock on wood he continues to throw great horses. It would be nice to eventually get one of those classics and win one. That’s the next goal. In addition, he has a good chance of becoming a stallion sire. Epicenter And Until the Mark had early success at yearling sales, so I’m curious to see what their babies will turn out like.
That Epicenter win (second in the 2022 Kentucky Derby, G1) was hard to swallow. He was so close. We thought he had it, but that wasn’t the intention. We think he’ll get one. For now it is a dream come true for us to have such a stallion.
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