The Keeneland November breeding stock sale catalog was open in front of Torie Gladwell.

As she talked about Bacio, the homebred colt who had carried her and her husband, Jimbo, to the highest level of Thoroughbred racing, she was also studying photographs of horses, evaluating possibilities, and taking calls about a mare they were trying to sell.

A rewarding Breeders Cup for breeders of Bacio (Courtesy of the Gladwells)

It was a fitting scene. Just days after Bacio’s victory in the Prevagen Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint, the Gladwells were already back to work.

Jimbo eventually pointed out what his wife was doing during the interview.

“She’s sitting here next to me, going through the November catalog, looking at pictures while we’re talking,” he said.

As the owners of Top Line Sales, the business of breeding, buying, selling, and developing racehorses does not pause for celebration. There are horses to prepare, decisions to make, and another group of prospects to evaluate. The next opportunity is always somewhere on the horizon.

Still, Bacio’s remarkable season gave them a reason to stop and appreciate just how far their work had taken them.

The Kentucky-bred Maclean’s Music colt won the Palace of Holyroodhouse Handicap at Royal Ascot in June, captured the Group 1 Coolmore City of Troy Nunthorpe Stakes at York in August and returned home to win the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint at Keeneland Oct. 31. He became an international star and, for the Gladwells, something even more personal. He became a Grade 1-winning homebred they helped bring into the world, then developed and retained an interest in when the opportunity to sell him did not materialize.

For Torie, it was the realization of a goal she had carried for years.

“I had two goals the last five years,” she said. “Be the number one 2-year-old consignor and breed a Grade 1 winner.”

Bacio's co-breeder Torie Gladwell (OBS Sales photo)

Top Line Sales finished second among 2-year-old consignors in 2026. Bacio checked the other box.

Torie once joked that she and Jimbo would retire when they accomplished both.

“I don’t foresee that happening anytime soon,” she said. “It’s just too much fun.”

The Gladwells’ story in racing began long before Bacio.

Torie arrived in Ocala, Fla. in 2007 after graduating from Murray State University with a degree in equine business. Horses had been part of her life for years, mainly through showing horses. She took her horse with her to college. After graduation, she accepted a position working with a 2-year-old consignor.

She met Jimbo within her first month or two in Ocala.

The partnership that followed became both personal and professional. Together, they built Top Line Sales into a prominent operation in the 2-year-old market, drawing on Jimbo’s family background in the business and Torie’s hands-on experience with horses.

Jimbo’s father had sold 2-year-olds and operated a large consignment. The couple initially focused on purchasing weanlings, then developing and reselling them as yearlings. They eventually shifted toward the 2-year-old market, where the business grew quickly enough that they made it their primary focus.

Today, their operation depends on a division of responsibilities that is not always visible to people who see the horses go through the sales ring.

Jimbo Gladwell looking for the next prospect (Anne M. Eberhardt/BloodHorse)

Jimbo is quick to credit Torie for much of the work behind the scenes.

“She’s the CEO of our broodmare operation,” he said. “She’s the office secretary. She’s head of nominations for Top Line. She’s the head of hiring for Top Line.”

He estimated that if she retired, he might need three to five people to fill the positions she handles.

Torie, in turn, describes Jimbo as the person who puts out the fires when she starts them. She said he’s a people pleaser, someone who wants to do right by everyone and has earned a strong reputation throughout the industry.

They are both deeply involved, and their business has grown through the efforts of a much larger group of people: Investors, partners, friends, employees, and family members.

“We’re just the tip of the spear that gets seen,” Jimbo said. “We have a lot of investors, partners, and friends that do this alongside us. They send good horses our way. My family is a big part of it, too. We’re just the ones standing out front that everybody gives the credit to.”

That perspective is important to the Gladwells. They understand that a successful horse operation is rarely the work of two people alone.

Their own hands-on approach, and their willingness to make decisions based on what they see in a horse rather than what the market might say, have helped shape the business.

Bacio is out of the stakes-winning Kantharos mare Katie’s Kiss. When Torie bought Katie’s Kiss, the mare was in foal to Maclean’s Music. The purchase was driven in large part by what Torie saw in the mare herself.

“She a gorgeous mare,” Torie said. “When I’m buying mares, I’m more buying a physical than the pedigree.”

She liked the mare’s appearance and believed the pairing had the potential to produce a fast horse.

“We figured the baby in her belly was going to be a rocket ship,” she said.

Bacio did little to disprove that prediction.

Brilliant Turf Sprint winner Bacio (Eclipse Sportswire)

As a youngster, he was not the easiest horse to manage. He was energetic, headstrong, and always seemed ready to do more than anyone was asking. The Gladwells knew he was fast, but his natural speed sometimes required restraint.

Jimbo recalled that when they wanted the horse to go a certain speed, Bacio had a habit of going faster.

“If our target was 15, he was going 13. If it was 13, he was going 11,” he said. “He just did it so easily and so willingly.”

Torie remembers a particular breeze about a month before the OBS March 2-year-olds in training sale. The farm gave Bacio a short test breeze to see how he responded when asked for a little more.

He went too fast.

That was the moment she began to understand just how much ability he possessed.

“When you ask them [during the sale] to do just a little bit more and they do too much and rise to the top, that’s when you know how special they are,” she said.

The Gladwells had seen that kind of response from other talented horses they developed over the years, including one of their first stakes winners named Richiegirlgonewild who won the Grade 3 Old Hat Stakes in front-running fashion at Gulfstream Park in 2010.

Speed alone does not make a racehorse, and the Gladwells know better than most how many things must go right between a young horse’s first breeze and a start in the Breeders’ Cup.

Bacio was offered at the 2025 OBS March sale after breezing an eighth of a mile in :9 4/5. The Gladwells had a reserve of $140,000. When the bidding did not reach that figure, he went home.

Bacio had a shin issue, and the timing made him a more difficult horse to sell to buyers who wanted a prospect that could take directly to the races. The Gladwells also had to weigh the realities of the market against what they believed the colt could become.

Torie said she and Jimbo were high enough on the horse that they were able to get their partners comfortable with the decision to keep him and move forward with his racing career.

Trainer Wesley Ward liked Bacio at the sale, and the Gladwells believe his training style would suit the colt. That relationship would become a defining part of the horse’s development.

Jimbo said Bacio was not necessarily difficult to ride or train, but he tried so hard that the wrong approach could have worked against him. He needed someone who understood when to let him do his thing and when to hold him back.

Ward provided that balance.

“He would send us updates weekly about how much he loved this horse,” Jimbo said. “Me and Torie were like, ‘Gosh, I wonder if he’s as good as Wesley says he is. We may have something special.’ ”

The decision to keep Bacio was also a business decision, though one with an emotional component. The Gladwells could have later sold him had the right offer arrived. But when MyRacehorse became involved, the group was not looking to purchase all of Bacio, and the Gladwells wanted to make sure he remained with Ward.

They found a way to retain an interest in Bacio while bringing additional partners into the ownership group.

Torie understands the tension between wanting to keep a homebred and needing to run a sustainable operation.

Breeders Cup Turf Sprint winner Bacio (Eclipse Sportswire)

“If I had my way, I’d probably keep all my homebreds racing, just because I get so attached,” she said. “But at the end of the day, it is a business and we still have to keep the farm rolling and food on the table.”

For a business that depends on turning over horses to create the next opportunity, keeping a piece of Bacio was a meaningful choice. It allowed them to remain invested in a horse they believed in while continuing to operate the farm and develop the next generation.

The approach was not entirely new. Jimbo said the first 10 stakes winners to pass through Top Line’s yearling business were either bought back or failed to meet their reserves. Sometimes, he acknowledged, they place a higher value on a horse than the market does.

Plenty of horses they have believed in have not gone on to become stakes winners. But Bacio offered the kind of return that makes the occasional buyback worthwhile.

Especially when the victories came in rapid succession.

Bacio won at Royal Ascot, then returned to Europe to capture the Nunthorpe Stakes at York. By the time he arrived at Keeneland for the Breeders’ Cup, he was no longer simply a promising young horse. He was an international Group 1 winner facing a field that included proven Breeders’ Cup champions.

There were plenty of questions about whether his speed would carry over the extra distance and around the turn in the Turf Sprint. Torie said the criticism leading into the race became difficult to ignore.

The Gladwells had confidence in their horse, but they also understood the challenge.

On Breeders’ Cup day, Bacio broke sharply and went straight to the front. Torie was focused on one thing as the gates opened.

“Please break good. Please break good. Break on top,” she recalled thinking.

He did.

As Bacio clicked off the fractions on the front-end, Jimbo realized just how fast they were going. Bacio continued to lead, powered away from the field turning for home, and held off the challengers to win by two lengths.

Torie knew he had it when he reached the top of the stretch.

No catching Bacio in Breeders Cup Turf Sprint (Eclipse Sportswire)

“They weren’t going to catch him,” she said.

For Jimbo, the international victories had carried a different kind of emotion from watching horses they had bred and sold go on to win major races. At York, he remembered seeing Bacio featured on the front page of the Racing Post with the headline “American Speedster and American Pride.”

It was a moment that made him feel part of something larger than the Gladwells’ own operation.

“You’re doing it for your country,” he said. “It’s all of us against the world.”

The Breeders’ Cup victory brought the story home. Bacio had become the horse they hoped he could be, and the achievement invigorated the people who had bred him, raised him, trained him, owned him, and supported him along the way.

Jimbo called the journey a fairy tale. A year earlier, he said, winning at Ascot or York was not something they imagined. A homebred Breeders’ Cup winner they still owned was even further from their expectations.

Torie’s goal had been to breed a Grade 1 winner. She had not set out to breed an international star or a Breeders’ Cup champion. Those accomplishments came one race at time and the work that made them possible continues.

The Gladwells’ success has not changed the way they approach the business. If anything, it has reinforced their belief that maintaining quality, doing things the right way, and trusting the process will create more opportunities.

Jimbo hopes Bacio will not be their only Grade 1 winner as breeders. Torie still wants Top Line to reach the top of the 2-year-old consignor rankings.

There are mares to evaluate, young horses to develop, and decisions to make about which prospects to sell and which ones might be worth keeping. The next Bacio is not something they can identify with certainty. They know many things must go right. But they will keep looking.

Torie and Jimbo Gladwell in 2023 (Photos by Z)

Torie said the horses always come first. It is a principle they emphasize throughout their operation, and one that shapes the decisions they make every day.

“The horses are what comes first,” she said. “We take care of the horses, so everything we do revolves around them.”

For Jimbo, the horses have also provided experiences and relationships that extend far beyond the racetrack. Horses have taken the couple around the world and introduced them to people from every corner of the sport and every walk of life.

“It really is phenomenal what this business can do for you,” he said. “It’s the greatest game in the world.”

Bacio has given the Gladwells a moment they will never forget. But as the November sale catalog made clear, they are not interested in standing still and admiring it for too long.

There is another horse to find. Another prospect to develop. Another sale to prepare for.

And somewhere among those pages and possibilities may be the next one that takes them on another unforgettable journey.