Champion sprinter La Verdad retired
La Verdad is going out on top.
Two weeks after being named champion female sprinter for 2015 and three weeks after winning the Interborough Stakes at Aqueduct, La Verdad was officially retired from racing by owner Sheila Rosenblum and trainer Linda Rice.
La Verdad left Belmont Park on Saturday and arrived at Gainsborough Farm in Versailles, Ky., on Sunday. She will be bred to Medaglia d’Oro.
La Verdad had been considered for the $300,000 Barbara Fritchie Handicap at Laurel Park on Feb. 13. But the seven furlongs of that race is not her best distance. Instead, La Verdad’s younger half-sister Hot City Girl - also owned by Rosenblum and trained by Rice - will run in the Barbara Fritchie.
“We just decided we wanted her to go out on top,” Rice said Sunday. “She won the Interborough and the Eclipse Award. If the Barbara Fritchie were six furlongs we would have run.”
La Verdad, a New York-bred daughter of Yes It’s True, won 16 races - including 11 stakes - from 25 starts and earned $1,563,200. In 2015, at age 5, she won 5 of 8 starts, including the Grade 2 Distaff, Grade 3 Vagrancy, and Grade 2 Gallant Bloom. She also finished second to Wavell Avenue in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint one week after winning a New York-bred stakes at Belmont.
Rice trained La Verdad for her entire career, the first four starts for Eklektikos Stable and the final 21 for Rosenblum.
“She behaved like a champion the entire time I had her,” Rice said. “It was nice to have her win that award. She certainly deserved it. She can be a great mother if she can pass on her desire to win and her demeanor to her babies. It’s exciting to see what comes.”