Santa Anita: Twirling Candy retired with injury

ARCADIA, Calif. – Twirling Candy, one of the top older horses in California this year, is out of the Breeders’ Cup with an injury and will be retired to stud at Lane’s End farm in Kentucky in 2012, trainer John Sadler said Saturday.

Twirling Candy was being pointed to the BC Dirt Mile at Churchill Downs on Nov. 5 when the injury was detected.

“It’s a slight injury,” Sadler said. “It’s not a big thing. He’ll go off to Lane’s End for his new career.”

Sadler described the injury as a “little strain. The timing is such that we could bring him back, but he’d need 60 to 90 days off.”

Bred by Jenny Craig, Twirling Candy, a 4-year-old colt by Candy Ride, won 7 of 11 starts and $994,900. He won five stakes, including the Grade 1 Malibu Stakes for 3-year-olds at Santa Anita last December in track-record time of 1:19.70 for seven furlongs.

A two-time stakes winner on turf at 3, Twirling Candy won two Grade 2 stakes this year – the Strub Stakes for 4-year-olds at Santa Anita in February and the Californian Stakes against older horses at Hollywood Park in June.

In his final two starts, he was third in the Grade 1 Hollywood Gold Cup in July and second, by a head, to Acclamation in the $1 million Pacific Classic at Del Mar on Aug. 28.

Craig raced Twirling Candy on her own from the start of his career in 2009 until earlier this year when Marty Wygod and William S. Frish of Lane’s End Farm joined the ownership group as partners.

The loss of Twirling Candy from the Breeders’ Cup is the second such setback for Sadler this week. Zazu, his top 3-year-old filly, was declared from the BC Ladies’ Classic on Wednesday because of inflammation in a shoulder. She is expected to return to training in 2012.

“It hasn’t been my week,” Sadler said.