Take the Points retired with leg injury

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Take the Points, a multiple Grade 1 winner on the turf, has been retired from racing due to an injury to his right foreleg, his connections announced Sunday.

“He has a fractured splint in his right front,” said Todd Pletcher, who trained Take the Points for the Starlight Partners of Jack and Laurie Wolfe and Don and Barbara Lucarelli. “Just with the timing, where he is in his career, the thought of doing surgery and trying to bring him back next year doesn’t make sense. There’s not really time to get anything accomplished at the end of this year.”

Take the Points had been under consideration for Saturday’s Arlington Million, but couldn’t make the race due to a wrenched ankle. Pletcher had hoped to make next Friday’s Grade 2 Bernard Baruch Handicap at Saratoga, for which he was the 121-pound highweight.

Take the Points, a son of Even the Score out of the mare Ginger Ginger, went 4 for 16 in his career with 3 seconds and 1 third. He earned $943,590. His biggest victories came as a 3-year-old when he won the Grade 1 Secretariat at Arlington and the Grade 1 Jamaica at Belmont Park. This year, he went winless in four starts, though he finished first in the Grade 1 Gulfstream Park Turf Handicap only to be disqualified and placed second for interference.

“That one stings most of all, when you’re the winner and you don’t get rewarded for it,” Pletcher said. “He was an exceptionally consistent performer that was a multiple Grade 1 winner who also showed some good 2-year-old form. He won on the dirt, ran well on synthetics. We’re hoping because of his racing accomplishments and he’s such a good looking horse that hopefully he can find a home as a stallion. I think he deserves a chance.”