Antonoe, Suffused retired; Grand Jete to race in 2018

Two graded stakes-winning turf mares campaigned by Juddmonte Farms have been retired following their 2017 racing seasons, but a third races on in 2018, according to Teddy Grimthorpe, Juddmonte’s worldwide racing manager.

Antonoe, who won the Grade 1 Just a Game on the Belmont Stakes card last June, and multiple graded stakes winner Suffused are retired to broodmare duty. Grand Jete, who won the Grade 3 Eatontown and was Grade 1-placed last season, will race again this year, Grimthorpe said while attending the Longines World’s Best Racehorse awards Tuesday in London.

Five-year-old Antonoe, a Juddmonte homebred by First Defence out of the Dynaformer mare Ixora, won four times in 10 starts on two continents. Trained in France by Pascal Bary to start her career, Antonoe won the Grade 3 Prix D’Aumale as a 2-year-old in 2015 and began her 3-year-old year promisingly before losing her form. She was away from racing for several months and returned in 2017 trained by Chad Brown in America, where she won an allowance race at Keeneland before finishing furiously up the rail in the Just a Game for her Grade 1 success. Antonoe was third in the Grade 1 Diana and fourth in the Grade 2 Ballston Spa last summer and did not start again. Grimthorpe credited Juddmonte’s North American manager, Garrett O’Rourke, for helping to make the decision to give Antonoe some time and bring her back in 2017.

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“She blossomed into what we always hoped she might be,” he said.

Suffused, a 6-year-old homebred by Champs Elysees out of the Daylami mare Scuffle, was a three-time winner in England before being moved to Bill Mott’s stable in America, where she became one of the better North American staying mares in 2016 and 2017, winning three graded stakes and just missing in the Grade 1 E.P. Taylor in 2016. Suffused has returned to England, where she was born, and will be bred to Kingman this year.

Like Antonoe, Grand Jete, a 5-year-old homebred by Dansili out of the Zamindar mare Modern Look, started her career in France before moving to Brown’s stable for 2017. She made her North American debut the day after Antonoe at Keeneland, winning an allowance race, then the Eatontown at Monmouth Park. Grand Jete dead-heated for second in the Grade 1 Beverly D., where she found trouble; was third in the Grade 1 Flower Bowl after setting the pace; and ended her season with a troubled ninth in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf.

“We felt she still has a bit more to do and prove,” Grimthorpe said. “I think she’s going to be capable of doing some good things at the highest level.”