Ken and Sarah Ramsey, whose Ramsey Farm stallion Kitten’s Joy led the general sire rankings in 2013, were named both National Owners of the Year and National Breeders of the Year Friday evening at the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association’s annual awards dinner in Lexington, Ky.
The Pennsylvania racing schedule is in the midst of a high-profile month, with seven graded stakes in September between Parx Racing and Presque Isle Downs. However, the statebred program also figures prominently in the equation, beginning with Pennsylvania’s Day at the Races on Saturday at Parx. The card features five stakes races for Pennsylvania-breds, highlighted by the $100,000 Mrs. Penny Stakes.
Grade 2 winner and young stallion Fast Bullet will relocate to stand at WinStar Farm in Versailles, Ky., in 2015. The horse entered stud at Ben Jr. and Elaine Walden’s Pauls Mill Farm, which returned to the stallion business in 2014 but will not stand a roster next year.
Big Blue Kitten and Real Solution, a pair of multiple Grade 1-winning homebreds by Ken and Sarah Ramsey’s leading sire Kitten’s Joy, will retire at the end of this season to make their stallion debuts in 2015 at Ramsey Farm in Nicholasville, Ky.
Palace Malice, the winner of last year’s Belmont Stakes and this year’s Metropolitan Handicap, has been retired with bone bruising to his left hind cannon bone.
Leading sire Street Cry has been taken out of service at Darley’s Australian division due to lameness.
Winchill, a stakes-winning son of Tapit, will make his debut at stud in 2015 at Pointer Farm in Bernville, Pa., where he will stand for an advertised fee of $3,000.
English Channel may not be a consistent sire of top sales horses, but he is capable of getting high-class runners on any surface.
B. Wayne Hughes’s Spendthrift Farm announced Wednesday that it has promoted Mark Toothaker to the position of stallion sales manager. Toothaker previously worked in other capacities as a member of the sales team at the Lexington, Ky., farm.
David Garvin, a successful Thoroughbred breeder and founder of the Camping World retail chain, died Saturday from injuries sustained from an accidental fall off the roof of his home on Ironwood Farm in Bowling Green, Ky. He was 71.
