Graded stakes winner Noble Tune has been retired and will begin his stud career with the upcoming Southern Hemisphere season at Rathmor Stud in South Africa. He will stand for a fee of 25,000 Rand, or about $2,365 in U.S. funds.
My Flag, a Grade 1 winner and dam of champion Storm Flag Flying, was euthanized due to complications from foaling after producing a healthy Bernardini colt on April 12. She was 21.
In 1955, a chestnut-coated “California comet” named Swaps streaked from Santa Anita to the finish line at Churchill Downs, beating the favored Nashua in the Kentucky Derby. Fifty-nine years later, Swaps’s then-18-year-old exercise rider, Art Sherman, is the trainer of the latest chestnut California comet, the appropriately named California Chrome, the smashing winner of the Santa Anita Derby on April 5.
Thoroughbred industry veteran Bill Betz knows how hard it is to taste success in the Kentucky Derby. “It takes a lot of luck ... The Derby has its own life,” he said. “The stars have got to align.” The stars have been kind to Betz.
Wicked Strong landed squarely on the Kentucky Derby trail last week with an upset win in the Grade 1 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct. The 3-year-old bay colt is the first serious Derby candidate by 2007 Derby runner-up Hard Spun to emerge from the stallion’s first three crops, and his impressive rallying win from midpack in the Wood – coupled with his encouraging bloodlines – will make him an intriguing contender for the 1 1/4-mile classic should he make the Churchill Downs starting gate May 3.
A half-brother to 2009 Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra was foaled last week at Dede McGehee’s Heaven Trees Farm near Lexington, Ky.
Grade 1 winner Egg Drop has been retired from racing with a tendon injury, and plans call for the 5-year-old daughter of Alphabet Soup to be sold at a Kentucky mixed auction this November.
The Thoroughbred Horse Show Alliance will host its third annual show on Sunday, May 4 at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Ky., with the proceeds benefitting aftercare organizations in the state.
Grade 2 winner Birdrun has been retired from racing and will begin his stallion career at Poplar Creek Horse Farm in Bethel, Ohio for an advertised fee of $2,000.
Azamour, Europe’s champion older horse of 2005, was euthanized on Saturday after sustaining a major injury at the Aga Khan’s Gilltown Stud in County Kildare, Ireland, Racing Post reports.
