Champion female sprinter Gamine retired from racing

Gamine, the 2020 Eclipse Award champion female sprinter, has been retired from racing, owner Michael Lund Petersen announced via a press release issued Tuesday evening.

The 5-year-old daughter of Into Mischief will take up residence at Hill 'n' Dale Farm in Paris, Ky. No breeding plans for Gamine’s first mating in the upcoming 2022 season have been announced.

“Gamine is leaving the track happy and healthy,” Petersen said in the release. “She gave me and my family the thrill of a lifetime. We look forward to her next chapter.”

Gamine, who is out of the Kafwain mare Peggy Jane, was bred under the Grace Thoroughbred Holdings moniker of Stonestreet Farm owner Barbara Banke. She was purchased for a sale-record $1.8 million by Petersen out of the 2019 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic sale of 2-year-olds in training.

Trained by Bob Baffert, she debuted in March of her 2-year-old season and crossed the line first in the first four starts of her career. That included a dazzling 18 3/4-length victory in the Grade 1 Acorn Stakes at Belmont, in which she ran the mile in a stakes-record 1:32.55, just off the track mark of 1:32.24.

Gamine also won the Grade 1 Test Stakes by seven lengths in 1:20.83, tying the stakes record and just off Saratoga's more than four-decade-old track mark of 1:20.40 for seven furlongs.

In her first try around two turns, Gamine crossed the line third in the Kentucky Oaks, run in September that season due to the ongoing pandemic. However, she was later disqualified to ninth in the Oaks after she tested for an overage of betamethasone.

Gamine concluded her season with a 6 1/4-length victory over older foes in the Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Sprint at Keeneland, running seven furlongs in a track-record 1:20.20. That victory secured her the divisional title.

In 2021, Gamine returned to win her first four outings, taking the Grade 3 Las Flores Stakes at Santa Anita, the Grade 1 Derby City Distaff at Churchill Downs, the Grade 2 Great Lady M. Stakes at Los Alamitos, and the Grade 1 Ballerina Handicap at Saratoga.

Sent away as one of the heavier favorites of the 2021 Breeders' Cup at Del Mar in her defense of her Filly and Mare Sprint victory, Gamine finished third behind Ce Ce and Edgeway in what proved to be her career finale.