Champion Hansen sires first winner
Freshman sire Hansen, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and champion juvenile male of 2011, sired his first winner when the 2-year-old gelding Hansen’s Victory took a $13,075 maiden race at Hastings Park on June 5.
Bred in Kentucky by 3480 Equine LLP and owned by a partnership headed by North American Thoroughbred Horse Company, Hansen’s Victory won the 3 1/2-furlong race by 1 3/4 lengths while making his second start. He was purchased as a yearling for $49,205 at the 2015 Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society’s British Columbia sale.
Hansen, who was bred and initially raced by Dr. Kendall Hansen, won all three of his starts at two. While he was by leading sire Tapit, he was out of the cheap claiming mare Storming Sunday, by Sir Cat, and outran his pedigree from the get-go, showing blazing early speed. Trained by Mike Maker, he won his maiden by 12 1/4 lengths going 5 1/2 furlongs and then took the 1 1/16-mile Kentucky Cup Juvenile by 13 1/4 lengths. He captured the BC Juvenile at Churchill by a head over favored Union Rags. He was never headed in his three starts at 2.
At 3, after Skychai Racing bought an interest in the colt, Hansen was second to Algorithms in the Grade 3 Holy Bull, won the Grade 3 Gotham, was second to Dullahan in the Grade 1 Blue Grass, and then 9th in I’ll Have Another’s Kentucky Derby. He came back to win the Grade 3 Iowa Derby in June and closed his racing career with a 4th-place finish in the Grade 2 West Virginia Derby. He had five wins in nine starts and $1,810,805 in earnings.
Hansen was retired to stand at Ashford Stud for the 2013 breeding season for a fee of $12,500 and is represented by 102 foals in his first crop. He was sold to the Korean Racing Authority after that initial breeding season and now stands in South Korea.
Hansen’s progeny were well received at sales. Last year, he had 56 yearlings go through the sales ring for an average of $50,600, four times his stud fee, and this year he had 24 juvenile sell for an average of $99,063, almost eight times his 2013 stud fee.
Hansen has had three runners thus far.