Cherokee Run pensioned at age 19

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Champion sprinter and Breeders' Cup Sprint winner Cherokee Run has been pensioned from stud duty due to fertility decline and arthritis, according to Darley Stud.

The 19-year-old Runaway Groom horse is the sire of 2007 champion juvenile War Pass and 1999 champion juvenile filly Chilukki. His graded-stakes-winning runners include Zanjero, During, Sir Cherokee, Kafwain, Feathers, and others.

Cherokee Run covered 46 mares in 2009 while standing at Darley's Jonabell Farm in Lexington.

"He's happy and will remain here at Jonabell," said Ollie Tait, Darley's chief operating officer in America. "His fertility had been declining, and he's got a lameness issue, some arthritis in his hip, which makes it difficult for him to mount mares."

Cherokee Run won the 1994 Breeders' Cup Sprint, capping a season in which he also took the Grade 2 Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash and placed in six other graded stakes, including the Grade 1 Metropolitan and Carter handicaps and Vosburgh Stakes. The year before, at 3, he had been second to Prairie Bayou in the Preakness and won three other stakes. He also equaled a track record that season in Keeneland's seven-furlong Lafayette Stakes, covering the distance in 1:21.25.

Cherokee Run earned $1,531,818 for owner Jill Robinson and won 13 of his 28 starts. He also finished second and third five times each.

Cherokee Run stood throughout his stud career at Jonabell, first when it was owned by John A. Bell III and later when it was owned by Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum's Darley organization. His progeny earnings as of Friday totaled more than $41.8 million.