Eclipse Award runner and producer Caressing dies at 23

Eclipse Award champion Caressing, who produced an Eclipse Award champion in West Coast, died Sept. 14 at Hermitage Farm in Goshen, Ky., due to laminitis. The Honour and Glory mare was 23.

Caressing, who was trained by David Vance for Carl Pollard, won 5 of 18 career starts while earning $955,998. The filly won the Bassinet Stakes at River Downs in her third start, then was second in the Grade 3 Arlington-Washington Lassie. Sent off at odds of 47-1 in the 2000 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies at Churchill Downs, she angled six wide in the stretch and won by a half-length under John Velazquez, securing her Eclipse.

Caressing won the Grade 3 La Troienne Stakes at Churchill Downs in her 3-year-old debut, and later that year won the Grade 3 Singapore Plate Stakes at Arlington. She placed in four stakes during her 3- and 4-year-old seasons.

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Caressing produced seven winners from nine starters, led by West Coast, a son of Flatter born in 2014. The colt won four stakes in 2017, including the Grade 1 Travers Stakes and Pennsylvania Derby, to earn a divisional Eclipse. He was also third in the 2017 Breeders' Cup Classic and second in both the 2018 Pegasus World Cup and Dubai World Cup. He earned more than $5.8 million and now stands at Lane's End Farm. His first foals are yearlings.

Caressing also produced two Grade 3-placed runners in Gold Hawk and Juan and Bina. Her winning daughter My Goodness has produced Japanese Group 1 winner Danon Kingly, Group 3 winner Danon Legend, and stakes winner Danon Good.

Caressing's final foals are Touch Code, a juvenile colt by Honor Code who recently breezed in New York, and an unnamed yearling colt by Gun Runner.

Caressing has been buried at Hermitage.