Goodnight Olive retired, will be bred to Not This Time

Two-time Eclipse Award champion female sprinter Goodnight Olive has been retired from racing and will be bred to rising young sire Not This Time.

Goodnight Olive was purchased for a co-sale-topping $6 million at Fasig-Tipton’s November mixed sale in Kentucky by John Stewart, who has become a major new player on the auction scene as he acquires stock to build a breed-to-race operation. Stewart initially announced his intention to campaign the Ghostzapper mare in 2024, and she did return to trainer Chad Brown’s Payson Park barn before the retirement announcement.

“We purchased Olive at Fasig-Tipton as a broodmare prospect and had hoped to continue her racing career,” Gavin O’Connor, general manager for Stewart’s Resolute Farm, said in a press release. “At the end of the day, these athletes are used to performing at the highest level, and unless Chad and his team thought she could continue to compete at that level, we always knew this was a likely path for her. She really doesn’t have anything else to prove.”

Goodnight Olive retires to Resolute Farm – a former Shadwell property in Midway, Ky., that Stewart purchased late last year – with nine wins from 12 starts and earnings of more than $2.1 million. The four Grade 1 wins for the mare, who never missed the board, were highlighted by back-to-back wins in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint which secured her divisional titles.

Not This Time, who stands at Taylor Made Farm in Nicholasville, Ky., has been a top 10 general sire the past two years while siring Eclipse Award champions on both dirt and turf in Epicenter and Up to the Mark. Up to the Mark is out of a Ghostzapper mare, meaning Goodnight Olive’s foal will be bred on the same cross.

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