Grade 1 winner Offlee Wild dies at 16

Grade 1 winner Offlee Wild is reported to have died at Celikoglu Stud Farm in Turkey from a massive heart attack.

The 16-year-old son of Wild Again moved to Turkey for the 2015 breeding season after previously standing at Pin Oak Lane Farm in Pennsylvania and beginning his stud career at Darley in Lexington, Ky.

Bred in Kentucky by Dorothy Matz, Offlee Wild sold to owner Azalea Stables for $325,000 at the 2001 Keeneland September yearling sale. He competed in the 2003 Kentucky Derby after winning the Grade 3 Holy Bull Stakes and finishing third in the Grade 1 Blue Grass Stakes. He returned to win the Grade 2 Massachusetts Handicap at age 4, then had his strongest season as a 5-year-old, taking the Grade 1 Suburban Handicap and the Grade 3 Excelsior Breeders’ Cup Handicap.

At stud, Offlee Wild sired eight crops of racing age, with 259 winners and progeny earnings of more than $22.9 million. He shuttled for one Southern Hemisphere season in Argentina.

His top runners include champion She Be Wild, Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Bayern, Argentine Group 1 winner Aragon, Group 2 winner Hortensius, and North American Grade 3 winners Hogy and Acting Naughty.

Though fairly young as a broodmare sire, Offlee Wild has already made an impact commercially with Propositioned, a Tapit filly out of She Be Wild who sold for $1.15 million at the 2014 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga selected yearling sale. His most prominent son at stud is Bayern.

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