Grade 1 winner, prominent broodmare Nastique dies at age 29

Nastique, a four-time Grade 1 winner and producer of two graded/group stakes winners, died from the infirmities of old age at Brookdale Farm in Versailles, Ky. She was 29.

Fred Seitz Jr., Brookdale’s general manager, said the farm took ownership of Nastique after she was pensioned from broodmare duty, and she served as an all-purpose caretaker mare in her later years. She was buried on the farm.

“She was a very classy mare, very easy to get along with, and she was literally a babysitter for the last eight to 10 years of her life,” Seitz said. “That’s how easy she was, how much class she had. You could put her with any horse: a foal, a weanling, a yearling, another mare, a nervous horse, and she would calm them down. That’s what was so great about her. Mares that are born with that special thing just sort of have it. They just get it.”

Nastique, a daughter of Naskra, was a multi-surface graded stakes competitor on both the East and West Coasts, winning the Grade 1 Matriarch Stakes at Hollywood Park, the Ladies Handicap at Aqueduct and consecutive editions of the Delaware Handicap in 1988 and 1989. She also won the Grade 2 Silver Belles Handicap and Sheepshead Bay Handicap.

Homebred in Kentucky by Chaus Stables and trained by Stephen DiMauro, Nastique won 10 of 42 career starts for earnings of $843,121.

As a broodmare, Nastique produced eight winners from seven foals to race, including Japanese Group 1 winner Nobo True, Grade 3 winner Thunder Kitten, and stakes-placed Lady Pegasus. Four of her fillies went on to become stakes producers, with two of them rearing graded/group stakes winners.

Nastique sold in foal to Gulch at the 1991 Keeneland November breeding stock sale for $625,000. She later sold in foal to Broad Brush for $575,000 at the 1998 edition of the Keeneland November sale.