Grade 1 winner Sharp Azteca retired, stud plans pending

Sharp Azteca, a Grade 1-winning miler who earned more than $2.4 million, has been retired and there are plans to stand him at stud, trainer Jorge Navarro said Wednesday. The details of his future stallion career are being determined by owners Gelfenstein Farm and Marty Scharf.

Sharp Azteca is a 5-year-old son of Freud who won 8 of 17 starts, with six of those wins coming in stakes. Highlights of his career include winning the Grade 1 Cigar Mile by 5 1/4 lengths over Mind Your Biscuits last December at Aqueduct. Sharp Azteca also captured the Grade 2 Kelso last September at Belmont Park and from there finished second by a half-length in the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile last November at Del Mar.

“He was a runner,” Navarro said. “Horses like that don’t come along very often.”

Sharp Azteca has been rehabbing from a suspensory ligament injury in his left foreleg sustained during his final work for a planned start in the Godolphin Mile this past March in Dubai. He was third in the race in 2017. Sharp Azteca last raced in January, when eighth in the Pegasus World Cup Invitational. He is based at Gelfenstein Farm in Ocala, Fla.

“A couple of weeks ago we did a scan on him and he was 80 percent healed,” Navarro said.

The connections met to discuss scan results, the number of additional months he would need off from the track, and the fact that there’s no guarantee he would return to racing at a top level.

“We made the decision he doesn’t owe us anything,” Navarro said. “We had an amazing run with the horse.”

Navarro, on behalf of Gelfenstein Farm, purchased Sharp Azteca as a 2-year-old in training for $220,000 out of an Ocala Breeders’ Sales Company auction in 2015.

“He’s a beautiful animal,” said Navarro.

Sharp Azteca won the first stakes race of his career in the Grade 3 Pat Day Mile in 2016 at Churchill Downs. Other top efforts for him included a win in the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Handicap in February 2017 and a runner-up finish in the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap that June at Belmont Park.

Sharp Azteca is out of the unraced Saint Liam mare So Sharp, who is a half-sister to Grade 2 Dwyer winner Mint Lane. Sharp Azteca was bred in Kentucky by Cloyce C. Clark Jr.