Green Gratto retired after finishing last in return

Green Gratto, the 10-year-old Grade 1 winner who finished last Sunday in his return to the races off a two-year-layoff at Monmouth Park in New Jersey, will be retired and sent to his owners’ farm in Florida, his trainer said Monday.

Kathleen O’Connell, Green Gratto’s trainer, said that the horse banged his right foreleg at the start of the race, and she provided a picture showing a superficial wound at the bottom of his right fetlock. He finished last of seven in the optional-claiming race and was jogged to the finish line.

“Other than that small mark, he’s okay,” she said. “He jogs sound, but he is being retired and after resting a few days he is going back to his farm.”

Green Gratto won the 2017 Carter Handicap for his first Grade 1 win, but the horse didn’t win for his next 12 starts, most of them coming in graded stakes. He was retired in April 2019 to stud in New York, but he proved infertile.

His owners, Norman and Liz Wilson, returned him to the races late in 2019 at Gulfstream Park, but social-media critics, objecting to his age and layoff, pounced on the entry news. The outcry led Gulfstream and the Wilsons to reach an agreement to withdraw the horse from the race.

Green Gratto was then sent back to the Wilsons farm in Ocala, Fla., and was transferred to O’Connell at Tampa Bay Downs earlier this year. The Wilsons said Friday that Green Gratto was listless on the farm and losing weight, and that he was thriving in the racetrack environment.

O’Connell said Saturday, prior to the Sunday start, that the horse was “doing great and loves being pampered.”

Green Gratto will retire with career earnings of $1.149 million with a record of 9 wins, 9 seconds, and 9 thirds from 66 lifetime starts.

“The horse loves to train and loves the routine of the barn, which I’m sure he has had his whole life,” O’Connell said. “The owners are doing the right thing as they had always promised me to do.”