Kentucky Derby winner Go for Gin gets new home at Kentucky Horse Park

LEXINGTON, Ky.– Go for Gin, winner of the 1994 Kentucky Derby, has joined fellow Derby winner Funny Cide and other equine stars at the Kentucky Horse Park’s Hall of Champions in Lexington, Ky.

Joe Cornacchia, who campaigned the 20-year-old Go for Gin with the late Bill Condren, and William Boniface’s Bonita Farm in Maryland, where Go for Gin most recently stood at stud, donated the Derby winner, a son of Cormorant.

Pamela DuPont Darmstadt bred Go for Gin in Kentucky from the Stage Door Johnny mare Never Knock, who also produced 1992 champion older male and successful sire Pleasant Tap. Trained by Nick Zito, Go for Gin beat the season’s eventual Horse of the Year, Holy Bull, in the 1994 Derby, Go for Gin also finished second to Tabasco Cat in the Preakness and Belmont Stakes. At 2, he won the Remsen and Chief’s Crown, then was runner-up in the 1994 Fountain of Youth and Wood Memorial en route to his Derby victory. His stakes placings also include thirds in the 1994 Forego Handicap at Saratoga and in the 1995 Churchill Downs Handicap, both graded races.

Go for Gin launched his stud career at Claiborne Farm in Kentucky and has stood at Bonita since 2004. He has sired such runners as $3 million earner and Grade 1 winner Albert the Great, Panama’s 2005 Horse of the Year El Autentico, and multiple stakes winners Banrock and Gin and Sin.

The Kentucky Horse Park draws almost a million visitors a year, according to its executive director John Nicholson.