Lady Aurelia retired to Stonestreet broodmare band

Lady Aurelia, champion 2-year-old in Europe for 2016, has been retired from racing, leaving trainer Wesley Ward’s barn at Keeneland late Wednesday morning to begin life as a broodmare at Stonestreet Farm.

Lady Aurelia was bred by Stonestreet, where she was foaled and raised, and was owned by a partnership between Stonestreet and Peter Leidel. She’s retired with a record of 5-2-1 from 10 starts and earnings of $834,945.

In June, Lady Aurelia made her third trip to Royal Ascot but could only finish seventh in the Group 1 King’s Stand Stakes, a race she had won as a 3-year-old the year before. That defeat followed a second-place finish April 18 in the Giant’s Causeway Stakes at Keeneland and a 10th-place finish last fall in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint. Ward has no ready explanation for Lady Aurelia’s diminished performance.

“It’s the end of the line. It was a little selfish on my part. I wanted to push forward. She was so sound and feeling so good,” Ward said. “In looking at the bigger picture, her last three races, she hasn’t resurrected that form.”

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Ward said Lady Aurelia, following a break of a couple of weeks, had resumed light training after her trip to England when the decision was made to end her racing career.

Ward said Lady Aurelia was the best 2-year-old he’s trained. By Scat Daddy out of D’Wildcat Speed, by Forest Wildcat, Lady Aurelia actually was outworked in her earliest breezes at Palm Meadows.

“All of a sudden, when we got to Keeneland, her second work, you could see the brilliance,” Ward said.

Lady Aurelia won her debut over Keeneland’s dirt track by more than seven lengths. Ward said when he worked the filly over soft ground at Arlington in preparation for her first Royal Ascot visit, Lady Aurelia breezed so strongly he was certain she would win the Group 2 Queen Mary Stakes. And she did – by seven lengths, a jaw-dropping margin for a five-furlong European turf race.

Lady Aurelia came home shortly after the Queen Mary, but was back two months later to win the Group 1 Prix Morny over a straight-course six furlongs at Deauville. She subsequently finished third in the Cheveley Park Stakes, but had done plenty to win a Cartier Award as Europe’s top 2-year-old of 2016.

Lady Aurelia’s 2017 King’s Stand probably was the best race of her career, a comprehensive three-length tour de force over a good field that included the top-class mare Marsha. Marsha, in fact, beat Lady Aurelia by a nose in the Group 1 Nunthorpe Stakes at York.

That, it would turn out, was Lady Aurelia’s last real hurrah. But nobody should soon forget the 16-month run that preceded it.

“She was something special,” said Ward.