Multiple stakes winner Closing Remarks retired

The five-time stakes winner Closing Remarks has been retired after two disappointing performances this winter at Santa Anita.

Closing Remarks finished sixth in the Grade 3 Megahertz Stakes on Feb. 3 and the Grade 2 Buena Vista Stakes last Sunday, both one-mile turf races for fillies and mares.

She was sent to owner and breeder John Harris’s farm in Coalinga, Calif., earlier this week, trainer Carla Gaines said.

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Gaines said the recent losses were the reason for the retirement.

“To be fair, there is nothing wrong with her,” Gaines said. “She looks beautiful. She’s sound and healthy.”

Gaines said Closing Remarks will be sent to Kentucky to be bred this spring, but that no matings have been finalized.

By the Danzig stallion Vronsky, Closing Remarks won 7 of 27 starts and earned $1,000,820 in a career that began in the summer of 2020.

Closing Remarks won her first stakes in the $201,000 California Cup Oaks for statebred 3-year-old fillies at Santa Anita in January 2021, and later that season finished second in the Grade 1 Del Mar Oaks.

Closing Remarks had her best season in 2023, winning 4 of 10 starts with all the wins in Grade 2 stakes on turf. She won the Grade 2 Royal Heroine Stakes at Santa Anita in April and the Grade 2 Goldikova Stakes at the same track in November.

At the Del Mar meeting last summer, Closing Remarks won consecutive starts in the Grade 2 Yellow Ribbon Handicap and John C. Mabee Stakes.

“She was a gift,” Gaines said.

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