Soon to turn 11 years old, Pay Any Price closing in on retirement

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – The career of the popular turf sprinter and Gulfstream Park track-record holder Pay Any Price may be coming to a close at the end of the month, with his retirement brought about by a Gulfstream Park house rule that prohibits horses from racing here past the age of 10.

Pay Any Price will celebrate his 11th birthday on Jan. 1, and his longtime rider in the mornings and closest friend, trainer Georgina Baxter, said she and his connections are contemplating calling it quits after one more start sometime during December. Pay Any Price is owned by Richard Averill and the Matties Racing Stable.

“He’s going to have one more run and then I believe we’re going to retire him,” an almost tearful Baxter said Monday, a short while after Pay Any Price breezed an easy four furlongs here in 49.09 seconds at his usual time, just before the track closed for training, at 9:45. “I think he could still run at Tampa next year, but he really has never liked that track.”

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Tampa officials confirmed they permit horses to race there until the age of 12.

Baxter has been Pay Any Price’s regular morning rider for nearly the last six years and his trainer of record since the fall of 2018. The son of Wildcat Heir has posted 19 victories in 33 career starts, with the latest win coming in his most recent appearance, a wire-to-wire victory in the Bob Umphrey Turf Sprint here July 5. He has held the Gulfstream Park five-furlong turf mark of 53.61 since March 11, 2017, a time also considered the North American record for the distance.

During Monday’s work, Pay Any Price was a handful, as always, just to get to the pole and ducked out suddenly from a shadow on the racetrack inside the sixteenth pole. Baxter also reported he suffered a bit of a shoe issue along the way.

“He breezed well, but we had to pull his shoe when he got back to the barn,” said Baxter, who tries to secure a deserted track for the quirky Pay Any Price to train over late each morning. “It slipped and was digging into his heel.”

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Baxter said there was a race for Pay Any Price to run in here Sunday, but because of the foot issue Monday morning, he may have to wait another day for his career finale.

“We’ve tried to run him back since he won the Turf Sprint for the third time last summer, but he got loose here one day at the gate and had to scratch,” Baxter said. “And every time we entered him at Gulfstream Park West it rained and the race came off the grass. It will be awful when he finally has to leave the barn. I’ll be in tears. I don’t even want to talk about it. But the plan is to send him back to the farm in Ocala where he was born, so at least he won’t be too far away and I’ll be able to go and see him any time.”