Starspangledbanner, multiple Group 1 winner, retired again

Australia’s 2010 champion sprinter Starspangledbanner, who returned to training after having fertility trouble at stud in 2011, is set to try a breeding career again.

The four-time Group 1 winner will stand at Anthony Mithen’s Rosemont Stud, the Gnarwarre, Australia, farm where he was born. Rosemont was a minority shareholder in the Choisir horse when global breeding conglomerate Coolmore Stud bought him in 2010 with a view toward his breeding career. Starspangledbanner sired about 60 foals from his first season at stud in both Ireland and Australia, according to the Australian news outlet Racing and Sports, before Coolmore returned him to training last season.

Previously a winner of the 2009 Caulfield Guineas and the 2010 Golden Jubilee, Oakleigh Plate, and July Cup, Starspangledbanner recorded a second-place finish in the Group 3 Renaissance Stakes at the Curragh last year in his best performance in six starts for 2012 and 2013.

He closes out his career with more than $1.9 million in earnings and seven wins in 23 starts. Highweighted in 2010 in England and Ireland over sprinting distance, he had six stakes victories in his career and placed in five others, most notably finishing second in the Group 1 Nunthorpe Stakes and third in the Group 1 Newmarket Handicap in 2010.

“We will be trying some new fertility techniques that weren’t available when he last stood and stud,” Mithen told Racing and Sports, adding that the horse is “a little older and more mature.”

Mithen noted that stem cell treatment “really helped” another sub-fertile stallion, Foreplay, and that the two sires’ fertility issues are similar.

Rosemont has not yet announced a fee for Starspangledbanner.