Straight No Chaser will follow familiar route to Breeders' Cup Sprint

ARCADIA, Calif. - Straight No Chaser, the 2024 champion sprinter, is on schedule for a two-race fall campaign beginning with Sunday’s Grade 2 Santa Anita Sprint Championship before he is retired to stud at WinStar Farm in Kentucky.

The $200,000 Santa Anita Sprint Championship is a prep race for the Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Del Mar on Nov. 1. Straight No Chaser won those races in 2024 to clinch his title. On Sunday, trainer Dan Blacker said Straight No Chaser is on schedule for the same races.

“All the signs are good right now,” Blacker said of Straight No Chaser’s recent training.

Straight No Chaser has won 7 of 12 starts and earned $2,636,300 for the My Racehorse partnership.

Straight No Chaser has started twice this year in $2 million races at six furlongs, winning the Group 2 Riyadh Dirt Sprint in Saudi Arabia in February, and finishing eighth of 11 in the Grade 1 Dubai Golden Shaheen in the United Arab Emirates in April.

The arrangement for Straight No Chaser to stand at WinStar Farm was first announced last March.

Elliott Walden, the president and chief executive of Winstar Farm, said on Sunday that Straight No Chaser’s pedigree was one aspect of the 6-year-old’s resume that held appeal.

“His looks are outstanding,” Walden said in a phone interview. “He fits the profile of his grandfather, Speightstown, who won the Breeders’ Cup later in life.”

Speightstown won the 2004 BC Sprint at Lone Star as a 6-year-old in his final start. Straight No Chaser, who is by the Speightstown stallion Speightster, won the 2024 BC Sprint at Del Mar as a 5-year-old.

A previous version of this article misstated the track at which the 2004 Breeders' Cup was run. It was at Lone Star Park, not Churchill Downs. Additionally, the article misstated Speightstown's age when he won the 2004 Breeders' Cup Sprint. He was 6 years old, not 5.

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