Unusual Heat, a six-time leading stallion in California, was euthanized on Wednesday due to complications of arthritis-induced laminitis.
Harris Auerbach, the managing partner of the Unusual Heat syndicate, announced the stallion’s death in a statement. In a brief interview at the Barretts May sale of 2-year-olds in training at Del Mar, Auerbach said Unusual Heat had been in declining health in recent months.
Judge's Case, a Grade 1-placed stakes winner, was euthanized Monday at Old Friends Equine Retirement in Georgetown, Ky., due to chronic orthropedic disease. The gelded son of Montbrook was 20.
Bred in Florida by J.C. and Phyllis Dudley, Judge's Case earned $707,618 over the course of nine seasons and 104 starts, hitting the board 62 times and winning 16 races.
As his first-crop Kentucky Derby winner, Always Dreaming, prepares for the Preakness Stakes, Bodemeister added another feather to his cap when American Anthem won the Grade 3 Lazaro Barrera Stakes at Santa Anita last Saturday.
The win was the first graded stakes score for the well-regarded colt, who had previously finished second in the Grade 3 Sham Stakes before finishing off the board in two subsequent starts.
Although preceded by a few other stallions as proof of concept, it was the late, great Danehill who popularized the “shuttle stallion” model, with Coolmore sending him back and forth from Ireland, where he stood during the European breeding season, to Australia for the breeding season there. Eight times leading sire in Australia, Danehill overcame initial indifference in Europe to lead the English sire list twice and the French sire list three times.
The dispersal of Ernie Semersky and Dory Newell’s Conquest Stables at the most recent round of Keeneland mixed sales offered an imposing slate of horses with high-level back class or strong potential.
In the eyes of most buyers, Conquest Mo Money offered neither.
Grade 1 winner Admiral Kitten has been sold to stand at Moutonshoek Stud in South Africa starting with the upcoming Southern Hemisphere breeding season.
The 7-year-old son of Kitten’s Joy is in his second season at stud and currently resides at Ocala Stud in Ocala, Fla., where he stands for an advertised fee of $4,000. He debuted last year at Stroud’s Lane Farm in Reddick, Fla., where he was bred to 20 mares.
Zenyatta, a Hall of Famer and the 2010 Horse of the Year, produced her fifth foal on Tuesday night, a Medaglia d’Oro filly.
The mare has been boarded at Lane’s End in Versailles, Ky., since her retirement from the racetrack at the end of her 2010 campaign. Zenyatta and her foal are owned by Jerry and Ann Moss.
“Both mare and filly are in excellent health,” read a statement on the horse’s official website, Zenyatta.com.
