ARCADIA, Calif. - Clubhouse Ride, a three-time stakes winner and millionaire, will enter stud at Harris Farms in Coalinga, Calif., this spring, the farm and the Santa Anita publicity department announced.
Clubhouse Ride will stand for $2,500. A 7-year-old by Candy Ride, Clubhouse Ride sustained a suspensory injury when ninth in the San Antonio Stakes on Feb. 7, leading to discussions about whether to launch a stud career this year or attempt a racing comeback later this year.
Champion and Hall of Fame racehorse Tiznow posted a stakes double on Saturday evening, as his aptly named Royal Son captured the John Battaglia Memorial Stakes at Turfway Park and Rebranded won the Curribot Handicap at Sunland Park.
Both stakes competitors represent a productive cross. According to Daily Racing Form’s SirePowered Results, runners by Tiznow won four races in the month of February. Three are out of mares by the pensioned A.P. Indy, a breed-shaping sire and prominent broodmare sire.
Group 1 winner Creator was euthanized Feb. 28 at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Ky., due to complications from colic. The Mill Reef horse was 29.
Creator had been pensioned at Old Friends Equine Retirement in Georgetown, Ky., since 2004, when he was retired from stud duty in Japan and shipped to the U.S. He and the champion Sunshine Forever – who died in January 2014 – were the first stallions the prominent Thoroughbred aftercare organization returned from stud duty overseas.
The late Stavros Niarchos made his first big splash in the international Thoroughbred industry at the 1956 Keeneland January sale when he purchased 1955 Horse of the Year Nashua’s dam, Segula, for $126,000, then a world-record price for a broodmare. About 20 years later, Niarchos began a serious expansion of his Thoroughbred holdings, notably through the purchase of 1978 Keeneland July sale-topper Nureyev, by Northern Dancer.
Graded stakes winner Williamstown, a resident of the Old Friends Thoroughbred retirement farm in Georgetown, Ky., was euthanized on Feb. 25 due to complications from the neurological disease equine protozoal myeloencephalitis (EPM). The son of Seattle Slew was 25.
Williamstown won five of 24 career starts for earnings of $360,884. He posted his biggest victory in the Grade 2 Withers Stakes at Belmont Park in 1993, recording a track-record time of 1:32.79 for the mile. He won or placed in nine other stakes, including a runner-up effort in the Grade 1 Jerome Handicap.
Throughout the spring prep season, DRF Breeding will publish pedigree profiles of Kentucky Derby contenders. Our current profiles are archived below, in alphabetical order.
A fire at Chanteclair Farm in Versailles, Ky., best known as the birthplace of champion Royal Delta, killed six horses Wednesday morning.
The fire was reported around 6 a.m. Eastern, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader, and destroyed two barns on the 260-acre property. The farm was once owned by the late Prince Saud bin Khaled of Saudi Arabia. It is currently owned by John Moores - former owner of Major League Baseball’s San Diego Padres - and Charles Noell, who bought the property in 2013.
Distorted Humor, a perennial leader among the sire ranks, is already off to a stellar start in 2015. According to Daily Racing Form’s SirePowered Results, runners by the WinStar Farm stallion have already won 19 races in North America since the start of the season. That number got a big boost the weekend of Feb. 21-22 with five victories, led by repeat winners House Rules and Khozan.
The book of mares set to meet Tapit during the 2015 breeding season will be among the strongest in the world.
However, it was the mares Tapit bred in 2010 that helped vault the 14-year-old son of Pulpit to the unforgettable season he had last year.
The resident of Gainesway in Lexington, Ky., finished the year with 156 winners from 323 runners and earnings of $16,812,111, a North American progeny earnings record for a single year. Tapit had three Grade 1 winners, all 3-year-olds, including his first U.S. classic winner, Tonalist, in the Belmont Stakes.
