Ten years ago this week, Ashado won the Kentucky Oaks, giving high-profile ownership group Starlight Stables and trainer Todd Pletcher their first victory in the filly classic. Later that year, Ashado became Pletcher’s first Breeders’ Cup winner, scoring in the Distaff to secure the first of her two divisional Eclipse Awards.

Ashado now gives her connections another first, as she is among this year’s inductees into the National Museum of Racing’s Hall of Fame. The honor was announced April 25, with the induction ceremony taking place Aug. 8 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

“He probably takes a hundred more strides than anyone else in the race, but he’s harder to pass up than a third martini.”
– Jim Murray, Los Angeles Times

Among the many nuggets of perceived wisdom about Thoroughbred breeding is that to be a really good sire, the horse must have been precocious enough to be a good 2-year-old. Precocity certainly remains a desirable quality in a stallion prospect – although, 2-year-old racing is far less important and extensive than it once was, perhaps less so than at any time in American Thoroughbred history.

Kafwain made his name as a racehorse in some of California’s most prestigious races for 2-year-olds and 3-year-olds a little more than a decade ago. Now settled in at Tom and Debi Stull’s Tommy Town Thoroughbreds in Santa Ynez for his fifth year of stud duty since returning to the Golden State, the 14-year-old Kafwain is beginning to have an impact on the state’s breeding sector as well.

Soi Phet had been with trainer Leonard Powell for a month last summer when the trainer realized a change in the gelding, a $16,000 claim last May.

“It was a week before his first race for us,” Powell recalled last weekend. “He became a different horse. Mentally and physically, he was more relaxed, and that was different.”

Powell saw proof in a race when Soi Phet won his debut for the stable in a starter allowance at Hollywood Park last June, leading throughout to win by 9 1/2 lengths.

Grade 1 winner and millionaire Unbridled Belle died in February in Japan after foaling complications, Kate Hunter, a communications manager in the Japanese bloodstock industry, confirmed.

The 11-year-old Broken Vow mare was purchased by Haruya Yoshida’s Oiwake Farm for $400,000 at the Keeneland January horses of all ages sale earlier this year. She died from foaling complications while in quarantine Feb. 17, two days after delivering a Bernardini foal. The foal also died.

Keeneland has announced that prominent Central Kentucky breeding outfits Claiborne Farm and Lane’s End Farm have become signature sponsors for two Grade 1 events at the Lexington, Ky., track’s fall meet.

The Hancock family’s Claiborne Farm, located in Paris, Ky., has become signature sponsor of the Breeders’ Futurity for 2-year-olds. William S. Farish’s Lane’s End, located in Versailles, Ky., has entered into a multi-year agreement as sponsor of the Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup, an invitational for 3-year-old fillies on the turf.

Champion sprinter Safely Kept has been euthanized at Burleson Farms near Midway, Ky., due to the infirmities of old age. The Horatius mare, who was inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame in 2011, was 28. Her death was reported by Blood-Horse.

Safely Kept won 24 of 31 starts for Richard Santulli and Barry Weisbord and trainer Alan Goldberg, earning $2,194,206. Her record included 22 stakes victories.

Veteran California sire Benchmark has been pensioned at age 23 due to infertility.

The son of Alydar was to stand Ballena Vista Farm in Ramona, Calif., for the 2014 breeding season at an advertised fee of $5,000. However, he did not impregnate any of the mares he covered thus far this season, and was officially retired from stud duty on Monday, according to a release from the farm.

Out of the Grade 1-producing Danzig mare Winters' Love, Benchmark won seven of 16 starts, including three Grade 2 stakes on the racetrack.

Dundeel, a six-time Australian Group 1 winner, has been retired and will begin his stud career this upcoming Southern Hemisphere season at Arrowfield Stud in New South Wales, Australia. A fee will be announced at a later date.

The High Chaparral colt, who is a 4-year-old on the Southern Hemisphere calendar, raced as It’s A Dundeel in Australia, but will stand as Dundeel, the name he is registered under in his native New Zealand.