Grade 2 winner Soldat has been retired from racing and will stand the 2014 breeding season at John Sykes’ Woodford Thoroughbreds near Ocala, Fla.
The 5-year-old son of War Front was campaigned during his racing career by a partnership led by Harvey Clarke and W. Craig Robertson III, and he was trained by Kiaran McLaughlin. A stud fee for Soldat will be announced at a later time.
Joy Gilbert photo/courtesy Ramsey FarmKitten's Joy
Although he is a son of Ramsey Farm flagship stallion Kitten’s Joy, Real Solution lacks the ‘Kitten’ moniker attached to many of the top runners carrying the operation’s red and white silks.
Dashing Blade, a three-time Group 1 winner and leading sire in Germany, was euthanized at age 26 due to neurological problems, Racing Post reports.
Bred in Great Britain by Littleton Stud, the son of Elegant Air was one of Europe’s top juveniles in 1989, winning the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes in England and the National Stakes in Ireland.
The gentle nature of the coppery chestnut stallion in the field at Gustav Schickedanz’s Schonberg Farm near Nobleton, Ontario, belies his background as one of the most celebrated runners of his generation.
“He’s a true gentleman,” farm manager Lauri Kenny says of Wando. “He’s a really old soul, a lovely horse.”
So gentle is Wando, in fact, that some days he behaves more like a family pet than a Thoroughbred stallion.
The rapid-fire victories of Chief’s Crown in the Grade 1 Hopeful Stakes and Contre-dance in the Grade 2 Adirondack Stakes at the 1984 Saratoga meeting created some serious buzz for the second crop of their sire, Danzig, at the subsequent Keeneland September yearling sale. The principal beneficiary of that excitement was the late Lee Eaton and partners, who sold a beautiful colt out of Foreign Courier, by Sir Ivor, an unraced daughter of their blue hen mare Courtly Dee, for $650,000.
Arromanches, sire of multiple Grade 2 winner Caixa Eletronica, died in his paddock Wednesday night at age 20.
The stakes-placed winning son of Relaunch last stood at Buckshot Stables in Liberty, Ind., for a private fee.
“I had him for close to 11 years, and it was really like losing an old friend,” said Ron Dafler, who co-owned Arromanches in a partnership and stood the horse at his farm. “He was a good old horse.”
The $2.4-million All American Futurity at Ruidoso Downs is billed as North America’s richest race on the calendar for 2-year-olds of any breed, but a number of entries in the flagship Quarter Horse race’s 28 trials are the direct progeny of Thoroughbreds.
The American Quarter Horse Association has a special registry and numbering system for Quarter Horse-Thoroughbred crosses, referring to them as “index horses.” Those horses are allowed to compete in AQHA events, including racing, with certain breeding restrictions to maintain their status within the registry.
The lawsuit to allow cloned horses to enter the American Quarter Horse Association registry saw action once again on August 12, when a district court judge announced that she will enter an injunction requiring the AQHA to register clones and their offspring.
