Sunday’s closing-day card at Belmont will include appearances by the 8-year-old Be Bullish and 10-year-old Gimme Credit, a pair of consistent New York-bred stakes winners who are well past their prime. One hopes they eventually find a suitable home when their racing days are over as did another New York-bred stakes-winning veteran, Wishful Tomcat.
Unlike Be Bullish and Gimme Credit, who are geldings, Wishful Tomcat is a horse and standing at stud at Homer Thoroughbreds in Burbank, Wash.
Multiple Grade 1 winner and pensioned stallion Sewickley died July 10 in Maryland due to complications of colic, the Blood-Horse reports. The son of Star de Naskra was 28.
Sewickley won 11 of 32 career starts, earning $1,017,517. He won back-to-back editions of the Grade 1 Vosburgh Stakes at Belmont in 1989 and 1990. His 1989 campaign also included victories in the Grade 2 Fall Highweight Handicap and Grade 2 Tom Fool Handicap in New York, as well as the listed Commonwealth Breeders’ Cup at Keeneland.
Grade 1 winner The Deputy will relocate to Cedar Brook Farm in West Union, Ohio for the 2014 breeding season, standing for an advertised fee of $2,000.
The 16-year-old son of Petardia previously stood at Hubel Farms in Clare, Mich., where he had resided since the 2006 season. The Deputy will remain in Michigan until at least January 1 to adhere to the state’s stallion bonus award program, at which point ownership will be transferred to new owner Duane Howard, and the horse will move to Ohio.
Awesome Patriot, a stakes-winning full-brother to Preakness Stakes winner Oxbow, will begin stud duty in 2014 at Spendthrift Farm in Lexington, Ky.
Clarence Scharbauer Jr. has been adding to his highlight reel the past month. The man behind Alysheba celebrated his 88th birthday on July 6 with a stakes win at Lone Star Park. A few weeks earlier, he accounted for his first Churchill Downs stakes win in 25 years when homebred Fiftyshadesofgold romped in the $113,400 Debutante Stakes.
Mr. Prospector’s transfer from Aisco Farm in Florida to Claiborne Farm in Kentucky for the 1981 breeding season meant a sharp upgrade in the quality of broodmares to be covered by the sensational young son of Raise a Native.
Mr. Prospector had shown what he could do with mares with Kentucky-quality pedigrees through the accomplishments of Fappiano, Miswaki, Gold Beauty, and Eillo, among others, and buyers responded by digging into their bank accounts when his first Kentucky-conceived yearlings came on the market in 1983.
Multiple graded stakes winner Uh Oh Bango will enter stud for the 2014 season at E.A. Ranches in Ramona, Calif. A stud fee will be announced soon.
The 6-year-old Arizona-bred son of Top Hit won five of 20 career starts, earning $691,512. Winner of the Prairie Meadows Freshman Stakes as a juvenile, Uh Oh Bango earned Iowa's Horse of the Year honors for 2009. He also finished second in the Grade 3 Iroquois and Delta Jackpot – the latter by a neck – during his 2-year-old season.
