Multiple Grade 3 winner Performer has been retired from racing, and he will stand at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Ky., debuting for the 2022 breeding season, Daily Racing Form reports.
The 5-year-old son of Speightstown came out of a third-place effort in the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Mile Stakes on Feb. 27 with an ankle injury, re-aggravating an ailment that kept him on the shelf for nearly a year in 2019 and 2020.
Performer retires with six wins in nine career starts, earning $420,475 for owners Phipps Stable and Claiborne Farm. He was trained Shug McGaughey.
Never worse than third in any of his efforts, Performer won the G3 Discovery Stakes as a 3-year-old, and he kicked off the 2021 season with a victory in the G3 Fred W. Hooper Stakes. He also finished third in last year's G1 Cigar Mile Handicap.
Claiborne Farm president Walker Hancock said the decision to delay Performer's debut at stud to 2022 was due to the timing of the horse's injury, coming in the middle of the breeding season already in progress.
Performer is out of the Grade 2-placed A.P. Indy mare Protesting, whose foals also include Grade 2-placed stakes winner Breaking the Rules. A multi-generational member of the taproot line in the Phipps breeding program, his second dam is graded stakes producer On Parade, his third dam is Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies winner and champion-producing My Flag, and his fourth dam is Hall of Famer and 1996 Broodmare of the Year Personal Ensign.
Read more at Daily Racing Form.
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