Champion Game Winner Retired to Lane’s End

Champion Game Winner (Candy Ride {Arg}–Indyan Giving, by A.P. Indy) has been retired from racing and will stand the 2021 season at Lane’s End in Versailles, Kentucky. A stud fee will be forthcoming.

During his championship juvenile season, TDN Rising Star Game Winner was undefeated in four starts–a 5 3/4-length score in his career unveiling at Del Mar followed by the GI Del Mar Futurity, GI American Pharoah S. and GI Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs. After earning the champion 2-year-old title for the 2018 season, he returned at three to finish runner-up in the GI Santa Anita Derby and GII Rebel S. and finished fifth in the GI Kentucky Derby.

“As a 2-year-old, he was just phenomenal and he really brought it to that Championship level,” said Bob Baffert. “To do what he did really showed that he was the best of the best. Candy Ride was a brilliant racehorse and he throws brilliance, and with Game Winner, the minute he showed that brilliance, I knew we had something special.”

Game Winner was most recently seen winning the GIII Los Alamitos Derby by five lengths.

“After the Los Al Derby, he had a high suspensory injury, and Bob was trying to work through it and get him over it, and never could to his satisfaction,” said Lane’s End’s Bill Farish.

Bred in Kentucky by Summer Wind Farm, Game Winner is out of Indyan Giving, who has also produced graded-stakes winner Flagstaff (Speightstown). His second dam is Champion Fleet Indian who won five graded stakes and earned over $1 million. To date, his sire Candy Ride has produced 16 Grade I winners and is the fourth leading active sire by lifetime earnings.

“Champion 2-year-olds make great sires,” added Farish. “Street Sense, Uncle Mo, American Pharoah, and now Nyquist looks very promising. All were the very best of their generation and now are among the elite stallions in America. Game Winner dominated in his championship year and was a graded-stakes winner at three. He is a champion from the immediate family of a champion, so we are honored that Gary and Mary West have entrusted Lane’s End with his stallion career.”

Consigned by Lane’s End to the 2017 Keeneland September Sale, Game Winner realized $110,000 from agent Ben Glass.

“Mary and I have been excited about Game Winner since the day Ben Glass bought him for us at Keeneland,” said Gary West, who campaigned the champion colt. “These special horses are so hard to come by and to have a Champion means everything to us. I am so pleased he will stand at Lane’s End and I plan on supporting him extensively as I have with my other stallions, alongside the superior group of shareholders they have put together.”

“This includes Alpha Delta, Summer Wind Farm, SF Bloodstock, Mt. Brilliant Farm, Sea Horse Breeders, West Point and St. Elias. They are among the best breeders in America and undoubtedly will support him and contribute greatly to his chances to be a successful stallion.”

The 4-year-old retires with five wins and two seconds from eight career starts and earnings of $2,027,500.

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Champion Game Winner Retired To Lane’s End For 2021

Lane's End Farm announced today that undefeated champion 2-year-old and graded-stakes winning 3-year-old Game Winner has been retired from racing and will stand the 2021 season at Lane's End.

Game Winner, who has earned over $2 million from four graded stakes wins, is the second-highest-earning colt by perennial leading sire and Lane's End stallion Candy Ride. During his championship 2-year-old season, Game Winner went unbeaten with victories in the Grade 1 Del Mar Futurity, G1 American Pharoah Stakes and G1 Breeders' Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs.

As a 3-year-old, Game Winner ran a terrific race in the Kentucky Derby, finishing fifth beaten by just over three lengths. That same year, his graded stakes performances featured second-place finishes in the G2 Rebel Stakes and G1 Santa Anita Derby. He was most recently seen winning the G3 Los Alamitos Derby.

“As a 2-year-old he was just phenomenal, he really brought it to that championship level,” said Bob Baffert. “To do what he did really showed that he was the best of the best. Candy Ride was a brilliant racehorse and he throws brilliance, and with Game Winner, the minute he showed that brilliance I knew we had something special.”

Game Winner broke his maiden at first asking at Del Mar, dominating the field by 5 3/4 lengths. This dominating performance gave his connections the confidence to target the G1 Del Mar Futurity just 16 days later. The win would become the first of three Grade 1 victories as a 2-year-old, as he later took the G1 American Pharoah Stakes posting a 97 Beyer and the Breeders' Cup Juvenile by almost three lengths. After an unbeaten 2-year-old season that included three Grade 1 victories, he was rightly crowned champion 2-year-old male. In doing so, Game Winner joined an elite list of just three colts to win three or more North American Grade 1 races as a 2-year-old in the past 20 years.

“Champion 2-year-olds make great sires,” said Bill Farish. “Street Sense, Uncle Mo, American Pharoah, and now Nyquist looks very promising. All were the very best of their generation and now are among the elite stallions in America. Game Winner dominated in his championship year and was a graded-stakes winner at three. He is a champion from the immediate family of a champion, so we are honored that Gary and Mary West have entrusted Lane's End with his stallion career. “

Game Winner started his 3-year-old career with back-to-back second-place finishes in the G2 Rebel Stakes, beaten by a nose by Omaha Beach, and the G1 Santa Anita Derby. His next start came in the Kentucky Derby where he was a fast-finishing fifth after getting knocked hard out of the gates and being as far back as seventeenth at the halfway point of the race. He finished just over three lengths behind the winner and earned the highest Thorograph figure of .25 of the field. His final 3-year-old start was a dominating five-length win in the G3 Los Alamitos Derby.

“Mary and I have been excited about Game Winner since the day Ben Glass bought him for us at Keeneland,” said Gary West. “These special horses are so hard to come by and to have a champion means everything to us. I am so pleased he will stand at Lane's End and I plan on supporting him extensively as I have with my other stallions, alongside the superior group of shareholders they have put together. This includes Alpha Delta, Summer Wind Farm, SF Bloodstock, Mt. Brilliant Farm, Sea Horse Breeders, West Point and St. Elias. They are among the best breeders in America and undoubtedly will support him and contribute greatly to his chances to be a successful stallion.”

Bred in Kentucky by Summer Wind Farm, Game Winner is out of the A.P. Indy mare Indyan Giving who has also produced graded-stakes winner Flagstaff. His second dam is champion Fleet Indian who won five graded stakes and earned over $1 million. To date, his sire Candy Ride has produced 16 Grade 1 winners and is the fourth-leading active sire by lifetime earnings.

Game Winner will be available for inspection in the coming weeks and a stud fee will be determined.

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The Familiar Road Home For Honor A. P. At Lane’s End.

The floors of A.P. Indy's stall had been bare since February, when Lane's End lost its elder statesman and pensioned cornerstone sire at the age of 31. For an entire season, the residents of the stallion operation's front barn passed by the empty stall on the way to the breeding shed.

Choose your cliche: both life and the show must go on at a stud farm, but Lane's End's “big stall” hadn't had a vacancy in a long time. Whoever filled the spot, it was going to be a big deal.

Fitting then, that the horse who finally called for bedding in A.P. Indy's stall for the first time in seven months would be one of the Hall of Famer's own blood, and one named to be a living tribute to his career.

Grade 1 winner Honor A. P. arrived at Lane's End on Tuesday around 11:30 a.m., and he checked in to the most high-profile suite in the place. A day earlier, his pending arrival was announced after the 3-year-old colt was found to have come out of his fourth-place effort in the Kentucky Derby with a strained front-left tendon.

It was a quick turnaround for Honor A. P., who had just returned from Churchill Downs to the barn of trainer John Shirreffs at Santa Anita Park before the injury was discovered – just over a week from wheels-up to wheels-down in Kentucky, where he will enter stud in 2021. Tendons can take a long time to get back to racing shape in a racehorse, if they ever do, so the decision to move him on to the next phase of his career was an easy one.

“It's not visible, but it's obviously there,” said Bill Farish of Lane's End. “It's too bad that it came when it did, but timing-wise, the Derby's not when it would have been. If it had been in May and this had happened, they probably would have brought him back. Now, it's a six-month thing, and you're going to be into missing the breeding season.”

Even before naming the horse, owners Lee and Susan Searing of C R K Stable clearly thought highly of A.P. Indy's handiwork.

Honor A. P. is a son of fellow Lane's End resident Honor Code, one of A.P. Indy's most successful runners, one of his last notable sons to retire to stud, and the kind of horse that forces a person to believe in evolution. Many of the physical traits that defined both A.P. Indy and his sons – the alert, inquisitive look in his eye, the ebbs and flows of his withers and midsection into a solid rump, the general impression that the horse before you could run forever – are all present in Honor Code, but bigger and stronger than the generation before him.

The Searings bought Honor A. P. for $850,000 at the 2018 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Selected Yearlings Sale. He was practically a carbon copy of his flashy dark bay sire at the end of the shank.

Besides the uncanny resemblance to Honor Code, Honor A. P. had the page to merit the lofty price and the expectations that came with it. His dam is the multiple Grade 1-winning Wild Rush mare Hollywood Story, who had generated plenty of black type on her page before Honor A. P. set foot on the track.

Honor A. P. as a yearling at the 2018 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Sale.

Just like Honor Code did for A.P. Indy, Honor A. P. developed into a generational update of his sire, keeping the classic A.P. Indy look and the strength of Honor Code, but adding a bit of scope to the equation. That combination of traits led Honor A. P. to become one of the top 3-year-olds of his generation, punctuated by a victory in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby.

Farish had been interested in Honor A. P. as a stallion prospect well before he was a fully-fledged classic contender. He'd flown out to California to watch him finish second in the G2 San Felipe Stakes in March. However, the talks with the Searings got more serious after the colt's nose touched the finish line in the rescheduled Santa Anita Derby on June 6, and the announcement that Lane's End had secured the breeding rights went out on June 26.

“It didn't take long at all,” Farish said about the negotiation process. “Lee Searing was excited to have him come here. He named him after A.P. and everything else. Lucky for us, he genuinely wanted to have him here. We'd been following him since [the Saratoga sale], and David [Ingordo, Lane's End's bloodstock agent] bought him.”

A few hours after Honor A. P. arrived at Lane's End, he was brought out for display to the media, and he was soon joined by Honor Code. The two stallions stood face-to-face as if they were looking into a mirror; each with four socks and a flashy white face punctuating their near-black coats. Keeping true to the theme of generational progress, Honor A. P's socks were a little longer and his blaze was a little wider.

Honor A. P.'s long white socks also provided the optical illusion that he might be a little racier and longer-legged than his sire, though Farish said time might balance that out.

“I think he looks that way right now because he's still tucked up and racing fit, but the resemblance is uncanny,” he said, “This guy's running style was maybe a little more like A.P. Indy than it was Honor Code. He's maybe a tick taller. They're both definitely taller than A.P. was. He's got more length and length of stride than Honor Code did, but they were both effective.”

These two horses looked similar, and they obviously come from similar blood. One would assume this would mean they might be drawing from a similar pool of mares come 2021 and beyond, perhaps cannibalizing each other's books, but Farish said the stallion that breeders might gravitate toward will depend on the outcome they desire with the foal.

“Yes, in some ways you're dealing with the same crosses, but you have one horse that does have runners and one that doesn't, so they're in very different points in their careers,” he said. “People that are looking for a more proven horse are going to go to Honor Code, and ones that want something sale-wise that's unproven, they'll go to Honor A. P. It gives people an interesting choice.

“I would think a lot of the American speed-type sires are going to work very well –Speightstown, lines like that could complement the A.P. Indy line,” Farish continued. “It's worked, and we'll keep trying what's worked. In the beginning, with a stallion like this, you don't like to try to over-manage it, because you really don't know what's going to work. You'd like to think you do, and a lot of times you're right, but a lot of times you're wrong. City Zip was going to be a six-furlong sire and he ended up getting stakes winners at a mile and a sixteenth on the grass. You just try as many different things as you can.”

Honor A. P. not only inherited his grandsire's stall when he arrived at Lane's End, he also inherited his groom, Asa Haley.

Haley was paired with A.P. Indy for 14 years, and he stayed on with the stallion after he settled into life as a pensioner. He also tends to another of A.P. Indy's sons at the farm: the 2003 Horse of the Year Mineshaft.

Haley and Honor A. P. only had a few hours to get acquainted before the two went through their paces before the cameras on Tuesday afternoon, but the horse obeyed his new handler well as they paraded around the courtyard of the stallion complex. It's a first step compared with nearly a decade and a half together with A.P. Indy, but so far, so good.

“He seems to be pretty nice so far,” Haley said. “I think we should get along. I mostly get along with all my other horses, so I hope I can get along with him, too, so I guess time will tell.”

Arguably no one on the planet knew the makeup of A.P. Indy like Haley did, and what made the old horse tick. For a long time, Honor Code resided in the stall immediately next to his sire, so Haley had plenty of time to notice the patterns between father and son, and when he applied that knowledge to his latest charge, he could see back through the generations in Honor A. P.

“That white eye,” Haley said, noting the signature ring that the grandfather, father, and son each have around an eye. “It sticks out, just like like A.P.'s did. That white eye sticks out on Honor Code, and it's sticking out on him, too.”

There is bedding again in A.P. Indy's stall, and a nameplate on his door. It would be a lot to expect of the stall's new resident to beckon a new set of “good old days” like his his famous grandsire, but with the letters “A. P.” on the the first door on the right in the Lane's End stud barn, perhaps the rookie can at least provide a bit of normalcy. Every generational shift has to start somewhere.

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Grade 1 Winner Honor A. P. Retired Due To Injury; To Stand At Lane’s End

Lane's End farm announced today that Honor A. P. will retire from racing and stand the 2021 season at their Versailles farm. The 3-year-old colt retires as a Grade 1 winner and the top earner of his leading second-crop sire Honor Code.

In his most recent start, Honor A. P. dealt with an unlucky trip to finish a quickening fourth in the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby, posting a 99 Beyer and traveling an incredible 49 more feet than the winner Authentic. This in turn means that the colt ran the fastest race of the field when accounting for ground loss.

“Honor A. P. is a horse with an immense talent,” said trainer John Shirreffs. “He was so forward and precocious that he broke his maiden second time out by over five lengths going two turns. Honor A. P. showed brilliance as a 2-year-old from the first time I saw him train and replicated it as a 3-year-old defeating the future Kentucky Derby winner. He ran a super race in the Derby and we later found that he came out of the race with an injury, so all things considered, what he accomplished was something special.”

As a 2-year-old, Honor A. P. broke his maiden at Santa Anita by over five lengths posting a 91 Beyer, one of the highest of his generation. His first start as a 3-year-old was in graded stakes company when he finished second in the G2 San Felipe Stakes. In his next start, he won the G1 Santa Anita Derby posting a 102 Beyer, becoming the only horse to defeat subsequent Kentucky Derby winner Authentic while also defeating G2 Pat Day Mile Stakes winner Rushie. The G1 Santa Anita Derby has long produced breed-shaping sires with past winners including A.P. Indy, Sunday Silence, Affirmed, Pioneerof the Nile and more. In his next start, the Shared Belief Stakes, he posted another 102 Beyer making him one of four 3-year-old colts in 2020 to post multiple triple-digit Beyers beyond a mile.

“Honor A. P. was a 'wow' horse from the beginning. He was the highest priced yearling in Honor Code's first crop. He was a standout 2-year-old at April Mayberry's, and the most recognizable horse in training at Santa Anita,” said Bill Farish. “His stunning good looks paired with his obvious talent make him just the type of prospect we are looking for at Lane's End.”

Honor A. P. is out of the multiple Grade 1 winner Hollywood Story, who earned $1,171,105 in her career and he is a half-sibling to three black-type winners. Hollywood Story is by Wild Rush, making Honor A. P.'s pedigree free of Mr. Prospector on his dam's side to five generations. His sire Honor Code is one of just four second-crop sires including Liam's Map and Constitution to produce a Grade 1 winner in 2020. To date, Honor A. P. is Honor Code's highest priced yearling commanding a final bid of $850,000 from David Ingordo for Lee and Susan Searing's CRK Stable at the 2018 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Sale.

“Like any owner in this game, Susan and I have long dreamt about having a leading Derby contender,” said Lee Searing. “Honor A. P. has given us the journey of a lifetime and we are excited to stay involved in his next career as a stallion where we know he'll be in great hands at Lane's End.”

Honor A. P. will be available for inspection at Lane's End farm in the coming weeks and a stud fee will be determined.

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