Horse of Year Havre de Grace retired with injury
Monday - 4/23/2012, 5:25pm ET
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Havre de Grace, the 2011 Horse of the Year, has been retired after injuring an ankle following a workout at Churchill Downs.
Owner Rick Porter said Monday on his Fox Hill Farm website that the injury was detected in the champion filly's right front ankle Sunday. After she was examined at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital, "we didn't get a positive prognosis for continuing her racing career."
"Owning Grace through her racing career has been the highlight of my time in horse racing," Porter wrote. "She was a wonderful, wonderful racehorse, and I feel confident she'll be an equally wonderful broodmare."
Equine surgeon Larry Bramlage said in Havre de Grace's discharge papers that she would need 60 days of stall rest and hand walking and would be fine to breed.
Havre de Grace (HA'-vur-duh-grays) won the New Orleans Ladies in her only start this year. Last year, she took Horse of the Year honors by winning five of seven races, including the Apple Blossom, the Woodward Stakes against males and the Beldame. She also finished fourth in the Breeders' Cup Classic.
The 5-year-old bay mare won nine of 17 starts with four places and two shows and earned $2,586,175.
Havre de Grace, by Saint Laim out of Easter Bunnette, by Carson City, was bred in Kentucky by Nancy S. Dillman. She was purchased as a yearling at Keeneland for $380,000.
She had been headed for the Grade II $300,000 La Troienne Stakes at Churchill Downs on Kentucky Oaks Day.
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