GRADE 1 JOCKEY CLUB GOLD CUP WINNER HAYNESFIELD TO STAND AT AIRDRIE

Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup winner Haynesfield to stand as an Airdrie Stud-WinStar Farm Venture

 

The recently retired Haynesfield, winner of 2010’s Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup Stakes, will take up residence at Brereton and Elizabeth Jones’s Airdrie Stud for the 2012 breeding season as an Airdrie Stud-WinStar Farm venture.  A stakes winner at 2, 3, 4 and 5 and a winner of 10 of 19 lifetime starts, Haynesfield retires with lifetime earnings of over $1.3 million.  The eight-time stakes winner recorded his biggest victory in last year’s Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup stakes, where he easily bested Eclipse champion Blame by 4-lengths in the mile and a quarter event under equal weights.  The loss would prove to be the only defeat incurred by Blame over his championship season.  Haynesfield also took 2010’s Grade 2 Suburban Handicap and was beaten just a nose in that season’s Grade 1 Cigar Mile.  A son of 2004 Eclipse Champion Sprinter and leading sire Speightstown, Haynesfield is out of the stakes-winning and Grade 2 placed  mare Nothing Special.  His immediate female family includes two Broodmares of the Year in Shy Spirit and Good Mood, the latter the dam of Grade 1 sires With Approval and Touch Gold.  Haynesfield raced in the colors of Harvey Weinstein’s Turtle Bird Stable and was bred by Barry Weisbord and Margaret Santulli.

 

Said Airdrie’s Brereton Jones, “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to stand Haynesfield and we couldn’t be happier to be joining up with the team at WinStar.  This horse gave us so many reasons to pursue him, perhaps none bigger than the fact that he was the only horse to beat Blame last year and did it at equal weights on a stage as big as the Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup.  To have won more than half his starts and been a stakes winner at 2,3,4 and 5 demonstrates both the outstanding talent and soundness that we believe will make him a top stallion.  Both farms are committed to ensuring he gets the best opportunity possible to make it and we will be supporting him heavily in both the breeding shed and on the race track”

 

WinStar Farm President and CEO Elliott Walden continued, “We obviously believe Speightstown is a very special sire and we are excited about partnering up on his most accomplished son.  Haynesfield was an absolute top-class racehorse and we believe he has the physical and genetic make-up to make a very successful stallion.  He’s a big, beautiful, stretchy horse that we measured at 16.3.  He’s correct in front, has a great shoulder and hip and has a very intelligent looking head and eye.  We believe he’s the total package and we look forward to teaming with Airdrie to make him a success.”

 

Haynesfield will stand the 2012 breeding season for a $10,000 fee.  In addition to the pay early and multiple mare discounts that Airdrie already has in place, first season breeders to Haynesfield are eligible for the farm’s new Breeder’s Reward Program.  Any first season breeding that produces a 2 or 3-year-old winner of a Graded Stakes race in the U.S or Canada will reward the breeder of record with a $50,000 check and a lifetime breeding right in Haynesfield.  In addition, if the mare is booked through the farm by an agent, that agent will receive a $20,000 check.  Added Jones, “We believe this horse has a big future and we want to really reward the people that are helping us get there.”