Grade 1 Winner Creative Cause to Stand at Airdrie Stud
Grade 1 winner Creative Cause, one of the top performers of his generation at both 2 and 3, has been retired to stud duty at Brereton and Elizabeth Jones’s Airdrie Stud. A son of champion sire Giant’s Causeway and the Grade 1 winning millionaire Dream of Summer, he retires with earnings of more than $1,030,000. Creative Cause raced in the colors of his owner Heinz Steinmann and was trained by conditioner Mike Harrington throughout his career.
As a two-year-old in 2011, Creative Cause won his 5-furlong debut at Hollywood Park by 4 ¾ lengths before going on to win both the Grade 1 Norfolk Stakes at Santa Anita as well as the Grade 2 Best Pal Stakes at Del Mar, a race in which he defeated eventual Grade 1 Kentucky Derby winner I’ll Have Another. He concluded his juvenile campaign with a close-up 3rd in the Grade 1 $2,000,000 Breeder’s Cup Juvenile, beaten just a length by champion Hansen. Creative Cause was one of three nominees, along with Hansen and Union Rags, nominated for the 2011 Eclipse Award for Champion Juvenile.
At 3, Creative Cause was widely regarded as the top Kentucky Derby prospect on the West Coast during the prep season, a claim bolstered by his defeat of Grade 1 winner Bodemeister in the Grade 2 San Felipe Stakes in March. Made the 4-5 favorite in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby, Creative Cause was beaten a nose on the wire by next-out Kentucky Derby winner I’ll Have Another. Beaten just three lengths in that event despite going 8-wide in the Churchill Downs final turn, Creative Cause concluded his career with a 3rd place finish in the Grade 1 Preakness Stakes.
“I couldn’t believe more strongly that Creative Cause is as good a stallion prospect as we’ve put in the Airdrie stallion barn,” said Airdrie Stud owner Brereton Jones. “He is the absolute total package. He’s a Grade 1 winning millionaire, by a Grade 1 winning millionaire that’s a perennial leading sire, and out of a Grade 1 winning millionaire that beat Ashado in the Apple Blossom. People may not realize this, but he literally beat every horse he ever ran against at least once, and he ran against every top horse in his generation including I’ll Have Another, Bodemeister, Union Rags, Paynter, Hansen, Gemologist, Alpha and Dullahan. He had that great precocious speed but also trained on to be a top-class 3-year-old and he’s a gorgeous, 16:2, correct individual that was purchased by Becky Thomas as a yearling. We will be supporting him with the best mares we’ve ever sent an Airdrie stallion, including our Kentucky Oaks winner Proud Spell, her dam Pacific Spell, the dam of this year’s Kentucky Oaks winner Believe You Can, Grade 1 winner No Such Word and our eleven-year-old mare Don’t Trick Her, who has already produced two U.S Grade 1 winners, just to name a few. We’re all in on a horse that we believe has a limitless future.
Creative Cause will stand his first season for a fee of $15,000.
