rip gato del sol

[Danzig]

the old grey was euthanized yesterday, 28 years old. he was the first ever hancock-bred derby winner, winning for arthur hancock.

[Cajungator26]

RIP

So sad, but he lived a long life...

[miraja2]

Gato Del Sol always has the reputation as "one of the worst" Derby winners in the last few decades. Although that is probably fair, it sometimes overshadows the fact that he was still a competitive G1-caliber horse at age 5 on both the turf and the dirt, holding his own with tough horses like Interco and John Henry.
He was a tough old boy.

[Riot]

I'm glad they got him back to Stone, and that he could live out his life there.

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by miraja2

Gato Del Sol always has the reputation as "one of the worst" Derby winners in the last few decades. Although that is probably fair, it sometimes overshadows the fact that he was still a competitive G1-caliber horse at age 5 on both the turf and the dirt, holding his own with tough horses like Interco and John Henry.
He was a tough old boy.

i believe he won at least one stakes every year he raced, from age two thru age six. not exactly hall of fame material, but not too shabby either.

[Riot]

Excerpted from, "The Hancocks", by Frank J. Mitchell:

The year after leaving Claiborn, [Arthur] Hancock went to the Saratoga sale and bought a Jacinto yearling filly for $20,000. ... the filly had a pedigree built on the same pattern as Bold Reasoning, by a son of Bold Ruler and out of a daughter of Hail to Reason.

[Leon Peters and Hancock raced the above filly, Peacefully, in California, and she won the Luther Burbank Stakes and was second in the Torrey Pines.]

... Peacefully was retired to stud ... and she was sent to Stone Farm's best stallion at the time, the great Chilean-bred distance runner Cougar.

Cougar was champion turf horse in 1972, but the "Big Cat" wasn't just good on turf. He was good at a distance. He could finish, and he was dead game, no matter what the weight. Trained by Charlie Whittingham, Cougar ... won the Santa Anita Handicap off works alone in 1973.

But in the general consensus of the commercial marketplace, there was no way you could make Cougar seem like a fashionable sire of early-maturing, quick horses. After standing his first two seasons at the Spendthrift Farm of Leslie Combs, Cougar was in commercial trouble.

[His owner, Mary Bradley, asked Arthur if he could syndicate and stand Cougar, which he did]

Since Cougar was his best stallion and Peacefully was a stakes winner, Hancock and Peters sent their young mare to the, "Big Cat".

Their first offspring was a filly named Tasha Two, and the second was Gato del Sol. Stone Farm retained only two yearlings from it's 1979 crop of foals, and ... Gato del Sol was one of them.

A good-class two-year old, Gato del Sol had closed from far back to win the Del Mar Futurity as a juvenile and was among the dozen highest-rated colts on the Experimental Free Handicap from 1981.

In the Derby, jockey Delahoussaye followed his riding orders. He let Gato del Sol find his best stride, which meant that the cold dawdled along at the back of the pack of 19 racers till past the half-mile pole.

Moving from 19th at the half to seventh at the three-quarters, Gato del Sol found his best stride and was only three and a half lengths off the leaders and fourth after a mile. The grey kept slugging all the way down the stretch at Churchill Downs, and he pulled away from Reinvested to win by two and half lengths.

Gato del Sol raced through the age of six for Hancock and Peters. By the time he retired, he had won or placed in 17 stakes events on turf and dirt, and earned $1,340,107.

When retired to stud for the 1986 breeding season, Gato del Sol drew a certain amount of attention. He had evidence of high ability, and his pedigree was an outcross for many lines in the stud book. But he did not appeal to breeders with a goal of breeding quick two-year-olds. So Hancock sold Gato to a farm in Germany with the thought that the stallion might find greater success in siring staying horses on the spacious racecourses of Europe.

That did not happen. Then, after the horror stories of elderly stallions being sent to slaughterhouses, Arthur and Stacie Hancock repurchased the gray sone of Cougar for $5,500 and spent more than twice that sum having him shipped home safely. Gato del Sol arrived back home to Stone Farm on an August afternoon in 1999, white with age but bright and happy.

[Hickory Hill Hoff]

I believe he was the oldest living Derby winner...

RIP