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#1
05-05-2010, 03:15 PM
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Quote:
 I started a thread (last year maybe?) about favorite claimers -- he was mine. I hope he has a great home and enjoys retirement! 
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#2
05-06-2010, 06:07 PM
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Happy retirement to a champion...
Two-time champion Good Night Shirt retired Written by Sean Clancy May 06, 2010 Good night, Shirt. Two-time Eclipse Award winner Good Night Shirt has been retired. The 9-year-old injured his ankle after finishing second in the Iroquois last spring and was unable to heal properly to return to the races. Dr. Dean Richardson performed surgery on the injury last year and after an extensive rehabilitation, the horse’s return to racing was deemed impossible. Owned by Sonny and Ann Via, Good Night Shirt retires as the second leading money earner in the sport’s history and one of just two horses to earn more than $1 million in American steeplechasing. Good Night Shirt will live out his days with another Fisher champion, six-time Virginia Gold Cup winner Saluter, at Fisher’s Maryland farm. “He’s sound in the field and that’s important,” Fisher said. “I was worried we might have to put him down. We were worried about his quality of life but it looks like he’ll be able to have a good retirement.” Bred by Dr. Tom and Chris Bowman, Good Night Shirt won twice on the flat in 2004 before being sold to Via and Fisher. The infield sport proved a perfect niche for the stamina-laden, long-galloping chestnut. He broke his maiden in the demanding Nashville maiden race as a 4-year-old in 2005. Unpolished and raw, he won on talent alone. That summer, he won a Saratoga allowance before losing five consecutive novice stakes through the fall and the following spring. Later in 2006, he won a weak edition of the Ferguson and finished second to Hirapour in Saratoga’s A.P. Smithwick before missing the fall season. One step from becoming a timber horse in 2007, Good Night Shirt showed he was for real when rallying to just miss in the Royal Chase. At 21-1, in his first open Grade I stakes start, he missed nailing Mixed Up by a diminishing neck. That’s when things changed. He won the Iroquois in his next start and went 9-for-11 over the next two years. Finally able to ration his pace and polish his jumping, Good Night Shirt knocked McDynamo from the Eclipse podium with wins in the Lonesome Glory and Colonial Cup in 2007. And, well, 2008 was one of the best seasons in history for any horse in any sport. Perfection is hard to top. Under Willie Dowling, Good Night Shirt started five times and won five times, picking off the Georgia Cup, Iroquois, Lonesome Glory, Grand National and Colonial Cup (each a Grade I). Employing a punishing resolve on or near the lead, Good Night Shirt had no peers. In 2009, he returned to win the Carolina Cup before being caught late by Pierrot Lunaire in the Iroquois while trying to become the first horse to win three consecutive runnings of the 3-mile classic. Rested for the summer as usual, Good Night Shirt returned to training in the fall but was soon on the sidelines – and at New Bolton Center – with the ankle injury. Surgery helped stabilize the joint, as did months of exercise on an underwater treadmill, but the scant hopes of a return to racing were snuffed out. “He was just a pleasure to train, just a pleasure to have in the field,” Fisher said. “Even the landscaping people, they show up, a guy who knows nothing about horses looks out in the field and says, ‘I like that one.’ It’s Shirt, standing there, turning his lip up. Just a cool a horse. People say go find me another Good Night Shirt or find me another Saluter and I tell them, ‘They don’t make them.’ ” In all, Good Night Shirt won 14 races from 33 starts and earned $1,041,083. Over jumps, he won 12 races and earned $1,006,493 from 23 starts. He never fell. http://www.st-publishing.com/cms/ind...1214&Itemid=73
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#3
05-07-2010, 05:34 PM
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Eskendereya...
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Hybrid Mode
