Multiple Gr1 winner Smart Call, honoured as Equus champion middle-distance horse after trouncing males including multiple Horse of the Year Legal Eagle in the 2016 J & B Met, has been retired and will be bred this autumn to Juddmonte’s champion Kingman.
Smart Call wins the Met
The Racing Post reports that the now seven-year-old daughter of Ideal World is currently at The National Stud in Newmarket after having run her last race when fourth against males in the Group 2 York Stakes last month.
In her penultimate start, she had fulfilled a goal for owner and breeder Jessica Slack by capturing the Group 3 Hoppings Fillies’ Stakes at Newcastle.
“We decided a while ago that we wanted to retire her to stud this year and breed her on southern time, so [trainer] Sir Michael Stoute had planned her campaign this year to fit in with that,” Slack said.
“It’s so lovely that she could retire having won her race and been in such good form.
“She has been such a star and we are so proud of her,” Slack added.
Smart Call gained a respected international profile by winning the J & B Met three weeks after taking the Group 1 Paddock Stakes, which offered her an entry to the 2016 Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf at Santa Anita Park.
While training in Britain for the Breeders’ Cup, she incurred a setback that sidelined her for several months with lameness problems.
After resuming racing in May 2017 with a third in the Group 2 Middleton Stakes at York – in which, ironically, she finished in front of Filly & Mare Turf winner Queen’s Trust – Smart Call went on to compete in the Hong Kong Vase, finishing seventh of 12 in the field of top international males including winner Highland Reel and runner-up Talismanic.
She raced four times this season and, prior to her York Stakes triumph, she had finished third again in the Middleton Stakes.
A classic Mauritzfontein product, Smart Call is a daughter of Ideal World out of the 1999 Met winner Horse Chestnut’s unraced daughter, Good Judgement – a half-sister to Vodacom Durban July winner, Greys Inn, who sired runner-up Legal Eagle.
- Racing Post – additional reporting by SP editorial staff
