The Group One BTC Cup winner Your Song will be retired from racing after he runs in next month’s Stradbroke Handicap.
A clear-cut winner of the weight-for-age sprint in the wet at Eagle Farm on Saturday, Your Song will join Widden Stud’s stallion roster in the NSW Hunter Valley.
Your Song follows fellow three-year-olds Pierro and All Too Hard into early retirement ahead of the 2013 Australian breeding season.
Bred by Eduardo Cojuangco’s Gooree Park Stud, Your Song became the 13th individual Group One winner for his sire Fastnet Rock when he swept aside Rain Affair by five lengths in the BTC Cup.
It was only the Anthony Cummings-trained colt’s seventh start and he is now a firm favourite to wind up his career with more Group One success in the Doomben 10,000 and the Stradbroke.
Widden Stud owner Antony Thompson said the decision to retire Your Song wasn’t unexpected.
“Mr Cojuangco is a real racing fanatic but when he gets a good colt he tends to want them to go to stud,” he said.
“This was always the plan … to try to win a Group One race with him as a three-year-old.”
Your Song underlined his promise as a late-season two-year-old and at his first start at three he split Pierro and Epaulette in the Group Three Run To The Rose before his spring campaign was cut short.
Pierro will stand at Coolmore Stud for a record first-season fee for an Australian-bred horse at $77,000 while Vinery Stud has put a $66,000 fee on All Too Hard.
A decision on Your Song’s introductory fee is on hold, pending the colt’s performances at his final two race starts.
Hugh Bowman will take over on Your Song in the Doomben 10,000, replacing BTC Cup-winning jockey Peter Robl who has been suspended.
