Snapdancer shapes as one of the big-ticket items on next year’s broodmare sale circuit after the curtain was officially drawn on her racing career on Wednesday.
Ciaron Maher Racing announced that the Group 1 Memsie Stakes, in which the daughter of Choisir defeated subsequent spring star I’m Thunderstruck, would be her last start owing to injury.
The six-year-old’s Memsie win earned her a spot representing Inglis in the $15 million The Everest, but she suffered a hoof injury that resulted in her scratching from that event and has not raced since.
“After a simply brilliant 2022, she sustained an injury that meant the 2023 autumn would come up too quickly,” Maher Racing said of Snapdancer in a statement.
“While the injury itself is not career-threatening, she would be a rising seven-year-old by the time she returned to the track and the reality is she has more than done her job.”
Snapdancer sits alongside Duais, Forbidden Love and Roch ‘N’ Horse as Australia’s only multiple Group 1-winning mares in 2022, having won the 1400-metre Memsie Stakes two starts after winning the Group 1 Robert Sangster Stakes (1200m) in Adelaide.
In between, she was runner-up to Startantes in the Group 1 Tatt’s Tiara (1400m) at Eagle Farm.
A $60,000 Inglis weanling who later sold for $180,000 as a yearling at Magic Millions, Snapdancer also won a Group 3 Triscay Stakes (1200m) and $1m Magic Millions Fillies & Mares Sprint (1300m) to retire with seven wins and as many placings from 20 starts, for a tick over $2 million in stakes.
“Her Group 1 wins in the Robert Sangster Stakes and Memsie Stakes this year may have been her career highlights, but it was her consistency and toughness that we will remember most,” Maher Racing said.
“She travelled around the country, performing admirably everywhere she went and spent time at every single one of our training facilities along the way, ensuring there will be a lot of our staff sad to say goodbye to ‘Snappy’.”
