NEWS
Grade 1 winner Dare and Go dies in Australia
Posted: Tuesday, November 20, 2001
Multiple Grade 1 winner and second crop sire Dare and Go, who will forever be remembered for snapping Cigar's 16-race win streak in the 1996 Pacific Classic (G1), died earlier this week in Queensland, Australia.Dare and Go suffered a ruptured stomach late Sunday night and died the next morning. The ten-year-old son of Alydar had been standing his second Southern Hemisphere season at Australia's Vatana Farm.
Dare and Go had stood at Vinery Kentucky near Lexington since his retirement in 1996 but was due to stand the upcoming 2002 season at Dr. William Solomon's Pin Oak Lane near New Freedom, Pennsylvania on a lease deal. Dare and Go was scheduled to stand in 2002 for $2,500, half his previous year's stallion fee.
With 102 foals of racing age, Dare and Go has sired 30 winners from 60 starters, including stakes winners First Spear, Ronnie's Hot Rod, and Daring Pegasus. First Spear has won four of 15 career starts, including this year's Lamplighter Handicap at Monmouth Park and the Challenger Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs, for $183,560 in earnings.
Dare and Go has lifetime progeny earnings of $1,141,944 through Monday.
Solomon said he was approaching the upcoming season with optimism for Dare and Go and that Pin Oak Lane was aggressively marketing him.
"We had some advertising in him already—I think he was a horse that was going to be a sire of some stature as he got older," Solomon said. "He would have sired better older horses that would have gotten better and he probably would have produced grass horses as well. Look for the crops that he has sired to improve dramatically, at least that's what I thought."
Bred in Kentucky, Dare and Go is out of the Secretariat mare Partygoer. Campaigned by La Presle Farm, Dare and Go hit the board in 19 of 22 career starts with seven wins for earnings of $1,608,972.
In three starts as a four-year-old Dare and Go's only win came in the 1995 Strub Stakes (G1) at Santa Anita. A year later, Dare and Go pulled off the mammoth upset of two-time Horse of the Year Cigar in the Pacific Classic and concluded the year with a second-place finish in the Goodwood Breeders' Cup Handicap (G2) and 11th-place finish behind Alphabet Soup in the Breeders' Cup Classic (G1).—Victor Ryan
