by Pete Denk
Multiple Grade 1 winner and millionaire Silver Wagon will stand at Hurricane Hall in Lexington for $5,000 during the 2008 breeding season, Hurricane Hall President Ben Walden Jr. said on Tuesday.
Winner of the 2003 Hopeful Stakes (G1), Silver Wagon won his fourth graded stakes when he took top honors in this year’s $300,000 Carter Handicap (G1) at Aqueduct on April 7. The six-year-old Wagon Limit horse was retired with seven victories and earnings of $1,162,193 from 25 starts.
Silver Wagon was offered as a stallion prospect at the 2007 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky November breeding stock sale, but he was listed as reserve not attained on final bid of $1-million.
“The under $10,000 stud fee market recently has been forgotten and Silver Wagon, as a Hopeful winner and later as a Grade 1 winner in New York going one turn, will be hard to look past at his stud fee,” Walden said.
Out of the Darn That Alarm mare So Ritzy, the gray or roan horse was bred in Florida by Mr. and Mrs. Leverett S. Miller. The late Mahmoud Fustok’s Buckram Oak Farm purchased Silver Wagon for $120,000 at the 2003 Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co. February sale of selected two-year-olds in training.
In his second career start, Silver Wagon won a maiden race by 7 1/2 lengths at Saratoga Race Course, defeating Buckran Oak's eventual Grade 2 winner Eurosilver.
In his next start, Silver Wagon won the Hopeful by four lengths, defeating a field that included Sanford Stakes (G2) winner Chapel Royal, Bashford Manor Stakes (G3) winner Limehouse, and Birdstone, who subsequently won the Champagne (G1), Belmont (G1), and Travers (G1) Stakes.
In addition to winning the 2006 Sport Page Breeders’ Cup Handicap (G3) at Aqueduct and the ‘07 General George Breeders’ Cup Handicap (G2) at Laurel Park, Silver Wagon placed in five other graded stakes, including a runner-up finish to '04 Horse of the Year Ghostzapper in the ’05 Metropolitan Handicap (G1) at Belmont Park.
Silver Wagon joins Artie Schiller, Bellamy Road, English Channel, and Teuflesberg at Hurricane Hall.
Pete Denk is a Thoroughbred Times staff writer