I’ll Have Another’s road to retirement

The Kentucky-bred brown colt by Flower Alley out of Arch’s Gal Edith was foaled and sold for $11,000 (U.S.) at the Keeneland Yearling Sale in Lexington, Ky. He was resold to Canadian philosopher, businessman and racing enthusiast J. Paul Reddam for $35,000 as a 2-year-old at a Florida auction.

An uninspiring 2-year-old season saw I’ll Have Another win just one maiden race. Losses in a pair of subsequent stakes races lead to a five-month layoff that took him into his magical 3-year-old campaign. With a 43-1 long-shot win in the Feb. 3 Robert B. Lewis Stakes at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, Calif., and a new jockey up — Vancouver’s Hastings Park veteran Mario Gutierrez — I’ll Have Another was off to the races. But his win by a nose in the top- graded Santa Anita Derby under Gutierrez on April 7 did not gain I’ll Have Another much respect in the Run for the Roses four weeks later. At Churchill Downs, in Louisville, Ky., he went off at 15-1. Winning the May 5 Kentucky Derby after overtaking the heavily bet Bodemeister in the stretch, he went to the post as second pick in the Preakness Stakes two weeks later, winning another thrilling stretch dual at Pim- lico Race Course, in Baltimore, Md.

June 8, a day before he would attempt to gain the first Triple Crown since Affirmed, I’ll Have another is scratched from Saturday’s Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y., with tendinitis in his left foreleg. He’s officially retired.

I’ll Have Another is the 12th horse since Affirmed to win the first two legs but not the Belmont. Joe Hall