Remembering El Prado

I had planned to talk about Silverbulletday winner War Echo who starts her comeback on Weds in a listed stake at Belmont, however some sad news came over the wire within the past 2 hours. Accordig to DRF.com the Saddler's Well El Prado (IRE), passed away this morning due to an heart attack. You have to sign up to see the article which can be found here. El Prado was one of my favorite stallions siring BC Mile winner Artie Shiller, G1 winners Asi Siempre and Borrego and many other great horses. However, the two horses who made him a superstar sire are Medaglia d'Oro and Kitten's Joy. I've talked about MDO quite a bit the past few months, but I'll give you some of his stats. 2002 Jim Dandy and Travers winner, 2 time Breeder's Cup runner-up, 2003 Whitney winner, 2004 Donn Handicap winner and 2004 Dubai World Cup runner up. He's gotten off to a great start at stud with stakes winners including the one and only Rachel Alexandra, Gabby's Golden Gal (both Rach and Gabby are G1 winners), G2 winner Payton d'Oro, stakes winners C.S. Silk, Retraceable, Tasty Temptation and Al Khali, his first male stakes winner. In Europe he has the promising Al Zir.

Kitten's Joy is out of the Lear Fan mare Kitten's First, and burst onto the seen as one of the best turf males in 2004. Many thought that if he hadn't lost to Better Talk Now in the BC Turf that year, he and not Smarty Jones would have won the Champion 3yo Male that year. KJ won the 2004 Eclipse for Turf Male and came back to finish second in the Arlington Million the next year. KJ has also gotten off to a fast start being number 1 on the Freshman List (as of right now), and has 1 graded stakes winner. This past weekend, KJ had a great weekend with several winners and a second place finish in a graded stakes.

Here is one of KJ's races the 2004 Turf Classic



I couldn't find a video of any of El Prado's races, however he was the 1991 2yo Champion in Ireland with a win in the Group 2 National Stakes. He stood at Adena Springs in Kentucky and was owned during his racing career by Coolmore.

I'm defently going to miss him.