Bonapaw set a stakes record and beat a crowd favorite in the 2001 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap at Oaklawn Park.
At age 5, the bay gelding won the Grade 3 race by 4 3/4 lengths over 1998 Count Fleet winner Chindi, Gerard Melancon leading Bonapaw to the winner's circle after six furlongs in 1:08. Sold for $6,500 as a yearling at Keeneland in September 1997, Bonapaw scored a Grade 1 victory in the 2002 Vosburgh at New York's Belmont Park and was supplemented to that year's Grade 1 Breeders' Cup Sprint, finishing 10th at Chicago's Arlington Park.
A career earner of more than $1.1 million, winning 18 of 49 starts, Bonapaw was euthanized on Thursday at Old Friends Thoroughbred Retirement Farm in Georgetown, Ky. At age 21, he suffereed from equine protozoal myeloencephalitis.
A Fair Grounds maiden winner as a 2-year-old in 1998, Bonapaw won five stakes at the New Orleans track and also captured the Grade 3 Hanshin Cup Handicap at Arlington.
Howard Alonzo trained Bonapaw for twin brothers Dennis and James Richard, the latter donating Bonapaw to Old Friends in 2009. "Jamie even donated Bonapaw's Vosburgh trophy to us," said Old Friends president Michael Blowen, "and we will cherish it always."
Bet on it: Arkansas-owned Gentlemen's Bet, an Oaklawn stakes winner, will get a late start in the breeding shed next year at age 9.
Winner of the 2015 Hot Springs and two other black-type stakes, Gentlemen's Bet has been retired after winning seven of 22 starts and $744,155. Racing for Harry Rosenblum, of Little Rock, the son of Half Ours also won the Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash at Maryland's Laurel Park and the Iowa Sprint Handicap at Prairie Meadows. In addition, he placed in two Grade 1 stakes and Oaklawn's Grade 3 Count Fleet.
According to an online report, Gentlemen's Bet will stand the 2018 breeding season at Brent and Crystal Fernung's Journeyman Stud near Ocala, Fla.
"Gentlemen's Bet is the perfect horse for Florida," Brent Fernung told bloodhorse.com. "He is a big, beautiful fast horse with a great pedigree." Past De Francis winners Wildcat Heir, Montbrook and Yes It's True, he said, are "arguably the best three stallions to stand in Florida in the past 20 years."
Unraced at 2, Gentlemen's Bet surprised at 33-1 in his January 2012 debut at Florida's Gulfstream Park when trained by Wayne Catalano. He did not race again until early in his 4-year-old season, winning twice at Oaklawn in allowance/optional claiming races before placing third in the Count Fleet.
Gentlemen's Bet won the 2015 Hot Springs, finishing seventh in the Count Fleet, after missing the 2014 season. He was fourth in the King Cotton and eighth in the Count Fleet in 2016. Back with Catalano after being trained by Ron Moquett, Gentlemen's Bet made his last start when fourth in an allowance/optional claimer June 7 at Indiana Grand Race Course.
Sports on 07/08/2017