I'm thrilled about Lonrho coming here! He WAS amazing and hopefully can infuse some of that into our breeding over here!

Ah...okay.  Your post #5 explains much to me about why Wilburn was retired.

I hate that we lose Wilburn, three is just too young imho.  

Thanks for the updates. 

Beautiful capture of Gio by Wendy....more at the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wendy_u/6342032700/in/pool-ntra/

 

That is a fabulous photo of Gio! Wow he looks wonderful! On the subject of Wilburn, I think he has soundness issues because at 6500 dollars for the stude fee, he could make much more by racing another year. If he breeds one hundred mares, he will only make 650,000. In one year of racing he could do much better than what he would earn in the shed. I would like to know what his issue is. I imagine they don't want to post it because extreme unsoundness in a three year old may give people pause before breeding to him.

Well I saw the big bucks for Bernardini and then news of Wilburn being the first son to retire immediately after.  I agree with you though, its odd that they would retire him now at three unless something were wrong.  I don't like 3yo retirements to stud.  For any reason.

I was thinking like you. I imagined they saw Bernardini's fee and bought Wilburn to be the poor man's way to Bernardini; however, in my thoughts they were going to try to charge like 30,000 for Wilburn because he looks so much like Bernie. On seeing his stud fee, I have decided that he is probably injured, or they just think he isn't a very good racehorse. I think it is probably the former rather than the latter.

Could be, I thought he was talented.

Matt and I were at the Spendthrift breakfast the other morning and I believe I heard (but I could be wrong) that Wilburn had a suspensory injury and they decided to retire him.  It didn't seem to be too serious as he was walking in their show ring just fine with no wraps. 

Thanks Wendy for the info on the suspensory and happy to hear it's nothing serious.  Really liked this colt.

GREAT photo of Gio, Wendy!!

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