Horse racing: Imperatriz ends racing career with 10 Group 1 victories, set for breeding barn

Kiwi mare Imperatriz lands the Group 1 William Reid Stakes (1200m) at The Valley. Photo / Bruno Cannatelli

Champion New Zealand racemare Imperatriz has been retired in a shock move today.

The 10-time Group 1 winner only raced last Saturday when bogged down into fourth in the TJ Smith in Sydney but was found to have wear and tear when given her end-of-season veterinary examination this week.

“It is just the wear and tear you expect from a horse who has been racing at her level, and some people might have patched her up and kept racing,” says David Ellis, managing owner of Te Akau syndications.

“But we think it was her telling us she has had enough so she will retire sound and happy and start her next career.”

That will be as a broodmare; Imperatriz is almost certain to be sold at a public auction as being owned by a syndicate it would be too difficult for her owners to breed from her as a group.

While Ellis has the option of negotiating a private sale that would run well into the millions of dollars, Te Akau have tended to sell their best mares at public sales which are more transparent and open for anybody to bid on.

Their greatest such sale was the $4.1 million paid for Avantage as a broodmare at a special one-horse GavelHouse Plus auction. That figure should be eclipsed by Imperatriz.

The five-year-old mare has been phenomenal in the past 15 months in particular, dominating Victoria’s best sprinting races after taking all before her at home.

Her series of Group 1 wins put her second on the world rankings and she become the world’s highest-rated sprinter, both firsts for a New Zealand-trained horse.

Trained early in her career by Jamie Richards, before he moved to Hong Kong, Imperatriz was twice a Group 1 winner aged three over 1600m but it was when she was moved to sprinting by new Te Akau trainer Mark Walker and Sam Bergerson that she found her true calling.

She was ridden in the majority of her major wins by Opie Bosson.

Imperatriz will go to the broodmare paddock the winner of 19 of her 27 starts for $6.9m in stakes after Ellis purchased her for A$360,000 (NZ$392,000).

“She will be sold as a broodmare prospect only, so whoever buys her won’t have the option of racing her again,” says Ellis.

“But she has taken us and a lot of people on a wonderful ride and done New Zealand proud.”

Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.