To Honor and Serve will enter stud at Gainesway in 2013

To Honor and Serve will enter stud at Gainesway in 2013

To Honor and Serve scored his biggest win to date when closing out his sophomore campaign with victory in the Cigar Mile (NYRA/Adam Coglianese Photography) by Brisnet.com Grade 1-winning millionaire To Honor and Serve will enter stud in 2013 at the Beck family’s Gainesway Farm near Lexington, Kentucky, it was announced Sunday. The Live Oak Plantation colorbearer, a graded stakes winner at two, three, and four, and second highweight on the Experimental Free Handicap, becomes the first Grade 1 winner by champion Bernardini to enter stud. Last season, To Honor and Serve became just the ninth three-year-old in history to win the Grade 1 Cigar Mile, and his winning time of 1:33.89 was the second best mile run by any sophomore in 2011. The bay four-year-old has also captured the Nashua, Remsen and Pennsylvania Derby, all Grade 2s, and began 2012 with a 5 1/4-length romp in the Grade 3 Westchester Handicap. He’s placed in a pair of Grade 1s, the Met Mile and Florida Derby, and also ran third in the Grade 2 Fountain of Youth. “To Honor and Serve has every component necessary to be a top sire, and we are delighted Mrs. Weber has agreed to stand him at Gainesway,” Gainesway President Antony Beck said. “He was a top class two-year-old, a brilliant runner and a Grade 1-winning miler on the dirt.

“Perhaps equally
important, he had outstanding speed — he ran two number 1 Rags — and those
are the types of horses who take it to the next level as stallions. And
of course, he is by one of the most exciting young sires in our industry,
and from a sire’s family. He represents great opportunity for breeders and
for Gainesway.”

To Honor and Serve was bred in Kentucky by Twin Creeks Farm, Larry Byer
and Rancho San Miguel, and purchased by Charlotte Weber’s Live Oak
Plantation for $575,000 from the 2009 Keeneland September Yearling Sale. From the
first crop by Bernardini, he is out of the stakes-winning Deputy Minister
mare Pilfer, and descends from the direct family of breed-shaping sire
Dynaformer.

“I am pleased that To Honor and Serve will be standing at Gainesway,” Weber
said. “Antony Beck, his family and entire team have a history
of success and are leaders in the industry. We know he will have every
opportunity to be successful as a sire. I look forward to seeing his
foals.”

To Honor and Serve is currently readying for the Grade 1, $750,000 Woodward
on September 1 at Saratoga, and breezed five furlongs in 1:00 4/5 over the
Oklahoma training track on Sunday. His current record stands at 14-7-1-3,
$1,328,840.

A stud fee
will be announced at a later date.

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