Eclipse winner and California-bred Horse of the Year Acclamation has been retired and will stand the 2013 breeding season at Old English Rancho in Sanger, Calif. for a $20,000 fee.
Acclamation becomes the first Cal-bred Eclipse winner to retire in the state as a stallion since Bertrando 20 years ago.
The champion older male of 2011, Acclamation is the most accomplished son of champion stallion Unusual Heat. He retires with a seven-race win streak, all of them graded stakes, but hasn’t raced since July.
Out of the Silveyville mare Winning in Style, 6-year-old Acclamation was bred by and foaled at Old English Rancho in central California. He is owned by Peter and Mary Hilvers and E.W. "Bud" and Judy Johnston and trained by Donald Warren.
Bud Johnston told Daily Racing Form that Acclamation could return to racing during the second half of the 2013 season if he recovers from a problematic strained ligament in a foreleg that has kept him on the sidelines since winning the Eddie Read Stakes (gr. IT) July 21 at Del Mar.
“We need to evaluate the injury and see how it heals,” Johnston told DRF. “There is a possibility we can do it. The injury has to be healed 100 percent. The vets say in four or five months it should be 100 percent. If we plan on bringing him back, we’d start jogging every day and breeding him when we want to.”
Acclamation has 11 wins in 30 starts with earnings of $1,958,048. Included in his totals are six grade I wins—the 2011 Pacific Classic, the Charles Whittingham Memorial Handicap three times (2010-12), and the Eddie Read Stakes twice (2011-12). He also won the Clement L. Hirsch Turf Championship Stakes (gr. IIT) in 2011, and the Jim Murray Handicap (gr. IIT) twice (2010-11).
