Three-time Grade 1 stakes winner Smiling Tiger retired | Washington Thoroughbred Owners Association

It was announced on July 4 that WTBOA Sales poster horse Smiling Tiger has been retired from racing and will stand the 2014 breeding season at Premier Equine Center in California for a $5,000 fee.

August 17, 2013 12:55 pm

It was announced on July 4 that WTBOA Sales poster horse Smiling Tiger has been retired from racing and will stand the 2014 breeding season at Premier Equine Center in California for a $5,000 fee.

A six-year-old son of Hold That Tiger out of Federal Way Handicap winner Shandra Smiles, a daughter of leading Washington sire Cahill Road, Smiling Tiger was bred in Kentucky by Dr. Rodney Orr, of Silverton, Oregon.

Orr consigned him through Halvorson Bloodstock Services LLC to the 2008 WTBOA September yearling sale where trainer Jeff Bonde purchased the chestnut colt for $40,000 for Alan Klein and Philip Lebherz.

A stakes winner in each of his four seasons of racing, Smiling Tiger placed in the Grade 1 Del Mar Futurity and Grade 2 Best Pal Stakes as a two-year-old in the first two what would be 16 graded stakes placements. At three he won both the Grade 1 Bing Crosby and Ancient Title Stakes and placed in three other Grade 1 races, including a third in the Sentient Jet Breeders’ Cup Sprint. For his efforts, he was among the three finalists for the 2010 Eclipse Award sprinter title. At four, the speedy colt added his third Grade 1 triumph in the Triple Bend Handicap and he made his final start a winning one when he came home on top by a length in the Vernon O. Underwood Stakes run at Betfair Hollywood Park last December.

All in all Smiling Tiger made 23 starts while under Bonde’s care and amassed a 9-2-8 record. His final earnings of $1,480,704 places him at the top of all horses to have gone through the WTBOA sales ring.