Champion Midnight Bisou Retired After Injury
The Eclipse Award-winning mare Midnight Bisou has been retired after suffering an injury, Bloom Racing Stable announced Wednesday.
Dr. Larry Bramlage of Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington confirmed that the 5-year-old mare sustained a sesamoid fracture in her right front fetlock, according to the statement issued by Bloom Racing.
Surgery will not be required, and the injury will be “inconsequential to her and her broodmare career,” according to the statement, which notes that she is set to be offered Nov. 8 as a broodmare prospect at the Fasig-Tipton November sale.
Midnight Bisou, a daughter of Midnight Lute, earned more than $7.4 million and retires as the highest-earning dirt mare of all time.
Midnight Bisou won the 2019 Eclipse Award for Champion Older Dirt Female after a campaign that included seven consecutive wins in races including Grade 1 victories in the Personal Ensign S., Ogden Phipps S. and the Apple Blossom Handicap. Her only loss last year was to Blue Prize in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff.
Midnight Bisou’s other wins included the Grade 1 Santa Anita Oaks and the Cotillion S. in 2018.
The ever-consistent Midnight Bisou was never off the board in 22 starts, which included 13 wins, six second-place finishes and three third-place finishes.
“I cannot begin to tell you what this mare has meant to me, my family, and my partners,” Jeffrey Bloom, co-owner and managing partner of Bloom Racing, said in the statement announcing her retirement. “The places she has taken us and the thrills she has given us are immeasurable. And just to be in her presence is to feel what greatness is all about. Her calm, inquisitive demeanor, her fierce determination in a race is unlike any other horse.”
Midnight Bisou’s retirement was announced two days after Bloom reported on Twitter that the mare was a “bit ‘off'” after cooling out following a routine maintenance breeze Monday at Saratoga. She was sent to Bramlage for a full evaluation.
Midnight Bisou — who was ranked seventh in the National Thoroughbred Racing Association’s Top Thoroughbred Poll this week — had been set to run in the Grade 1 Juddmonte Spinster S. Oct. 4 as her final prep race for what was set to be her third appearance in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. She had finished third behind Monomoy Girl and Wow Cat in the Distaff in 2018.
She started her racing career with trainer Bill Spawr in California and was transferred to trainer Steve Asmussen following her third-place finish in the Kentucky Oaks in 2018.
