Goodnight Olive set for Gun Runner as John Stewart reveals mating plans
John Stewart's marquee broodmare purchase Goodnight Olive is being covered smartly once again with a booking to the Three Chimneys sensation Gun Runner.
Big-spending Stewart acquired the Ghostzapper mare for $6 million at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky November Sale of 2023. A four-time Grade 1 winner including the Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Sprint, she is now a star member of the owner's Resolute Racing operation.
The news was announced on Resolute Racing's 'Breeding in the Bluegrass', a live-streamed show hosted by America's Best Racing from a speakeasy bar in Lexington, Kentucky, on Friday. The broadcast, which featured interviews with a number of representatives from leading studs in the area, is one of the ways in which Stewart has been hoping he can open up the sport to new fans and included insight from his wife Chelsey Stone Stewart, recently appointed the Resolute CEO.
"We're really excited to announce that Goodnight Olive is going to Gun Runner this year," Stewart said.
"Not just a top stallion, if not the top stallion in the country. When you go to these sales and you see what the value is of these Gun Runners. Ron Winchell [major owner-breeder] and I partner, you've got to partner to afford them."
Tony Cissell, general manager of Three Chimneys, was on the show at the time of the announcement.
"How can you not like that pairing," Cissell said. "She's a really strong, quick filly, he's done everything. It's just exciting when you have a mare of that quality.
"Goodnight Olive is a special mare and you can always find room for special mares. Goodnight Olive was a really sound, durable horse and so was Gun Runner. If we can do anything to help the breed, it's breed good, sound horses."
Goodnight Olive's first foal was a colt by Not This Time and she has been scanned as carrying another colt, due next month, by the 2024 Preakness winner Seize The Grey.
Stewart announced that another of his best mares, the South African champion Princess Calla, was also visiting Gun Runner while one of the show's guests Jes Sikura, the director of bloodstock at Hill 'n' Dale at Xalapa, explained that Thorpedo Anna was scheduled to be heading to the same individual.
Thorpedo Anna, an extremely rare three-year-old filly to be judged US horse of the year, was retired last October. The five-time Grade 1 winner and earner of more than $4million has been retired to the Sikura family's operation.
Among the visitors to Taylor Made Farm's leading light Not This Time scheduled from the Resolute paddocks will be Queen Caroline, another $3 million Stewart purchase from Fasig-Tipton and dam of Florida Derby and Breeders' Cup juvenile hero Forte, as well as his Grade 1-winning Argentinian-bred mare Didia and Forbidden Nectar, an unraced half-sister to Not This Time's recent impressive UAE 2,000 Guineas scorer Six Speed.
German Group winner Tabera, a beautifully-bred Gleneagles mare and dam of promising Zarak colt Seneque, is among a group set to visit Coolmore's Justify.
Stewart has made a considerable amount of other purchases for his growing broodmare band including Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint champion Caravel, who produced a Frankel colt last year. He has an investment in Believing, the Mehmas mare who won last year's Al Quoz Sprint in the Coolmore silks for George Boughey.
The owner confirmed that one of his other active signings, Goliath, is expected to participate in this month's The Amir Trophy in Qatar. The 2024 King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot has become a seasoned international traveller for Francis Graffard, landing the Group 1 Grosser Preis von Baden in September and was last seen finishing third to Sosie in the Hong Kong Vase in mid-December.
"He runs in Qatar next week for $2.5 million dollars," he said. "He's a gelding, he was ranked fourth in the world when I bought him, if he was a colt you couldn't have bought him. I bought 75 per cent, Philip [Baron Von Ullmann, breeder] stayed in as a partner. We've been to Japan, Ascot, Germany, all these great places. It's not all about winning the race."