Lady’s Secret, Former Horse of Year, Dies

Just hours after foaling a colt, Lady’s Secret, one of only six females to be named horse of the year, died Tuesday at Valley Creek Farm in north San Diego County.

Leigh Ann Howard, director of operations at Valley Creek, said the cause of death was internal bleeding from the uterus. Such a condition, Howard said, is not uncommon among older mares. Lady’s Secret, who was 21, had delivered 11 foals before this one. Her last foal, the result of a mating with General Meeting, was born at 11:50 p.m. Monday. She was found dead in her stall, with the foal nearby, by a farm employee at 7:45 a.m.

“She had been checked on just an hour before,” Howard said, “and everything seemed to be fine.”

Lady’s Secret, voted horse of the year in 1986 after winning the Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Santa Anita, raced for Gene and Joyce Klein and was trained by Wayne Lukas. The gray, Oklahoma-bred daughter of Secretariat and the mare Great Lady M. was bred by Bob Spreen and sold to the Kleins for $200,000 before she raced. She was sold twice as a broodmare, to Issam Fares for $3.8 million while she was in foal to Alydar in 1989, and to Kim and John Glenney of Georgetown, Ky., for $750,000 after she had been mated with Seattle Slew in 1998. Some records indicate that Lady’s Secret was sold for $5.4 million in 1987, but actually that was the amount the auction company guaranteed the Kleins if bidding didn’t reach their presale minimum.

The Glenneys, citing better winter weather, moved Lady’s Secret from Kentucky to California in May 2001.

Other females voted horse of the year include Twilight Tear in 1944, Busher in 1945, Moccasin in 1965, All Along in 1983 and Azeri last year. Moccasin shared honors her year when Roman Brother was voted horse of the year in a separate poll.

Lady’s Secret was the fifth horse-of-the-year champion to die in the last 10 months. The others were Seattle Slew, Sunday Silence, Spend A Buck and Conquistador Cielo.

Lady’s Secret, whose career spanned 1984-87, was a small filly who barely weighed 900 pounds, but she won 25 races -- 22 of them stakes -- in 45 starts and earned $3 million. In 1986, on a cross-country schedule, she ran 15 times, and won 10, one a victory over males in the Whitney Handicap at Saratoga.

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An unnamed chestnut colt, designated as hip No. 107, sold for $2.7 million at the Barretts sale at Fairplex Park in Pomono, breaking the world record for a 2-year-old sold at auction. The colt was bought by Charles Fipke, a Canadian who hadn’t made any purchases at the Barretts sales before. Fipke’s trainer is Bob Baffert.