Champion Game Winner Retired to Lane’s End

[Wandering Eyes]

Champion Game Winner (Candy Ride {Arg}–Indyan Giving, by A.P. Indy) has been retired from racing and will stand the 2021 season at Lane’s End in Versailles, Kentucky. A stud fee will be forthcoming.

During his championship juvenile season, Game Winner was undefeated with victories in the GI Del Mar Futurity, GI American Pharoah S. and GI Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs. At three, he was runner up in the GI Santa Anita Derby and GII Rebel S. and finished fifth in the GI Kentucky Derby.

“As a 2-year-old, he was just phenomenal and he really brought it to that Championship level,” said Bob Baffert. “To do what he did really showed that he was the best of the best. Candy Ride was a brilliant racehorse and he throws brilliance, and with Game Winner, the minute he showed that brilliance I knew we had something special.”

Game Winner was most recently seen winning last year’s GIII Los Alamitos Derby.

“After the Los Al Derby, he had a high suspensory injury, and Bob was trying to work through it and get him over it, and never could to his satisfaction,” said Lane’s End’s Bill Farish.

Bred in Kentucky by Summer Wind Farm, Game Winner is out of Indyan Giving, who has also produced graded-stakes winner Flagstaff. His second dam is Champion Fleet Indian who won five graded stakes and earned over $1 million. To date, his sire Candy Ride has produced 16 Grade I winners and is the fourth leading active sire by lifetime earnings.

“Champion 2-year-olds make great sires,” said Farish. “Street Sense, Uncle Mo, American Pharoah, and now Nyquist looks very promising. All were the very best of their generation and now are among the elite stallions in America. Game Winner dominated in his championship year and was a graded-stakes winner at three. He is a champion from the immediate family of a champion, so we are honored that Gary and Mary West have entrusted Lane’s End with his stallion career.”

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