Secret Oath injures her ankle, is retired to sales ring next month

Lexington, Ky.

Secret Oath, the winner of the Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks in 2022, was retired this week with a minor ankle injury and will be put up for auction next month by her Briland Farm breeder-owners Robert and Stacy Mitchell, her trainer D. Wayne Lukas told Horse Racing Nation on Friday.

“She had an ankle flare up, and they decided that was enough,” Lukas said in the paddock on opening day at Keeneland. “It was her right front.”

Secret Oath was diagnosed with the injury after a workout last Thursday, when she breezed five furlongs in 58.6 seconds at Churchill Downs. The 4-year-old Arrogate filly out of the Quiet American mare Absinthe Minded was being readied for Sunday’s Spinster Stakes (G1) at Keeneland on the way to the Breeders’ Cup Distaff on Nov. 4 at Santa Anita.

“She’s OK,” Lukas said, “but they decided to sell her.”

Secret Oath will have hip 180 in the Fasig-Tipton Night of the Stars sale on Nov. 7. New owners theoretically could bring her back to the track, but that would depend on their plans and her recovery.

For now Secret Oath’s last race was her runner-up finish to Idiomatic in the Personal Ensign (G1) on Aug. 25 at Saratoga. Eclipse Award winner Nest finished third in that race, and it was expected the three of them would line up in the Spinster. When entries came out Tuesday, Idiomatic and Nest were in, but Secret Oath was conspicuous by her absence.

“When you lose one like that, it hurts the whole barn a little bit,” Lukas said. “I thought she’d make a big run in the Spinster.”

With earnings of $2,444,767, Secret Oath had a record of 18: 6-5-3. After she won the Martha Washington and Honeybee (G3) in 2022, she went up against the boys and took third in the Arkansas Derby (G1).

Five weeks later, she won the Oaks to give Lukas, now 88, one more big moment during America’s biggest week of racing. As he put it at the time, “When you’re 86, and you’re going to be 87 in a few months, you know you don’t have a lot of them in front of you yet.”

In 10 races since, Secret Oath won only once more. That was in the Azeri (G2) on March 11 to bring her to the winner’s circle for a third time at Oaklawn.

Seventeen months after the Kentucky Oaks triumph, Lukas sounded a familiar refrain about Secret Oath.

“She’s been a tremendous horse for us,” he said. “Those kinds of horses make it worth getting up every day.”

And then with his trademark flash of optimism, Lukas said, “We’ll find another one.”