Sir Winston is 1st; Husbands may have ridden for last time

Nearly 2 1/2 years since he won the Belmont as a 10-1 long shot, Sir Winston finally ended his stakes drought Sunday night in what might have been the last race for jockey Patrick Husbands.

Now 5, Sir Winston (8-5) battled Frosted Over (9-2) down the stretch before emerging with a half-length victory in the 1 1/2-mile Grade 3 Valedictory Stakes on closing day at Woodbine.

With the win, trainer Mark Casse said Sir Winston would be “looking at the Pegasus next.” The $3 million Pegasus World Cup Invitational (G1) is Jan. 29 at Gulfstream Park.

While Casse scored an exacta with the 1-2 finish, Husbands got his record fifth win in the Valedictory in his first ride on Sir Winston. A seven-time champion jockey in Canada, Husbands said Casse temporarily talked him out of retirement when they spoke on the phone Thursday.

“I said, ‘Mark, I’m done,’” Husbands, 48, told Woodbine TV as he fought back tears after Sunday’s race. “In my heart I wanted to be here. Woodbine has been great to me. Mark told me I had the whole winter to think about it.”

Husbands, a native of Barbados, has been mourning the recent death of a close friend who helped raise him, according to Casse.

“There was never a question of whether he was going to ride Sir Winston,” Casse told Horse Racing Nation on Sunday night. “I just told him this was not the time to make this decision.”

Husbands said he would spend the next few months deciding whether to make his retirement permanent. In 18,753 races since 1994, he has 3,508 wins and more than $170 million in earnings, according to Equibase. More than 1,000 of those victories have been in partnership with Casse.

In nine races since he won the 2019 Belmont, Sir Winston’s only scores were in two allowance races. One was in August at Woodbine after nearly a year on the bench. Then he finished second in the Durham Cup (G3) and Autumn Stakes (G2), also at Woodbine, before winning Sunday.

A 5-year-old entire by Awesome Again, Sir Winston made his decisive move moving into the last of three turns. Husbands took him wide to engage Frosted Over, a graded-stakes-winning, 3-year-old Frosted colt who had been stalking the lead in a stretched-out field for most of the race.

Kazushi Kimura put Frosted Over just in front for maybe a stride or two before Husbands found another gear with Sir Winston, who showed the stamina to come out on top.

Collective Force (27-1) was a distant third. Burning Man (39-1) won the photo for fourth place in the field of 14.

Sir Winston was clocked in a winning time of 2:31.51 after chasing slow early fractions of 24.78, 50.36, 1:16.23 and 1:43.79. He had the lead when he was timed at 2:08.32 for the first 1 1/4 miles.

Bred and owned by Tracy Farmer, Sir Winston is 7: 4-2-1 on the all-weather track at Woodbine, where he broke his maiden as a 2-year-old in the summer of 2018.