First Row Partners

Goodnight Olive (Ghostzapper--Salty Strike, by Smart Strike), the Eclipse Award-winning Champion Female Sprinter of 2022 and 2023, who sold for $6 million at the 2023 Fasig-Tipton November Sale, will be retired and bred to Not This Time, according to a press release from John Stewart's Resolute Farm. Goodnight Olive earned $2.196 million on the racetrack, winning nine of 12 races while never finishing out of the money. She won back-to-back editions of the Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Sprint. Following her Breeders' Cup win, Goodnight Olive returned to Payson Park...

Elite Power (Curlin) and Goodnight Olive (Ghostzapper) repeated as Eclipse champion sprinters during Thursday's ceremony in Florida. Juddmonte's Elite Power traveled to Saudi Arabia to begin 2023 with a win in the G3 Riyadh Dirt Sprint. Returned stateside, he won the GII True North S. and GI Alfred G. Vanderbilt H. before having an eight-race win streak interrupted with a runner-up effort in the GI Forego S. at Saratoga in August. He returned to the winner's circle and earned his second straight win in the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint just...

Jay Hanley considers himself lucky to have had more than his fair share of highs in horse racing, but he has also gone through plenty of mishaps, frustrations and heartbreaks. A co-owner of champion Lady Eli (Divine Park), he was there for the ups and downs of the extraordinary mare's career as she fought a seemingly insurmountable battle with laminitis and returned to the top of the sport. Then there is Goodnight Olive (Ghostzapper - Salty Strike, Smart Strike), who overcame two setbacks early in her career and went on...

First Row Partners and Team Hanley's Prerequisite went wire-to-wire to take the rescheduled GII Wonder Again S. in just her third career start at Belmont Park Sunday. Sent off at 7-1, the bay filly rushed up to take the lead into the first turn and she was tracked by Spansive (Karakontie {Jpn}) through fractions of :23.67 and :47.94 in a strung-out field down the backstretch. She scampered away into the lane and was clear in upper stretch, but was all out to hold off the late-closing Be Your Best. "I...

Steve Laymon watched Goodnight Olive (Ghostzapper) clinch a likely Eclipse Award with her win in the GI Breeders' Cup F/M Sprint at Keeneland in November and the founder of the First Row Partners racing partnership will be back at Keeneland Monday to watch that mare's half-sister Katie's Keepsake (Medaglia d'Oro) (hip 55) sell with the Nursery Place consignment during the first session of the Keeneland January Horses of All Ages Sale. Laymon purchased the unraced mare, in foal to Tiz the Law, for $65,000 at the 2021 Keeneland November sale....

In a field which included three Grade I winners, it was first-time stakes starter Goodnight Olive (Ghostzapper) who came away with the victory--and an automatic berth in the GI Breeders' Cup F/M Sprint--in the GI Ballerina S. at Saratoga Sunday. Sent off at 5-1, the dark bay filly was hustled out of the gate before settling into third as Travel Column (Frosted) assumed command through a quarter in :22.09. Goodnight Olive rushed up to press the pacestter after a half in :44.50 and powered past that rival at midstretch before...