2016 Eclipse Award Champion Three-Year-Old Male

Major races: Travers Stakes (2016), Pegasus World Cup (2017), Dubai World Cup (2017)

Awards: Named 3-Year-Old Male Champion (2016), named Horse of the Year (2016)

Stud: Arrogate stood at stud at Juddmonte Farms in Lexington, Kentucky. In the last week of May 2020 Arrogate's stud schedule was suspended when he appeared to be suffering from soreness in his neck. He then fell in his stall, was unable to get back to his feet, and was sent for treatment at the Hagyard Clinic. After four days of tests and unsuccessful treatment, he was euthanized on June 2. A statement issued by Juddmonte said "His will to fight, so valuable to him on the racetrack, became a challenge in his care. When serious secondary health issues set in, the decision was made to put him to sleep."

April 11 - Arrogate

When things are fresh in our minds, they are magnified and with time, those moments, memories, those facts start to fade . . .

I hope I continue to think of that six-month period when Arrogate was not only the best horse in the world, but his accomplishments provoked the conversation that he was the "Greatest Horse Ever!" - A four race period of six months that started with the Travers, then he bested Kentucky Derby winner and Dubai World Cup winner California Chrome in the Breeders' Cup Classic in an amazing stretch duel, then he won the richest race in America by capturing the Pegasus at Gulfstream, and capped it off with the incredible win in the Dubai World Cup after getting left at the start of the race seemingly with no shot at victory, and a grand total of $17 million in earnings. We promised that we'd never forget his greatness and then others have come along, and our hero's accomplishments begins to gather dust and his untimely death way too young, and now, we have to remind so many that for that brief period of time, Arrogate was unlike any horse that we'd ever seen nationally and internationally. Was he the greatest ever? Maybe not but what he did should never be forgotten, a truly amazing horse. Thank goodness we've seen a few of his offspring shoot to stardom in the past couple years with Kentucky Oaks winner Secret Oath and Belmont Stakes winner Arcangelo. I hope Arrogate's bloodline produces another one who reminds us of his greatness and passes the torch to the next generation. I'm really pulling for Arcangelo now in his first year at stud.

Some racehorses build their reputation across years; Arrogate built his across about six unforgettable months, and the sport hasn't quite stopped talking about him since. A big, light-grey colt foaled in 2013 in Kentucky and bred by Clearsky Farms, he was a $560,000 yearling at Keeneland September, signed for by Juddmonte Farms and sent to Bob Baffert. The pedigree promised class without quite signaling greatness: by Unbridled's Song, the brilliantly fast son of Unbridled and a major sire of stakes winners, out of the Distorted Humor mare Bubbler, with inbreeding 4×4 to Mr. Prospector. He was, by every measurement, well-bred — but he was nothing more than an allowance-class secret through the spring of his three-year-old season.

Then came the 2016 Travers Stakes. In what was only his first stakes start, Arrogate exploded clear of a deep field at Saratoga to win by 13½ lengths, smashing the historic mile-and-a-quarter track record set by General Assembly in 1979. The performance was so visually overwhelming that he was installed as the favorite for the Breeders' Cup Classic at Santa Anita less than three months later — and he delivered, running down California Chrome through the lane in a stretch duel many regard as the finest of the decade. He was named the 2016 American Champion Three-Year-Old Male and the Longines World's Best Racehorse. As a four-year-old he extended the run, taking the inaugural Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream by nearly five lengths over California Chrome, then producing perhaps his most astonishing performance yet in the Dubai World Cup, where he stumbled out of the gate, dropped to dead last, swung six wide and ran past a top-class international field to win going away.

After Dubai, just as quickly as he had arrived, his form left him. Three off-the-board efforts in the second half of 2017 ended his career, and he retired to stud at Juddmonte's Kentucky operation with seven wins from eleven starts and what was then the all-time North American earnings record. His stud career was tragically brief: he was euthanized at age seven in 2020 from a neurological illness, leaving only a handful of crops behind. In 2023 he was inducted into the National Museum of Racing's Hall of Fame, an enshrinement that felt overdue and underdue at once. For a window of about a year, Arrogate was simply the best racehorse in the world, and the manner of his greatness — the lengths, the records, the comebacks from impossible positions — gave him a place among the small list of horses whose names alone are enough.

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