2019 Amsterdam Stakes winner
Shancelot was a brilliant flash of speed who took racing fans' breath away in the summer of 2019 with one of the most stunning sprint performances of recent years. He was foaled in 2016, a son of the young sire Shanghai Bobby. He was campaigned by Slam Dunk Racing and was trained at the time by Jorge Navarro, who had a hot barn full of fast horses. Jose Ortiz was his usual rider, a perfect fit for a colt who liked to send hard from the gate.
Shancelot opened his career with three straight wins, all of them coming on the front end. He blasted onto the national stage on Saratoga's stage in the Amsterdam Stakes, a Grade 2 sprint for three year olds. Sent off as the favorite, he ripped through blistering early fractions and just kept going, winning by a stunning 12 and a half lengths. The crowd at the Spa stood and roared as he crossed the wire, and racing fans across the country buzzed about the bay colt who looked like the next big thing in sprinting.
Shancelot could not quite match that performance again, but he kept running with the very best older sprinters in the country. He ran third in the H. Allen Jerkens Stakes at Saratoga, then traveled to Santa Anita where he finished a brave second to Omaha Beach in the Santa Anita Sprint Championship. The capper came in the 2019 Breeders' Cup Sprint, where he was the betting favorite and ran a huge race only to be beaten by another champion sprinter, Mitole. He finished his short career having never been off the board.
A tendon injury cut Shancelot's racing days short, and he was retired to stud at Buck Pond Farm near Versailles, Kentucky. There he began a new career as a stallion, and his first crop has produced winners on the track. Shancelot is remembered for that breathtaking Amsterdam Stakes romp, the kind of performance that gets replayed for years afterward, and as a sprinter who packed huge ability into a brief but very bright racing career.
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