Sweetontheladies Retired to Pleasant Acres Stallions

Grade 1-placed, black-type winner Sweetontheladies has retired from racing and will enter stud next year at Pleasant Acres Stallions, near Ocala, Fla., the farm announced Oct. 12. His fee has been set at $2,500.

The 6-year-old son of Twirling Candy , racing for The Four Horsemen Racing Stable and Lady Lindsay Racing Stables, became a black-type winner at 2 in the Juvenile Sprint Stakes at Gulfstream Park West and would go on to place in nine other stakes, including five graded stakes.

"He has retired sound and brings stamina and consistency as a tenacious sprinter on dirt to our stables," said Joe Barbazon, who and operates Pleasant Acres with his wife Helen. "Sweetontheladies is the only Twirling Candy stallion in Florida, which gives breeders the opportunity to expand the Candy Ride  bloodline in our state."

Sweetontheladies held his own in top competition most consistently at 4 where he started in nine black-type stakes and placed in five of them. In his second start in 2018, he was runner-up in the Gulfstream Park Sprint Stakes (G3) at Gulfstream Park. He went on to be second in the Smile Sprint Stakes (G3) and tested grade 1 company in the Alfred G. Vanderbilt Handicap (G1) as Saratoga Race Course, where he hit the gate at the break but regrouped to finish strong, closing from seventh in the stretch to finish third.

Sweetontheladies would also finish third in the Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash Stakes (G3) at Laurel Park. At 5, he got the best of multiple grade 1 winner Imperial Hint  in the 2019 Pelican Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs where he finished second. He retired with a 4-5-6 record out of 31 starts and $408,012 in earnings.

Bred in Florida by English Range Farm, Sweetontheladies is out of the stakes-placed Yankee Gentleman mare Whataclassybroad, who has produced three winners from four to race and is half sister to stakes-placed winner Wild English Rose (Wild Rush). The stallion's third dam, Dagian, is a full sister to French group 1 winner and sire Air de Cour and a half sister to group 1 winner and sire Agent Double (One for All).

Twirling Candy is the second-leading sixth-crop sire for North America by progeny earnings but is the only one of his sire class with a grade 1 winner so far this year. He is the sire of Collusion Illusion, who won the Bing Crosby Stakes (G1) at Del Mar in August and was most recently third in the Santa Anita Sprint Championship Stakes (G2) Sept. 27 at Santa Anita Park.