Noble Bird Out for Rest of Year
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John Oxley's Stephen Foster (gr. I) winner Noble Bird will sit out the rest of the year after emerging from the Aug. 8 Whitney Handicap (gr. I) at Saratoga Race Course with a hip injury, trainer Mark Casse said Sept. 12.
The 4-year-old son of Birdstone will likely resume training at the beginning of next year. He finished ninth in the Whitney.
"He came out of that race pretty banged up," Casse said. "We knew when we started backing up at the half-mile pole that something was wrong because that was not like him. We never really could figure out what was bothering him, but when we tried training him again, he just wasn't himself so we sent him to Ocala and they worked on him last week.
"He did something to his left hip. They can't really X-ray their hip so it's hard to say whether it's just a muscle tear of some sort, but he'll be fine. I would say our long-term goal would be next year's Stephen Foster. He probably won't start back training until the beginning of next year."
Noble Bird, bred in Kentucky by Jack Swain out of the Tiznow mare Anyhow, has a 4-3-0 record from 10 starts with earnings of $531,278. He was a $105,000 purchase by Casse from the 2012 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky select yearling sale. His Stephen Foster win, the first graded victory of his career, granted him an automatic berth to the Oct. 31 Breeders' Cup Classic (gr. I) at Keeneland as part of the "Win and You're In" Breeders' Cup Challenge.