Team Block relocating Fort Prado to Indiana
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Photo: Four Footed Fotos
Fort Prado during his race days, winning 2009 Black Tie Affair Stakes.
Team Block's multiple graded stakes-winning stallion Fort Prado is being relocated from Buck Pond Farm near Versailles, Ky. to Swifty Farms in Indiana to take advantage of Indiana' breeding incentives, Chris Block said Sept. 27.
Fort Prado, a 2001 foal by El Prado out of the Fortunate Prospect mare Fort Pond, was bred by David Block, patriarch of the Block racing family.
He entered stud in 2010 but did not immediately catch fire in Kentucky. His best recent performer is Prado's Sweet Ride, a 4-year-old filly out of the General Meeting mare Excellent Idea. She won the 2015 Regret Stakes (gr. IIIT) at Churchill Downs and last month won the Minnesota H.B.P.A. Distaff at Canterbury Park.
"He just wasn't getting the interest in Kentucky that we had hoped," Block said of the former Illinois Horse of the Year. "He was a small fish in a big pond, and he just didn't hit the grade I or grade II winner there the first couple of years."
Block said he would love to bring Fort Prado back to Illinois but the economic woes of racing in the Land of Lincoln make that impossible.
The striking gray horse had a record of 18-10-8 from 59 starts and earnings of $1,211,681 while racing from 2003-2009. His wins included the Fair Grounds Breeders' Cup Handicap (gr. IIIT) and the John B. Connally Breeders' Cup Handicap (gr. IIIT) at Sam Houston Race Park.