from the Durkin–Spadaro Partnership

Saratoga Springs, NY — Coraggioso, the New York Sire Stakes colt trotting champion of 2012, has been retired, according to owners Tom Durkin and Joe Spadaro.

Fred Brown photo

Coraggioso retired after winning 21 races and earning $677,398.

“I have one true regret about Coraggioso’s career; I never got to call one of his races. If I had called them I may have run out of superlatives. It would have been very difficult to come up with new words for a horse that wins 21 times,” said Durkin, who called eight Hambletonians and retired as the New York Racing Association track announcer in 2014.

Spadaro, former deputy executive director of the New York State Thoroughbred Breeding & Development Fund, had owned and bred trotters for years until Roosevelt Raceway closed in 1988.

After his retirement eight years ago, Spadaro re-entered the harness industry and partnered with Durkin purchasing the mare, Electra Hanover (Lindy Lane) in 2010 for $12,000. Included in that deal was the foal she was carrying as well as a SJ’s Caviar yearling colt.

The owners met with mixed results early in their venture, but found a true star in Electra Hanover’s fourth foal and their first homebred whom Durkin named Coraggioso, the Italian word for “courageous.”

The colt more than lived up to his moniker.

Coraggioso capped his 3-year-old season, which included victories in the Historic and the Tompkins-Geers stakes, by winning the $225,000 NYSS trotting colt championship at Yonkers Raceway.

The multiple stakes winning half-mile track specialist continued his winning ways as a 4- and 5-year old, winning multiple times from the assigned eight post in Yonkers Raceway’s Open Trot Handicap races before being sidelined by an injury sustained in August 2014.

Coraggioso raced 50 times with a record of 21-10-6, earned $677,398 and took a record of 1:52.4 in his 5-year old campaign.

“He proved that he belongs in the breeding shed and we feel Ohio is the state that offers the most promise for his next career,” said Spadaro.

Final plans for Coraggioso’s retirement are being finalized and will be announced soon.