Jennie Rees

@CJ_Jennie

Palace Malice, winner of last year’s Belmont Stakes and this year’s Metropolitan Mile, could race again next year after owner Dogwood Stable sold 50 percent interest in the 4-year-old colt to Three Chimneys Farm in Midway, Ky. Tuesday’s announcement came less than three weeks after Palace Malice was declared retired because of a bone bruise.

Dogwood president Cot Campbell said bids from breeders wishing to stand Palace Malice at stud were due at the Stoll Keenon Ogden law firm last Friday. He said Three Chimneys, which recently was taken over by Goncalo Torrealba, was the only farm offering the option of racing another year. Campbell said there were offers involving more money to stand him, but Dogwood liked the idea of at least having the possibility of racing Palace Malice another year “to make him more valuable than he is now” as well as for the partners’ enjoyment of having a top-class horse.

“It came as somewhat as a surprise,” Campbell said by phone of the offer. “… All of our people felt that the excitement, the pleasure, the anticipation of running the horse, with the hopes that he would be himself, was very appealing.”

Palace Malice won four straight graded stakes this year, including the Grade II New Orleans Handicap and Grade I Met Mile, before finishing sixth in Saratoga’s Whitney Stakes. The bruising of the left hind cannon bone later was detected, eliminating him running again this year. But Campbell said noted orthopedic surgeon Larry Bramlage of Lexington’s Rood and Riddle equine hospital believes the horse will heal “perfectly with several months of inactivity” and could race next year at the top level.

Campbell said Palace Malice will be examined by a veterinarian panel Nov. 15 and if the horse is deemed “100 percent racing sound to the satisfaction of Three Chimneys and Dogwood,” he will go to Dogwood’s training barn in Aiken, S.C, to be prepared for another campaign with trainer Todd Pletcher.

Three Chimneys will acquire full ownership of the horse upon his retirement, according to a Dogwood press release. Palace Malice, a son of two-time Horse of the Year Curlin, has seven wins in 17 starts, earning $2,676,135.

“To be involved with the leading son of a two-time Horse of the Year, who demonstrated amazing versatility to win races like the Belmont Stakes and Metropolitan Mile, is what Three Chimneys is all about,” Torrealba said in the release.