Evening Attire (horse) - Bloodlines

Bloodlines

Evening Attire is the son of 1991 Eclipse Award for Horse of the Year winner Black Tie Affair. In 69 starts, he won 15 races, placed 16 times, and finished third nine times. A millionaire twice over, he earned nearly three million dollars at the races.

On March 3, 2007, at odds of 8-1 and at the age of 9, he took the 52nd running of The Stymie by two and a half length, making a move at the 8th pole. The Aqueduct track writer wrote, "Evening Attire proved that age means little if you have class."

Evening Attire finished third in the 2007 Stuyvesant Handicap after hesitating at the start, a trait his trainer said the 10-year-old gelding developed in 2007. Evening Attire was entered in the 2007 Queens County Handicap at Aqueduct (a race he won in 2001) and took it by a head under veteran jockey Edgar Prado. He became the oldest horse ever to win the Queens County, which has been run since 1902. After the race (in which he defeated Hunting, who had won the 2007 Stuyvesant), Prado said: "He knows his way around the track. When he's right, he's pretty tough."

On May 15, 2008, Evening Attire placed in the Fit to Fight Stakes at Belmont. Again he hesitated at the start, then trailed until rallying to finish second.

Though his trainer, Patrick Kelly, had thought to take Evening Attire out of stakes competition, NYRA stakes coordinator Andrew Byrnes convinced him to enter the horse in the June 6, 2008, Brooklyn Handicap at Belmont Park contested at a mile and a half. With Cornelio Velasquez aboard, ten-year-old Evening Attire placed, coming from sixteen lengths behind at the quarter pole and going down the center of the track to rapidly close on five-year-old Delosvientos. Delosvientos went wire to wire, but the slowly breaking Evening Attire got within two lengths of the winner. Patrick Kelly said, "In the barn today, he had his game face on early. I’m always happy when he’s in the money. It was fun to try."

On July 19, 2008, in his first win outside the state of New York, Evening Attire won the Greenwood Cup Stakes at Philadelphia Park Racetrack by 8¼-lengths, breaking the 16-year-old track record. The previous track record of 2:31 flat for 1½ miles was set on January 4, 1992, by Laugh a Minute. Evening Attire's time was 2:29.90. This win earned him entry into the newly created 2008 Breeders' Cup Marathon.