Accelerate to end horse racing career at Pegasus World Cup

Accelerate threatened to be a top-class thoroughbred for most of his career, and he became one emphatically in 2018 by winning six of seven starts including the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Although he won just four of 15 races in 2016 and 2017, three of the victories came in stakes events, and he finished worse than third just twice.

“He was a little late getting to the races,” trainer John Sadler said. “He got to the races as a 3-year-old, he was a stakes winner at 3 and a stakes winner at 4. But his year, at 5, he really took off. He had the maturity to do it and keep doing it.”

Accelerate makes the final start of his career in the Grade 1, $9 million Pegasus World Cup on Saturday at Gulfstream Park in Florida.