The Mystique of Cigar

The Mystique of Cigar

By Dimitri Novotny
The Daily Party
November 1, 2023

Cigar (April 18, 1990 – October 7, 2014), was an American Thoroughbred racehorse who, in 1995 and 1996, became the first American racehorse racing against top-class competition to win 16 consecutive races since Triple Crown winner Citation did so in 1948 and 1950. Cigar retired as the leading money earner in Thoroughbred racing history and was later inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.

Cigar was foaled at Country Life Farm near Bel Air, Maryland. He was sired by a leading sire in North America, Palace Music (by the The Minstrel). His dam, Solar Slew, was by the 1977 Triple Crown winner, Seattle Slew. Cigar was a half-brother to Corridora Slew (ARG) by Corridor Key (USA), Mulca, and several other lesser performed horses.

Madeleine A. Paulson was the original owner of Cigar. In his 2003 book, Legacies of the Turf, noted race historian Edward L. Bowen wrote that according to Paulson family banter, she traded Cigar to husband Allen for the filly Eliza, the 1992 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies winner and that year's Eclipse Award choice for American Champion Two-Year-Old Filly.

Cigar was named after a navigational intersection for airplanes, not for the tobacco product,. Owner Allen Paulson was a major figure in American aviation who had owned the Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation, which manufactured Gulfstream private business jets. He named many of his horses after the five-letter-long names given to intersections on aeronautical navigational charts.

Further accolades came when Cigar was named the Racehorse of the Decade of the 1990s.[citation needed] In 2002, he was inducted in his first year of eligibility into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. In the Blood-Horse magazine ranking of the top 100 U.S. thoroughbred champions of the 20th Century, Cigar was ranked #18. In accordance with that ranking, Cigar is the highest-ranked American Thoroughbred during the decade of the nineties (1990–1999) and therefore lays claim to the title American "Horse of the Decade."

On February 2, 1997, a life-size bronze statue of Cigar was unveiled at Florida's Gulfstream Park on "A Salute to Cigar Day." Also in 1997, the New York Racing Association renamed the Grade I NYRA Mile, run in November at Aqueduct, as the Cigar Mile. The NYRA Mile was the second race in Cigar's winning streak.

Cigar was retired to stud at the end of the 1996 racing season. Ceremonies took place during the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden to honor the horse.

Paulson sold 75% of Cigar to Coolmore Stud and Michael Tabor, and this equated to a value of $25 million for him. He was taken to stand at the Ashford Stud, the American division of Coolmore Stud, and began his coverings there in February. An insurance policy on Cigar required that he cover 20 mares twice and get at least 60 percent of them in foal to be considered fertile. He proved infertile as a stallion, as none of the 34 mares bred to him became pregnant.

Cigar lived out his retirement at the Kentucky Horse Park's Hall of Champions in Lexington. Around April 2014, Cigar began to suffer increasingly from osteoarthritis in his spine, leading to instability in his legs. He underwent surgery to correct the problem but complications ensued and he died on October 7.