Silent Rule, the 4-year-old sprint specialist who has more wins than any active, undefeated Thoroughbred in the U.S., will not race for the rest of the year, and her connections said she might be retired to a breeding career.
“She wasn’t 100% sound,” trainer Jay Bernardini told Horse Racing Nation in a Sunday phone interview. “We decided that it’s in her best interest right now that we’re going to stop her campaign for the rest of the year at least, and we’re going to explore all our options.”
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Without getting specific, Bernardini and co-owner John Hoctel said the Street Boss filly who is 10-for-10 showed signs of an inflammation in the knee where she had a hairline fracture two years ago. Bernardini discovered it shortly after Silent Rule’s most recent win Aug. 14, when she defeated males in the Best of Ohio Honey Jay Stakes at Thistledown.
“It was a little bit of a surprise to me,” Bernardini said. “I didn’t see that coming at all, but right away we decided, all right, let’s assess the situation. Our first decision was we’re going to stop for now, stop the campaign and then decide what we want to do long term from here.”
Hoctel and his wife Linda Hoctel privately acquired Silent Rule in 2023 while they rehabilitated her at their Florida farm. That was where John Hoctel took her Friday after he put her on a trailer at Bernardini’s stable at Mountaineer in West Virginia.
“I went up myself and picked her up,” Hoctel said Sunday from his home base in Williston, Fla. “It was emotional.”
“It was a little unceremonious, her leaving during training and stuff,” Bernardini said. “John was like, ‘Jay, I figured it was better to get her out of there when you were busy.’ ”
Hoctel said he has listened to offers from potential buyers who would make Silent Rule a broodmare, and he said he might try to put her in the night of the stars at the Fasig-Tipton breeding-stock sale Nov. 3 in Lexington, Ky. He and Bernardini also said a return to racing for them in the spring remained an option, adding that she only would be sold as a potential broodmare.
“I’m going to make the decision here by the beginning of October,” Hoctel said. “I’m going to make a decision one way or another. I’m not one to dilly-dally around about things.”
The warm spot that Bernardini discovered around the knee last month kept Silent Rule from being entered for Thursday’s $75,000 Michael G. Mackey Memorial Angenora Stakes for Ohio-bred fillies and mares. The race will be run over the same six furlongs at Thistledown where Silent Rule won the Honey Jay. Bernardini said he would have stayed in state company for that race and two more before the end of the year. If racing is pursued in 2026, he said Ohio-bred competition in the spring probably would precede any notion of taking Silent Rule interstate.
“We weren’t going to delve into out-of-state competition until next year,” he said. “Obviously, this was a little bit of a surprise to me, but in horse racing, especially with a horse that had a slight, pre-existing injury before we ever got to race her, you kind of always have to be ready for it.”
Hoctel said Silent Rule looked good after making the 1,000-mile trip south.
“The knee looks great,” he said. “I took her off the horse trailer. She jogged off the trailer. You would never know.”
Both Hoctel and Bernardini admitted Silent Rule’s winning streak has taken on a life of its own, making it harder to decide whether to race her or breed her next year.
“If she had been beat, it would be a lot easier to make this decision to say, hey, give her a couple months off. Give her the winter off. I’ll train her down here in Florida and bring her back in the spring,” Hoctel said. “That’s an easy decision if she’d been beat. But it’s a very, very tough decision with her being undefeated. The mare owes me nothing. I owe her.”
With Brandon Tapara riding in all her races, Silent Rule has earned $355,456 for the Hoctels. For Bernardini, her perfect run, which began nearly 13 months ago at Thistledown, made her irreplaceable in his stable.
“It’s been such a great ride,” Bernardini said. “I don’t know if you were a ‘Game of Thrones’ fan. We watch it all the time. I said to my wife, oh, boy, I just lost my biggest dragon. She was the biggest dragon of them all. It could be permanent. It could be temporary. But for now, I said, I just lost my biggest dragon.”
