Three days before Christmas, Clubman rallied from well off the pace to win a starter/optional claimer at Laurel Park, giving owner-trainer Joanne Shankle an early Christmas present.

Shankle returned the favor soon thereafter, retiring the 10-year-old Not for Love gelding, a fan favorite for his lengthy career and unusual consistency.

“I’m gonna try to make him into a stable pony,” Shankle said.

The Dec. 22 win was Clubman’s second in his six-start second stint with Shankle and her partner Rodolfo Sanchez-Salomon. They had purchased him privately from owner-trainer Troy Singh, bringing him back to action in August; he recorded his first win for the new-old connections in a Maryland Million starter handicap.

“We always loved the horse, so I took him back,” Shankle said. “I took him back to run in the Maryland Million. I was going to retire him after the Maryland Million, but he’s the kind of horse that don’t want to retire.”

Indeed. A keyed-up Clubman showed his disdain for the easy life when he reared at the sight of a carrot cake held by Maryland Jockey Club VP of racing development Georganne Hale in a winner’s circle ceremony Dec. 28.

[See video of ceremony and race highlights above.]

Still, retirement it’ll be. Horses older than 10 can’t run in Maryland, for one thing, and anyway, it was just time for a next career, Shankle said. Clubman will get some down time before shifting gears.

Clubman’s first stint with Shankle began in 2018, when he was transferred into the Sanchez-Salomon barn off a third-place finish in the Maryland Million Classic. He won twice in a row the following February, and then in April, he went to Charles Town and won the Russell Road Stakes.

“He won our first stake race. He’s the one that won the first stake race in Charles Town for us,” Shankle said.

That August, Clubman posted a nine-length win in the Maryland Coalition Stakes at Timonium for his second and final stakes triumph. In all Clubman made nearly $280,000 while trained by Sanchez-Salomon and another nearly $47,000 while trained by Shankle.

Clubman was bred in Maryland by Dr. and Mrs. Tom Bowman, Quin Bowman, and Rebecca Davis. He is out of the unraced Lemon Drop Kid mare Otherwise Perfect. Among his many siblings is the multiple stakes winner Alwaysinahurry.

For his career, Clubman made 86 starts, winning 20 of them and earning $751,007. Remarkably, he maintained his form pretty much to the end of his career; he won at least two races in five different seasons, including his last three on the track. He won six races in 2023, the most of any of his eight racing seasons.

And he’s a barn favorite.

“I ride him every day. He’s a really cool horse,” said Shankle. “I ride a couple others of mine, but I love that horse. I ride him every morning.”

Shankle calls Clubman “a regular, normal, quiet horse,” and now she’ll see how the normal, quiet horse transitions to a new career. As well as Clubman was running of late, she says she nevertheless has no misgivings about retiring him.

“It was an easy thing [to retire him],” she said. “He made us a lot of money, and we really liked him. And I know he don’t want to retire, but I didn’t want to get him hurt or anything. So I just stopped on him.”

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