worried about getting beat in this race than in most of them." Songbird returned on August 26 in the Personal Ensign Stakes at Saratoga, where she faced only three rivals. She broke well and set an easy pace while opening a comfortable length lead. Turning into the stretch though, Forever Unbridled made a strong move in the center of the track and pulled ahead of Songbird in the final strides. Smith felt that the tactics of Forever Unbridled's jockey in racing wide were decisive. "I wish they would've come right next to me because I think she would've picked it up and maybe held them off. When I asked her heading for home she accelerated, (but) she's not supposed to get run down, and he ran me down." Retirement After the Personal Ensign, Porter said that he feared Songbird was not completely healthy, so arranged for her to be assessed at Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital. On August 31, he announced that she had damaged her hind suspensory ligaments, plus a lesion was found on a front distal cannon bone that could have proved catastrophic if she raced again. Dr. Larry Bramlage explained that the injuries probably occurred earlier in the year and were an example of how lameness in a horse can hide. "Horses that don't have any obvious problems but you know their performance is declining, usually you find more than one problem going on," he said. Porter announced that Songbird was being retired and would be offered for sale at the Fasig-Tipton November mixed sale as a broodmare prospect. Mike Smith said: "She was everything you'd want in a racehorse, everything. The balance, the speed, the stamina, the class, the heart, the try: she was just everything." Songbird was sold in November 2017 to Mandy Pope's Whisper Hill Farm for $9.5 million, a near-record price for a broodmare prospect (only Horse of the Year Havre de Grace, also sold by Porter to Pope, had ever sold for more). She was bred to Arrogate in 2018. On January 28, she had her first foal, a filly by Arrogate. In 2019 she was bred to leading sire Tapit. Race Record Pedigree References 2013 racehorse births Racehorses bred in Kentucky Racehorses trained in the United States Thoroughbred family 4-d Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies winners Eclipse Award winners