Kentucky Derby winner Always Dreaming retired from racing. See where he’ll go to stud.

Always Dreaming, the Todd Pletcher horse who won the 2017 Kentucky Derby as a 9-2 favorite, has been retired from racing and will become a stallion for WinStar Farm.

A son of Bodemeister out of Above Perfection, the dark bay colt brought Pletcher his second Kentucky Derby win on a wet, fast track that had been sealed after rain earlier in the day.

“He was brilliantly fast, and he has everything you want in a stallion — looks, pedigree, and performance,” said Elliott Walden, president, CEO, and racing manager of WinStar Farm in a press release. “We dream about the Kentucky Derby every day, but the race I really liked was the Florida Derby. When I saw the teletimer, I was amazed. We are excited to add a potentially breed-shaping stallion from the Unbridled line, which has proven to be today’s preeminent classic sire line.”

Always Dreaming won four races in 11 starts, all during his 3-year-old campaign and culminating with the Kentucky Derby. He finished eighth in The Preakness and was held out of the Belmont.

“He was one of the most athletic horses I have ever trained,” Pletcher said in the release. “He has a terrific bounce to him. I compare him to a panther, a fluid mover.”

His Florida Derby win by 5 lengths secured his status as one of the favorites in the Run for the Roses. He also hit the board four more times in earning $2,415,860.

“This is the best horse Todd and I have ever come to the Kentucky Derby with,” jockey John Velazquez said after the Kentucky Derby. “Nothing against all the others, but this was the best horse. I got a good position with him early and then he relaxed. When we hit the quarter pole, I asked him, and he responded. He did it himself from there.”

Held by an ownership group led by the Brooklyn Boyz Stables partnership of Anthony Bonomo and Vincent Viola, other stakeholders included Teresa Viola Racing Stables, St. Elias Stables, MEB Racing Stables, Siena Farm and West Point Thoroughbreds. WinStar Farm, SF Bloodstock and China Horse Club signed on for the colt’s 4-year-old season and stallion career.

Bonomo joked that his son broke the budget when he bought the horse for $350,000 at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale, but said he’d, of course, forgiven him by the time they reached Churchill Downs. Always Dreaming was bred in Kentucky by Gerry Dilger and Mike Ryan’s Santa Rose Partners.

When asked about Always Dreaming in the run up to this year’s Kentucky Derby, Viola said the horse would race as long as he continued to show he wanted to, because he’d earned that. The last race of Always Dreaming’s career would come on Kentucky Oaks Day of this year where he ran fifth in the Alysheba Stakes at Churchill Downs.

He will begin his stallion career in 2019 for a stud fee of $25,000.