- A colt named Gaudreau finished second in the Grade 1 Champagne Stakes at Belmont Park
- A second horse in the field, Johnny Hockey, also honors the late NHL star
- Read below for the race video and the stories behind both names
Johnny Gaudreau’s name was out front at Belmont Park on Saturday. For most of the race, anyway.
Gaudreau, a 2-year-old colt named for the late Flames and Blue Jackets star, finished second in the Grade 1 Champagne Stakes. U.S.S. Valor won it and punched a ticket to the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile on Oct. 30 in Lexington.
He wasn’t the only Johnny in the gate. A second horse in the six-horse field, Johnny Hockey, is named after Gaudreau too. The two were running 1-2 heading into the final turn before Johnny Hockey faded and U.S.S. Valor ran down Gaudreau in the stretch.
Watch the Champagne Stakes video:
This isn’t a small race. The Champagne is run for 2-year-olds and usually gives an early look at the next spring’s Kentucky Derby contenders.
The colt came in as a legit threat. The Nyquist colt won his only start on Aug. 8 at Saratoga, holding off U.S.S. Valor in that one. Chad Brown trains him, and Flavien Prat had the mount again Saturday.
Vincent Conanan of Next Level Stables, who named the colt, grew up playing youth hockey against Johnny. His son kept asking about the former Flames star, so Conanan promised to name a horse after him. He explained the pick to the Associated Press, per NHL.com:
“I was like, ‘You know what, I’ll name this one after Johnny.’ Because Johnny as a kid, he wasn’t the biggest player, but he had the biggest heart. So, I was, like, ‘This horse, I think he’s going to be the one.’”
Devon Bradley entered Johnny Hockey out of Bradley Thoroughbreds in Columbus, where Gaudreau spent his final two NHL seasons. Bradley talked about landing on the name:
“We needed a strong name. We needed a name that has some meaning, something to kind of give your horse just an extra oomph. We just felt like it fit, and I guess the rest is history.”
The two colts were born about a month apart. Here’s Gaudreau getting cleaned up at Belmont the day before the race:
The Gaudreau brothers, Johnny and Matthew, were killed in August 2024 when a driver struck them while they were cycling the night before their sister’s wedding. The hockey world marked two years since their deaths this summer.
He was a seven-time All-Star with 743 points in 763 NHL games. On Saturday, a colt carrying his name came within one horse of a Grade 1 win.
