Dance Spell
American-bred Thoroughbred racehorse

Dance Spell (1973–1979) was an American Thoroughbred racehorse bred in Kentucky by Harry and Jane Lunger's Christiana Stables. They entrusted his race conditioning to U.S. Racing Hall of Fame inductee, James W. Maloney.
As a two-year-old in 1975, Dance Spell's best results in major races was second place in both the Laurel Futurity and the Champagne Stakes to Honest Pleasure who was voted that year's Eclipse Award as the American Champion Two-Year-Old Colt. At age three in 1976, Dance Spell did not compete in the U.S. Triple Crown series but in July upset the undefeated Zen in winning the Saranac Stakes.
He won the Jerome Handicap in September and in late October defeated Honest Pleasure to win the Jamaica Handicap.
Dance Spell also notably earned a second in the Woodward Stakes and the Jim Dandy Stakes plus a third-place finish in the Travers Stakes.
Retired to stud duty for the 1978 season, Dance Spell performed for less than two full seasons before flipping over in his paddock and sustaining injuries of such severity that the valuable stallion had to be euthanized. However, a large percentage of his two crops of foals made it to racing, including multiple Graded stakes race winners Broom Dance and Fortnightly.
The public source identifies “Dance Spell” as american-bred Thoroughbred racehorse. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Dance, Spell and American-bred.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 3, 2019. The linked authority identifier is Q5215198. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973, 1979, 1975 and 1976.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dance Spell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.