Risen Star
American-bred Thoroughbred racehorse
Risen Star (March 25, 1985 – March 13, 1998) was an American Thoroughbred racehorse who won the Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes in 1988.
Background
The dark bay colt was the son of the great Triple Crown winner Secretariat and out of the mare Ribbon. Bred by Arthur B. Hancock III and Leone J. Peters, Risen Star was bought by Louisianans Ronnie Lamarque and Louie Roussel III at the 1987 Calder Two-Year-Olds In Training sale. He was trained by Roussel, a devout Roman Catholic who was stricken by throat cancer but recovered. Ten percent of Risen Star's winnings were donated to the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Roman Catholic order of nuns.
Racing career
As a two-year-old, Risen Star was lightly raced, winning the Minstrel Stakes at Louisiana Downs.
He started his sophomore season by winning the Grade 2 Louisiana Derby under jockey Shane Romero. Then, two weeks prior to the Kentucky Derby, he had another Grade 2 victory in the Lexington Stakes, in which he was ridden by Jacinto Vasquez.
He went into the Kentucky Derby as the morning-line third choice. The colts laid off the pace, their jockeys believing that the front-running grey filly Winning Colors would tire at the end of the race, but she didn't tire and won by a neck going wire to wire.
The public source identifies “Risen Star” as american-bred Thoroughbred racehorse. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Risen, Star and American-bred.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7336008. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1985, 1998, 1988 and 1987.
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This entry incorporates text from “Risen Star” 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.