Bahamian Squall, Grade 2 sprint star and Florida sire, dies at 17
Bahamian Squall, a Florida-bred Grade 2 sprint winner and sire of 60 winners, died at 17. His offspring earned nearly $5.5 million.
Double Diamond Farm announced June 25 that Bahamian Squall died at 17, closing the book on a Florida homebred whose speed mattered in two places: on the track and in the stallion barn. The 2009 dark bay or brown son of Gone West out of Midway Squall was one of Donald Dizney’s signature runners, a Grade 2 winner who later became a useful Florida sire at Double Diamond Farm near Ocala.
Bahamian Squall did his best work as a sprinter. He won the $350,000 Smile Sprint Handicap at Calder on July 6, 2013, covering six furlongs in 1:10.1 and beating Trinniberg and Jackson Bend. He also took the Ponche Handicap, finished fourth in the Gulfstream Park Sprint Championship Stakes (G3), and then moved north to Saratoga, where he ran second in the Alfred G. Vanderbilt Handicap (G1) on August 4, 2013. That runner-up finish gave him a Grade 1 placing against elite company far from his preferred Florida base.
He retired with a record of 5-6-4 from 25 starts and $582,920 in earnings and entered stud in 2016. At Double Diamond Farm, he stood in recent seasons for a $3,000 fee, a price that fit a horse built more for regional impact than national fashion. He was not marketed as a blue-chip stallion, but his profile fit Florida breeding: enough speed, enough durability, and enough on-track evidence to make him a practical option for breeders trying to keep state-bred racing supplied with runners.
That role became easier to measure in the offspring he left behind. Bahamian Squall sired 60 winners, including Spirit Wind and Special Princess, with his progeny earning nearly $5.5 million. Spirit Wind alone had earned $737,015 by May 11, 2026, a direct line from Bahamian Squall’s own sprint class to the next generation of Florida runners.
His death also sits inside the broader arc of Double Diamond Farm, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2023. Bahamian Squall was part of that long Ocala story, a horse who helped keep a state program moving by proving that a Florida-bred sprinter could win graded races, stand stud, and leave a lasting mark on the same regional circuit that made him.
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