La Cara and Quietside Retired After Disappointing Azeri Stakes Finishes

Two fillies who entered the GII Azeri Stakes at Oaklawn Park with graded stakes credentials left the track on March 7 headed for the breeding shed instead of the winner's circle. Tracy Farmer's La Cara finished fifth and Shortleaf Stable's Quietside seventh in the Grade II feature, and connections for both announced their retirements in the days that followed.

The tougher pill to swallow is La Cara's exit. The 4-year-old bay daughter of Street Sense out of Cara Caterina, by Bernardini, had been one of the more decorated fillies of her generation. Mark Casse's homebred for Farmer won the GI Central Bank Ashland Stakes and the GI DK Horse Acorn Stakes in 2025, adding to a 2024 resume that included the GIII Pocahontas Stakes and the Suncoast Stakes. Four stakes wins, two of them at the highest level. She retires with a record of 15-5-2-0 and earnings of $1,254,903.

The 2026 campaign, however, never got off the ground. La Cara made two starts this year and failed to hit the board in either. The Azeri, where she ran fifth, was the second of those attempts. Whatever the connections had been hoping to find in her 4-year-old season simply wasn't there, and rather than push further, Farmer and Casse made the call to retire her.

She will not be idle long. According to a post by Robert Yates on X, La Cara is set to be bred to Not This Time, a son of Giant's Causeway who has established himself as a legitimate sire force. The cross pairs La Cara's Street Sense influence with a proven commercial stallion, a pairing that should attract plenty of attention when the resulting foal hits the sales ring.

Quietside's connections at Shortleaf Stable also pulled the plug after the Azeri, where the Malibu Moon filly out of Benner Island, by Speightstown, finished seventh. No breeding plans have been publicly confirmed for Quietside, and Shortleaf Stable has not announced a mating at this time.

Both retirements close out what had been, at least for La Cara, a career worth watching. Two Grade I wins and seven figures in earnings represent a legitimate legacy for a homebred operation. The Azeri finishes simply confirmed what the connections already suspected: the best of La Cara was behind her, and her most valuable work from this point forward happens in a breeding shed, not on a racetrack.