Bred and owned by Bjorn Nielsen and trained by John Gosden, in Newmarket, Stradivarius was officially retired to stud, as an eight-year-old, on September 26, 2021, having been slow to recover from a foot injury. All told, in his long, illustrious career, the son of Sea The Stars won 20 of his 35 races and just shy of £3.5 million in prize money, not including bonuses of £2 million awarded for winning the Weatherbys Hamilton (WH) Stayers’ Million two years running in 2018 and 2019.
As a four and five-year-old, Stradivarius was a force majeure in the staying division, running up a winning sequence of nine races, which only came to end when he was just pipped, by a nose, in the British Champions Long Distance Cup at Ascot in October, 2019. In fact, he would win the the final major long distance race of the British Flat season just once, in 2018, but his winning tally also included the Goodwood Cup four times, the Gold Cup at Ascot and the Lonsdale Cup three times and the Doncaster Cup twice. Unsurprisingly, he was named Cartier Champion Stayer in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
Stradivarius ended his career on a slightly disappointing note, when just denied, by a neck, on his attempt to win the Goodwood Cup for the fifth time in July, 2022. Nevertheless, the epic duel he fought with the eventual winner, Kyprios, in the final two furlongs earned him a standing ovation. That performance came 2,120 days after he made his racecourse debut, in a maiden stakes race over an extended mile on October 5, 2016. He kept on at one pace to finish fifth, beaten 4½ lengths, on that occasion and it was a similar story when fourth behind his stable companion, Cracksman, at Newmarket a fortnight later. However, on November 7, 2016, Stradivarius made his one and only appearance on an all-weather surface, rallying to win by a head in a similar race at Newcastle.