On the heels of a season that saw him win four races, earn nearly $1 million, and finish second in the Grade 1 Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile, Post Time has been named the Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred/The Racing Biz Top Midlantic-bred of 2024.
The poll is conducted of media members and others involved in the Thoroughbred industry and restricted to horses that have run in 2024 and were bred in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, New Jersey, Delaware, and the Carolinas.
Post Time, a four-year-old during the 2024 season, earned the first two graded stakes of his career in consecutive starts early in his campaign. He lodged his first graded win in Laurel Park's Grade 3 General George and followed that up seven weeks later with a triumph in the Grade 2 Carter Stakes at Aqueduct.
He placed in three Grade 1 events during the season. That included a closing second in the Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile, in which he rallied from last to finish just 1 1/2 lengths behind winner Full Serrano (ARG) while clear of the rest.
"He means so much to all of us," said Post Time's trainer Brittany Russell. "You see the ride he's taken us on: these are the horses that everyone dreams of having."
Post Time, a Maryland-bred, is by Frosted and out of the stakes-winning and graded stakes-placed Fairbanks mare Vielsalm. An $85,000 purchase at the 2021 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic fall yearling sale, he is owned by Ellen Charles's Hillwood Stable LLC.
"He's just an amazing animal, and we've had so much fun with him," Charles said. "He gives you everything he has every time, and he's stayed sound. So it's all been a dream come true."
For the season, Post Time won four of nine starts and earned $975,000. In his career, Post Time has nine wins from 15 starts and has never finished worse than third. He has earned $1,227,910.
Post Time is the second millionaire that Hillwood has owned, following in the footsteps of Cordmaker, another General George winner, who earned just over $1 million. Hillwood also owned a third General George winner in Bandbox, who later became a sire.
"It's an honor, really, that I have a horse, any horse, for her, and for it to be him, it's really special," Russell said.
Post Time's connections are looking forward to a 2025 campaign. He's had some time off since a third-place finish in the Grade 2 Cigar Mile but is slated to return to Russell's barn in early February.
"We laid him off, not because there was anything wrong with him, just that we thought he'd been running pretty hard this [past] year and needed a little time off," Charles explained, adding with a laugh, "But there was a rumor that he was asking to get back."
The notoriously hard-headed Post Time "has his idea about what he's going to do," Charles added.
Post Time will be bidding to become the second horse to be named Top Midlantic-bred in two consecutive years. The first, Knicks Go, was the Top Midlantic-bred of 2020 and 2021. Stellar Wind was also the Top Midlantic-bred twice, but in non-consecutive years, 2015 and 2017.
Post Time received 11 of 13 first-place votes cast by a panel of experts and easily outpaced Book'em Danno, the New Jersey-bred Grade 1 winner who was runner-up.
They were followed by Neecie Marie, Future Is Now, Coastal Mission, Mindframe, and Roses for Debra.
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