With the eliminations for the 2025 Hambletonian coming up this weekend, the winner the 99th edition of that event in 2024 is conspicuous by his absence from harness racing's headlines.

The winner of the 2023 Dan Patch Award for two-year-old colt trotters and the 2024 Hambletonian for three-year-olds, Karl made more headlines late last year when it was announced that the sensational trotter would be returning to the racetrack at the age of four and setting aside a stallion career for the time being.

As stakes eligible lists were revealed over the early months of 2025, Karl's name was prevalent in North America's open trotting races and the four-year-old stakes like the Graduate and Hambletonian Maturity. But as the 2025 calendar rolls into the second half of the year, Karl's name has yet to appear on an overnight sheet for a qualifier or pari-mutuel event.

Trot Insider has learned that Karl is back in action, but not on the racetrack.

"He is currently at Crawford Farms Kentucky, and Rood & Riddle is collecting him for frozen European semen," said Crawford Farms' Michelle Crawford, Karl's breeder and co-owner. "He will stand next year somewhere [at a location] that has not been determined by the partnership group as of this date."

A son of Tactical Landing - Avalicious, Karl sports a record of 18-2-1 from his 23 lifetime appearances with a mark of 1:50.2 and more than $2.4 million in earnings. Crawford Farms Racing co-owns the four-year-old with trainer and co-owner Nancy Takter (through the Christina And Nancy Takter stable), Black Horse Racing and Bender Sweden Inc.

"He was actually really sick at the end of the year. They could not figure it out for a while," added Crawford. "So he had some illness which I think was impacting...I think he was extremely immature. Horses all display different levels of being able to perform on that level and he obviously wasn't ready. But his numbers look really good right now and we're just keeping our fingers crossed that everything goes as planned."

According to Crawford, there is no plan to race Karl at the present time as his focus is stallion duty.

"We're just all quietly letting him do his thing and I think at the end of the day he'll tell us what he can do and what he can't do but we're all very excited about it. And the partnership has been unanimous in putting his health first and taking our time doing what's right for him. We're all oars in the water, trying to go towards the same goal here and that's been the consensus; the partnership has stayed intact and we all speak quite frequently are all on the same page with where he's at and wish him the best."

(Standardbred Canada)