VERSAILLES, Ky. >> He has put on some weight, 170 pounds to be exact, since sauntering off the racetrack and into what has to be the sweetest retirement in all of sports. American Pharoah, however, carries it well: There are no love handles, and his rich bay coat looks barely able to contain the muscles rippling beneath it.

His day starts at sunup with a breakfast of high-end, organic grains — the equine equivalent of kale and quinoa — and then his work starts in earnest at 7:30 each day. That’s when American Pharoah hooks a left out of the stallion barn and ambles down the path to the breeding shed. Waiting for him is a mare, but not any old nag.

No, securing one of the 160 or so spots on American Pharoah’s dance card this season requires a royal pedigree, an accomplished record as a racehorse and, most important, an ownership with the $200,000 required to have last year’s Triple Crown champion to “cover” (a nicer term than impregnate) its mare.

While horse lovers and aficionados had to wait 37 years for American Pharoah to become just the 12th horse to win the three races of thoroughbred racing’s holy grail, horsemen have hurried to get their mares in the breeding shed with the Big Horse. What’s a stud’s life? Most days, he does double duty, with a 1:30 p.m. lunch date after the morning fling. Often, he is at again for a third time at 6 p.m.

It sounds exhausting until you do the math: up to $600,000 a day, and a $30 million annual haul for his owners, Ashford Stud, over the course of the five-month breeding season.

Best of all, American Pharoah has adapted to his new career with the same efficiency, élan and joie de vivre that he demonstrated while winning nine of his 11 starts, electrifying thoroughbred enthusiasts on the track and charming them off it.

He is clearly the Matinee Idol of a breeding farm that already boasts one of the most successful sires in the world, Giant’s Causeway, American Pharoah’s neighbor across the barn. On Tuesday, American Pharoah stood like a medieval knight awaiting his armor from his valet as a tour group aimed cameras and admiring gazes at him. He then stepped gingerly around Garfield, the farm’s cat and the second-most-popular animal here (sorry, Giant’s Causeway).

“He’s just a joy to be around,” said Scott Calder, one of Ashford’s executives, about American Pharoah. “He does everything so easily. We were the ones that had to adjust. So many people want to come to see him. He is a household name far beyond the sport of horse racing.”

No horse is born a natural stud.

Cigar, who died in 2014, was the sport’s leading money winner when he retired, but proved to be sterile in the breeding shed. The 2002 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner, War Emblem, was bought for $17.7 million by Japanese breeders who discovered — disappointingly — that he did not like girls. They tried several unorthodox therapies, including surrounding him with a harem, to no avail.

The folks here at Ashford took no chances when American Pharoah arrived here last fall after ending his career with a triumphant victory in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. He spent his initial weeks alongside Thunder Gulch, the 1995 Kentucky Derby and Belmont winner, now 25 years old. The old-timer’s assignment was to teach American Pharoah about life not on the run.

New stallions want to play and sprint — a lot — and company only encourages them. Not Thunder Gulch. He taught American Pharoah the finer things in stallion life, such as eating grass and whiling away an afternoon lounging atop the purplish-blue flower buds that roll over these 2,000 acres like a royal carpet.

The Hollywood version of American Pharoah’s first day at the office says that it came on Valentine’s Day. Not quite, says Calder. It was the day after, and it was filled with tension for Ashford’s breeding team. American Pharoah’s father, Pioneerof the Nile, had earned a reputation for being something of a prima donna over at WinStar Farm.

Pioneerof the Nile preferred peppermints to carrots. He was also sometimes reticent and required a whiff of pheromones from a cup of thawed mare urine to become interested. He also took his time and was prone to false starts, rocking back on his hind legs once, twice, as many as four times before consummating the relationship.

Not American Pharoah.

“Fortunately, those genes were not passed down,” said Calder, a wry smile curling on his lip.

Instead, he has been polite and determined, as well as efficient: So far he has a better than 80 percent strike rate when it comes to successfully conceiving a foal. His book of mares reads like a social registry. There’s the aptly named Judy the Beauty, the Eclipse Champion sprinter; Take Charge Lady, the dam of the 2013 champion 3-year-old Will Take Charge; and Rags to Riches, who in 2007 became the first filly since 1905 to win the Belmont Stakes.

When he is not at work, American Pharoah sometimes lounges in a roomy stall in a barn made from furniture-quality oak or gambols here in the bluegrass. Roaming alone in the paddock, he is framed by limestone fences, the handiwork of 20 master stonemasons, and looks every bit to the manner born.

American Pharoah has plenty of visitors — more than 3,000 so far from 45 states and a half-dozen other countries. The daily tours have been sold out for months in advance. He had two special tours earlier this week when his Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert came Monday and his jockey, Victor Espinoza, came Tuesday.

While American Pharoah’s first runners will not hit the racetrack until 2019, there is a strong — if very hopeful — vibe that they will have inherited the speed, mind and talent that their father demonstrated throughout his brilliant career.

Until his offspring start crossing finish lines in the afternoon, only a couple of things are certain: American Pharoah is enjoying his retirement and seems to be good at it.

© 2016 The New York Times Company