Course to Course - Issue 54
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This article appeared in - European Trainer - issue 54
Mark Johnson - The English Voice of the Kentucky Derby
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Geir Stabell (14 April 2010 - Issue Number: 16)
TRM Trainer of the Quarter - Luca Cumani
The TRM Trainer of the Quarter goes to Luca Cumani and has enjoyed success in top races all over the world including the Hong Kong Cup, the Japan Cup and the Breeders' Cup Mile as well as inmuerable wins closer to home, most notably two Epsom Derby victories.
Sophie Hull (European Trainer - Issue 26 / Summer 2009)
Jonathan Sheppard - an interview with the champion trainer
Sean Clancy (20 January 2009 - Issue Number: 11)
Better Talk Now - the multi-millionaire BC winner
Bill Heller (14 October 2008 - Issue Number: 10)
Is Conformation Relevant?
This year’s yearling sales are just beginning with Fasig-Tipton July in Kentucky quickly followed by Fasig-Tipton August taking place in Saratoga. Then it is the turn of the monstrous Keeneland September catalogue to lay host to thousands of blue-blooded Thoroughbreds desperate to have their conformation analyzed by trainers, owners and those conformation experts – the bloodstock agents. The 2007 September Keeneland yearling sale sold nearly four thousand horses for just short of four hundred million dollars in seven books, each illustrated with photographs of the current superstars sold at last year’s sale. Does examining a horse’s conformation really give you a better idea as to whether you are looking at next year’s superstar?
James Tate BVMS MRCVS(10 July 2008 - Issue Number: 9)
By James Tate
This year’s yearling sales are just beginning with Fasig-Tipton July in Kentucky quickly followed by Fasig-Tipton August taking place in Saratoga. Then it is the turn of the monstrous Keeneland September catalogue to lay host to thousands of blue-blooded Thoroughbreds desperate to have their conformation analyzed by trainers, owners and those conformation experts – the bloodstock agents. The 2007 September Keeneland yearling sale sold nearly four thousand horses for just short of four hundred million dollars in seven books, each illustrated with photographs of the current superstars sold at last year’s sale. Does examining a horse’s conformation really give you a better idea as to whether you are looking at next year’s superstar?
If you visit the saddling enclosure before the Breeders’ Cup, you will notice that some of the runners are offset at the knee, toe in or toe out, have long pasterns or perhaps even sickle hocks and curbs. Then you could visit the saddling enclosure before a maiden claimer and you would see just how many of these poor performers have good conformation. The racing media only concentrates on the good horses whose conformation often becomes exaggerated by winning lots of races. The legendary John Henry, the richest gelding in history, was unmistakably small, ugly, temperamental and back at the knee, but there are millions of other horses just as poorly conformed to which our attention is never drawn. In the same way, there are many poor performers with technically perfect conformation but we are led to believe that Secretariat’s conformation is superior because he won the Triple Crown.
Many U.S. trainers believe that training methods, tight turns and the unforgiving dirt surface make it difficult for horses to overcome poor conformation. Indeed, an argument could perhaps be made that some of the high-profile poorly conformed European Champions such as the dual guineas winning filly Attraction, may not have done so well on the other side of the pond. However, John Henry is far from the last Grade One winning performer with less than perfect conformation. Real Quiet, who missed out on the Triple Crown by a nose in the Belmont, passed through the sale ring as a yearling with both imperfect conformation and a poor veterinary report. Baffert said “When I bought Real Quiet for $17,000, I didn’t vet him. I just bought the athlete. I’ve had horses that didn’t pass the vet when they were yearlings and then went on to become great racehorses.” Five-time Grade One winner Congaree had poor knee conformation but that did not stop this giant colt winning twelve times in twenty-five career starts. Steve Asmussen will be hoping that his massive superstar Curlin continues his current great win streak, which includes the Breeders’ Cup Classic, the Dubai World Cup and now the Stephen Foster Handicap despite his less than perfect limbs. Ken McPeek purchased him at the yearling sales despite imperfect forelimb conformation as well as an OCD in his front ankle.
One thing is certain – a perfectly conformed horse in all areas except one bent foreleg will cost considerably less than the same horse with perfect conformation. Is it really correct to pay so much more to have little or no conformational faults, or should we be concentrating on certain faults and not others, or perhaps pedigree, size and stamp are more important? One only has to stand in the Keeneland sales pavilion for a minute to hear the phrase “I couldn’t buy a horse with hocks like that.” At this point, I would like to question the evidence supporting an opinion like this. Mike Ryan, one of the most successful yearling buyers in the history of auction sales believes that “it’s not a beauty contest where we should be looking for the perfect specimen. It is easy to find what you don’t like about a horse and strike him off the list. I go the other way and start with what I like about a horse. Then I look at whatever faults are there and ask myself, ‘Does he look like a runner?’ ‘Does he have the demeanor of a good horse?’ Good horses usually overcome their faults.” This article will attempt to illustrate some aspects of conformation before examining some of the available evidence concerning its scientific relevance to performance.
Conformation is defined as the form or outline of an animal but it may be expanded to include its movement. The conformation of the Thoroughbred racehorse today is a result of a combination of natural selection and the demands we have put on it. The assessment of a horse’s conformation is a personal process but many begin with the body, move onto the limbs and then assess the horse’s movement. The conformation of the body assesses the horse’s balance and center of gravity but in my opinion is an underestimated area of the assessment. Conformation textbooks detail limb ‘faults’ for pages after pages, but hardly mention assessing the future athlete’s body as a whole. When examining a yearling as a potential superstar surely it is vital to assess the whole horse– its height, length, width, girth and muscle mass, not to mention its neck, head, outlook and temperament.
When examining the biomechanics of the galloping Thoroughbred, one can see that its propulsion comes from its backend, hence the commonly held belief that sprinters are bigger in this area than distance horses. It also makes sense that any horse should have a large body allowing plenty of room for the heart and lungs. Good distance horses do not always have large girths but they are usually long, whereas sprinters are often shorter but stronger with a large girth and a big muscular back end. As a result, professional horsemen tend to use comments such as short-coupled, weak behind, weak necked, narrow and tubular. I would also suggest that this is an area in which so-called amateur owners can provide valuable insight when looking at yearlings, as some ‘experts’ seem to spend too much time assessing minor details and forget to look at the horse!
The assessment of limb conformation is quite complex but it is not a matter of opinion – a curb is a curb and back at the knee is back at the knee – conformation can change a little as the horse matures, but usually it is the onlooker’s assessment that varies, not the horse. The horse is assessed from a number of angles both at rest and in motion. Both hindlimb and forelimb conformation is important but their functions should not be forgotten – the hindlimb is providing most of the athlete’s propulsion whereas perhaps the most important function of the forelimb is simply not to break under the considerable pressure of training and racing.
Much is said about the side-on conformation of the knee in relation to the rest of the forelimb and everyone seems to have a different opinion. The 2007 Consignors and Commercial Breeders Association ‘Vet Work Plain and Simple’ booklet interviewed a cross-section of leading trainers with regard to conformational faults. Christophe Clement believes that “training methods in the U.S. make it difficult to overcome being back at the knee” and Carla Gaines, Eoin Harty, Bob Hess, Larry Jones, Richard Mandella, and Kiaran McLaughlin all supported his view to some extent. Yet in the same publication, Todd Pletcher is not so concerned by this conformational fault, stating that a lot of his best horses have been back at the knee and John Kimmel goes so far as to say that he would not buy a horse who was significantly over at the knee. From a veterinary perspective, horses who are over at the knee have extra strain placed on their sesamoid bones and the suspensory ligament, whereas horses who are back at the knee have extra strain placed on their knee ligaments, as well as having extra force placed on the front of their knee bones, thus knee chip fractures should theoretically be more common in such horses. However, statistical evidence for such injuries is severely lacking and as an anecdote, the over at the knee colt in the photograph has fairly major knee problems, whereas the back at the knee filly is a winner who has barely taken a lame step throughout two years of training!
Many buyers will also not buy a horse with long sloping pasterns, but is this sensible? A long sloping pastern theoretically predisposes a horse to injury of the flexor tendons, sesamoid bones and the suspensory ligaments. However, upright pasterns, which are not considered to be anything like such a serious fault, theoretically predispose a horse to fetlock joint injuries, ringbone of the pastern joint and navicular disease. The pastern angle is also irreversibly linked with the horse’s foot. This is a part of the horse that is often underestimated by non-professionals but trainers cannot help but notice poor feet as they seem to spend their entire lives trying to keep them right. Club feet are hated by trainers but also severely disliked are boxy feet, flat feet, contracted heels and unbalanced feet just waiting to form quarter cracks when training commences.
When looking at a yearling’s forelimb from the front there are several terms that are widely used – base-wide/base narrow, toed-out/toed-in and offset/rotated from the knee and/or fetlock, not to mention whether the horse is considered to have enough forelimb strength or ‘bone’. In order to be accurate, the yearling must be standing squarely and in most circumstances the horse’s gait will mirror its forelimb conformation. While none of the conformations listed above are considered desirable, all are seen in the paddock for most Grade One races, which is hardly surprising when it is remembered that although the forelimb has great relevance to the future superstar’s soundness, it has very little relevance to its future ability.
The hindlimb of the racehorse is where the majority of its propulsion comes from and therefore, despite the fact that there is slightly less lameness here than in the forelimb, their conformation is every bit, if not more, important. Whilst some of the forelimb conformational points carry relevance to the hindlimb, for example, pastern angle and foot-path, some new points have to be considered. When assessing the horse from side-on, the hindlimb/hock position is generally considered to be either ‘sickle-hocked,’ ideal or ‘camped behind.’ Sickle-hocked horses are predisposed to curbs (injury of the plantar ligament) and considered to have weak hind legs. However, it is also considered a ‘fault’ to have the limb too far behind the body as it is likely to be associated with upright pasterns. Also, there are horsemen who believe that a horse should not have an excessively straight hindlimb as this theoretically predisposes the horse to hock arthritis and a ‘locked stifle.’
When assessing the horse from behind, the onlooker is assessing pelvic and muscle symmetry as well as hindlimb conformation. ‘Cow-hocked’ horses are criticized because there is excessive strain on the inside of the hock joint, which may cause hock arthritis. This comment should be taken lightly when assessing yearlings as to some extent this is a normal conformation in weak, growing, young Thoroughbreds. ‘Bow-legged’ yearlings are also criticized as it is believed that excessive strain is placed on the outside aspect of the limb. These bow-legged horses which are base-narrow behind are often prone to knocking themselves at exercise.
Having considered some of the conformational faults of the Thoroughbred and cited some of the reasons why these may cause veterinary injuries, it would now make sense to advise potential purchasers to avoid horses with any significant conformational faults. However, the statistical evidence must be considered first. In 2002, one of the most renowned equine orthopedic surgeons in the world, Dr Wayne McIlwraith, presented the findings of his research into Thoroughbred conformation leading him to famously question corrective surgery performed on foals. His research concluded that “a perfectly correct leg is not ideal for soundness” and some degree of carpal valgus can be a good thing. The extensive study came up with several mildly unexpected conclusions. A longer toe increases the odds of knee problems, a longer shoulder decreases the odds of a fracture and offset knees lead to fetlock problems, not knee problems. The study also found that a longer pastern predisposes to forelimb fractures, Thoroughbred foals achieve 95% of their full height by 18 months of age and manipulating the knee for cosmetic reasons is not helpful and can actually contribute to unsoundness.
McIlwriath is not the only person to have carried out valuable research into this area. The late English veterinarian and trainer Peter Calver conducted a much more extensive survey of the conformation of Thoroughbred yearlings seen at the British sales. The study categorized and looked for statistical differences in the performances of many different conformations, for example: Back at the knee, offset and weak hocks. It concluded that the pedigree was more important than any conformational fault and that it was difficult to determine if conformation actually affected performance at all, or if horses performed poorly due to other, inherited characteristics, such as heart and lung function or size.
In summary, assessing the conformation of a Thoroughbred yearling is complex, personal and of questionable relevance. The size and shape of a future athlete should be relevant, as should its limb conformation. However, neither is proven to be relevant in determining whether or not it can win a Grade One race. This is the beauty of the sales – what one man loves, another hates, and no-one knows for sure who is right until at least a year or two down the line!
From Synthetic prep race to the Kentucky Derby dirt
Street Sense's dramatic, decisive victory in last year's Kentucky Derby restructured a lot of perceptions about winning the Run for the Roses. Not only could a Breeders'Cup Juvenile winner return the following spring to capture the first leg of the Triple Crown, but he could make his final prep for Churchill Downs' dirt track on a synthetic one.
Bill Heller (26 June 2008 - Issue Number: 8)
By Bill Heller
Street Sense’s dramatic, decisive victory in last year’s Kentucky Derby restructured a lot of perceptions about winning the Run for the Roses. Not only could a Breeders'Cup Juvenile winner return the following spring to capture the first leg of the Triple Crown, but he could make his final prep for Churchill Downs' dirt track on a synthetic one.
Street Sense wasn’t alone in switching from synthetic to dirt. Six Derby starters last year had their final preps on synthetic surfaces: the top five finishers in the Blue Grass Stakes on Keeneland’s Polytrack - Dominican, Street Sense, Zanjero, Teuflesberg and Great Hunter - as well as Hard Spun, who won the Lane’s End Stakes on Turfway Park’s Polytrack.
Trainer Carl Nafzger had no reservations about using Polytrack as Street Sense’s springboard to the Derby because he’d done exactly that the year before when Street Sense followed a third in the Lane’s End Breeders'Futurity at Keeneland with a resounding 10-length victory in the Breeders'Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs.
Nafzger, however, said he would not have used the Blue Grass as Street Sense’s final Derby prep if Street Sense hadn’t already raced on dirt. "Even if he had worked on dirt, there’s a lot of difference between working and running,"Nafzger said. "I would definitely want to see my horse in a dirt race first. I don’t care if it was an allowance race; I’d want to see him in a race.”
Sedgefield did not have that luxury, finishing fifth last year as the first North American-based starter since at least 1955 to run in the Kentucky Derby without a previous dirt race.
He won’t be the last.
In mid-March, it appeared that at least three of California’s top Kentucky Derby prospects – Colonel John and El Gato Malo, the 1-2 finishers in the Sham Stakes, and San Vicente and San Felipe victor Georgie Boy – will also be making their first dirt start at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday of May.
"I don’t think it’s going to be a problem for the California horses,"said Darrin Miller, who trains both Sedgefield and Dominican. "I don’t think it’s a disadvantage at all.”
Obviously, the California trainers of those three Derby hopefuls – whose final race before the Derby figures to be the Santa Anita Derby – agree, as will other trainers who use the Blue Grass or the Lane’s End for their horses' final Derby prep.
"My concern is just getting to the race,"El Gato Malo’s trainer Craig Dollase said laughing. "That’s the objective of the synthetic track. The whole point is to keep your horse sound. We just want a healthy, sound horse going into the first Saturday of May. So be it if it’s on dirt.”
That’s the approach Miller took with Sedgefield. The 36-year-old native of Verona, Missouri, began training at Canterbury Park in Minnesota in 1995, and splits his year between Florida and Kentucky. He did an admirable job of getting both Sedgefield and Dominican to the Derby for Tommy and Bonnie Hamilton’s Silverton Hill Farm in Springfield, Kentucky.
Silverton Hill purchased Sedgefield, who is a full brother to 2007 Turf Champion English Channel, for $300,000 at Keeneland’s Two-Year-Olds-In-Training Sale in April, 2006. A month earlier, the Hamiltons purchased Dominican at the Ocala Two-Year-Olds-In-Training Sale for $150,000.
Sedgefield began his career late in his two-year-old season, finishing seventh on Polytrack at Keeneland on October 27, 2006. After running fifth on grass at Churchill Downs, he won a maiden race easily on Turfway Park’s Polytrack.
Miller asked a lot of Sedgefield in his next start, the Grade 3 Tropical Park Derby at Calder on grass, and Sedgefield fought it out on the lead the whole way, finishing second by three-quarters of a length to Soldier Dancer. "After the Tropical Park Derby, we decided that the Kentucky Derby was an option for him," Miller said. "The plan was this: we run in the Hallandale Beach (on grass) and the Lane’s End.”
First, though, Miller gave Sedgefield a confidence builder. Dropped to allowance company on grass at Gulfstream Park, Sedgefield won handily. Then, in the Hallandale Beach, Sedgefield again displayed his grittiness, finishing second by half a length to Twilight Meteor despite breaking from the 10 post. Sedgefield drew even worse in the Lane’s End: the outside post in a field of 12. Regardless, he finished second by 3 ½ lengths to Hard Spun.
Trainer Larry Jones chose not to give Hard Spun another race before the Kentucky Derby because Hard Spun’s graded stakes earnings were already enough to ensure he’d start in the Derby. Sedgefield’s weren’t.
So Miller, after considering the Blue Grass Stakes, sent Sedgefield back to turf instead in the Grade 3 Transylvania at Keeneland just 13 days after the Lane’s End. Sedgefield again battled on the lead, but this time he tired late to fourth as the 7-5 favorite.
"I messed up,"Miller said. "I raced him back too quick. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. We thought it was an easy spot and it would give him the earnings he needed. We were right on the cusp there.”
With the fourth-place finish, though, Sedgefield did have enough earnings to break into the Derby field of 20. And Miller wasn’t worried about the switch to dirt. "He’d been on dirt as a two-year-old,"Miller said. "We didn’t see dirt as a problem for him at all.”
To prepare him for his first dirt race, Miller, who was stabled at Keeneland, worked Sedgefield four furlongs twice at Churchill Downs. Sedgefield breezed in: 49 (15th fastest of 35) 13 days before the Derby and in :48 2/5 (11th of 52) four days before. "After the first week, we moved the two horses to Churchill Downs,"Miller said. "He trained really well when he went there. He really stepped up to the plate. He was doing everything right. Then we had a lot of rain that week. He relished it. He trained very well on it.”
Dominican, who had two thirds from four previous races on dirt, including a fourth in an allowance race and a third in a Grade 2 stakes at Churchill Downs, worked just once after his gutsy victory in the Blue Grass. Five days before the Derby, Dominican breezed a bullet five furlongs in :59 2/5, fastest of 26 that morning.
Miller had both Sedgefield and Dominican primed for top efforts, but their preparation was seriously compromised the morning the selection order for post positions was drawn for the 20 Derby starters. "Our picks were 17th and 19th,"Miller said. "It was a pretty bad go. It left us in a pretty tough spot."Miller chose the rail for Sedgefield and the 19 post for Dominican, who finished 11th after a rough trip. The lack of a previous dirt start didn’t impact Sedgefield, who was dispatched at 58-1 from the highly disadvantageous rail.
Forwardly placed from the outset under Julien Leparoux, Sedgefield worked his way up to second midway through the mile-and-a-quarter classic. "I was just hoping he’d keep coming,"said Miller, who had never started a horse in the Derby before. Sedgefield tired late to fifth, nine lengths behind Street Sense, but just a length off third-place finisher Curlin, who subsequently was Horse of the Year and Three-Year-Old Champion.
Miller was proud of Sedgefield’s effort: "He gave us everything that day. He put it all out there.”
Some 10 months later, Miller said of his first experience in the Kentucky Derby: "It’s life-changing, for sure. It’s certainly a special opportunity and I’m grateful for it. It makes you want to do it again, searching for the next one."
Colonel John’s trainer, Eoin Harty, knows the feeling – kind of. The 45-year-old native of Dublin, who began his career as an assistant trainer for John Russell, was an assistant to trainer Bob Baffert when he nearly won three consecutive Kentucky Derbies. Cavonnier lost the ’96 Derby by a nose to Grindstone, then Silver Charm and Real Quiet took back-to-back Derbies. "It’s going to be my name on the program this time,"Harty said. "I’m going to bear full responsibility for the action of myself and my horse.”
He is perfectly comfortable with his decision to not give Colonel John a dirt start prior to the Derby. "I won’t because I’m a firm believer in training on synthetic courses,"Harty said. "I just think they’re so much kinder to the horse. You avoid the constant pounding, the bone on bone. The carnage rate of horses [on dirt] is unacceptable.”
Harty has had success training his horses on synthetic surfaces and then racing them on dirt. "From my own experience, I had a very good year at Churchill Downs last year, and my horses had worked on synthetic,"he said. "I did it with quite a few. I brought horses over [from Keeneland] the morning of the race at Churchill Downs, and that was it. It’s better for your horse. They stay sounder. If they’re sounder, they’re around to race longer and it’s good for the sport.”
Harty says he’s frequently asked about the difference between training horses on dirt vs. synthetic surfaces. "These are my opinions; they’re not facts,"he said. "From my own experience and from watching other trainers training on synthetic tracks, I wouldn’t say that training on synthetic is an advantage, but it gives a horse a different level of fitness. Every horse I’ve worked on a synthetic track who had been training on a dirt track, the first work is terrible. The second and the third are better. When I was at Santa Anita before they put in the synthetic track, and took them to Hollywood on synthetic for the first time, the horses seemed to be at a major disadvantage. When you look at synthetic tracks, they don’t have to work as hard to cover ground.”
Colonel John has been covering ground just fine on synthetic tracks. His victory in the Sham Stakes was his third in five starts. He was second in the other two races, one of them a Grade 1 stakes.
If he goes into the starting gate at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday of May, it will be his first dirt race, but not be his first time on dirt. "I’ll probably work him and gallop him at Churchill Downs,"Harty said. "It probably won’t hurt.”
Like Harty, Dollase, whose El Gato Malo had won his first three starts, including the Grade 3 San Rafael Stakes, before finishing second in the Sham, will also work his horse on Churchill Downs'dirt track before he starts in the Derby. Dollase’s only previous Derby starter, Wilko, finished sixth in 2005.
"My routine is usually to get a work over the track,"said the 37-year-old Dollase. Unlike Harty, Dollase has a different opinion regarding training on synthetic vs. dirt tracks. "I think you get a lot more fitness out of the synthetic,"he said. "You have to work harder. I used to train at Hollywood Park when it was the only cushion track, then run on Santa Anita when it was dirt, and what an advantage I had. I had a good meet a year and a half ago. So did a lot of the guys who trained at Hollywood Park. We were the guinea pigs starting out. Our horses trained on it, and I trained them hard at Hollywood Park and they ran well on Santa Anita’s dirt track. It might be harder the other way. A lot of guys who trained at Santa Anita didn’t do that well at Hollywood Park.”
Will a horse who has never raced on dirt win this year’s Kentucky Derby? "I think ultimately it comes down to the best horse wins the Kentucky Derby,"Harty said. "Look over the past 133 Derbies; usually the best horse wins. I think if the horse is good enough, he’ll overcome not racing on dirt.”
And if Harty’s horse doesn’t overcome that? "It would be a convenient excuse,"he said. "Based on my own experiences and the feelings of my owners, this is the route I take.”
Undoubtedly, as synthetic tracks grow in popularity, more trainers will take that route. Ultimately, the question won’t be can horses who have raced exclusively on synthetic surfaces win the Derby, rather which synthetic surface - Polytrack, Cushion or Tapeta - is more conducive to making that transition.
TRM Trainer of the Quarter - Judi Hicklin
The TRM trainer of the quarter award has been won by Judi Hicklin. Judi
and her team will receive a TRM product portfolio worth in excess of
$1,500. The portfolio will consist of TRM tack bags and saddle pads as
well as a large selection of the world famous TRM product range.
Bill Heller (10 July 2008 - Issue Number: 9)
The TRM trainer of the quarter award has been won by Judi Hicklin. Judi and her team will receive a TRM product portfolio worth in excess of $1,500. The portfolio will consist of TRM tack bags and saddle pads as well as a large selection of the world famous TRM product range.
Two months after her 94-year-old mother died, trainer Judi Hicklin saddled the star of her 14-horse stable, Wayzata Bay, for his third start in the $295,000 Grade 2 Prairie Meadows Cornhusker Breeders' Cup Handicap June 28th. The six-year-old had finished eighth and fifth in the stakes the two previous years, results the 54-year-old Hicklin didn't regret. She has a deep appreciation for racing in Nebraska. "I can remember when I was a little kid going over to Ak-Sar-Ben to watch the races," she said June 30th. "We had to go to the Kiddies Corral. That's where the kids had to stay. I was six. The Cornhusker has always been the premier race in the Midwest. Even to be in the race was exciting." Hicklin, a 54-year-old native of Des Moines, Iowa, showed horses initially before getting involved with Thoroughbreds. "Then Prairie Meadows opened (March 1st, 1989)," she said. "I bought a race horse, Clusterplan. I had a friend of mine train her. She won a race and she was third in a stakes. It was pretty amazing. It wasn't like show horses. You got paid instead of a ribbon." Hicklin quickly acquired her trainer's license and has been racing at Prairie Meadows ever since, spending her winters at Tampa Bay Downs. Before Wayzata Bay, Hicklin's best horse was Madam Riley, a two-year-old filly who won a few minor stakes. Wayzata Bay's fondness for Prairie Meadows is documented. His record before the 2008 Cornhusker was seven-for-15 at Prairie Meadows and three-for-26 everywhere else. But his owner, Gene Phelps, who named Wayzata Bay after his hometown in Minnesota, decided to attend the Cornhusker. He hadn't seen Wayzata Bay race live since he won the Prairie Mile three years earlier. Bettors weren't impressed and sent Wayzata Bay off the longest shot in the field at 38-1. Perhaps they knew no local horse had ever captured the Cornhusker, whose previous winners include Star de Naskra, Gate Dancer, Black Tie Affair, Sir Bear and Roses in May. Hicklin, however, thought Wayzata Bay was sitting on a top effort. "He was going into it as good as he possibly could," she said. Then, after an anxious moment, the race unfolded beautifully for her deep closer. "He stumbled at the start; I wanted to throw up," Hicklin said. "He recovered. Then two horses (Temporary Saint and Encaustic) hooked up in front and he laid third down the backside. Usually, he comes from way back. I thought, `Wow! He's laying real close.'" Then jockey Israel Ocampo moved his hands and Wayzata Bay shot past the dueling leaders. "He was in front at the eighth pole, and I was screaming," Hicklin said. "And he just widened." Wayzata Bay won by 3 ½ lengths in 1:48 47 and was greeted by a tearful Hicklin when he came back to the winner's circle. "I still can't believe it," she said two days later. "I can't stop crying about it. It was amazing. To win the Cornhusker is unbelievable, unbelievable." Wayzata Bay's victory pushed him past half a million dollars in career earnings. His next start will likely be in the Prairie Meadows Handicap at the end of July. He's won it the past two years. Would another victory tempt Hicklin to try and up the ante in a major stakes? "Wayzata is going to tell us where we want to go," she said. "Everybody else in our stable will follow him." They should. He's the leader of the pack in Nebraska and he has given Hicklin a moment she'll treasure the rest of her life, forever validating her ability to train Thoroughbreds. She is quick to point out that she's been helped the past 10 years by her assistant trainer Rafael Sanchez. Maybe somebody else was helping her the night of the Cornhusker. "I know she was watching, and screaming as loud as we were for him to win," Hicklin said of her mom. "She loved the races."
By: Bill Heller (10 July 2008 - Issue Number: 9)
Derby Starters - where do they go from there?
Led by Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense, the three-year-old crop of 2007 rearranged a lot of people's thinking on what it takes to succeed on the first Saturday of May and beyond.Street Sense not only became the first colt to win the Breeders' Cup Juvenile and the Run for the Roses the following spring, but along with the Derby's second and third place finishers, Hard Spun and Curlin, thrived later in the year. So did Tiago and Any Given Saturday, who finished seventh and eighth in the Derby and joined the top three in the starting gate for the Breeders' Cup Classic.
Bill Heller (14 February 2008 - Issue Number: 7)
By Bill Heller
Led by Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense, the three-year-old crop of 2007 rearranged a lot of people’s thinking on what it takes to succeed on the first Saturday of May and beyond.
Street Sense not only became the first colt to win the Breeders' Cup Juvenile and the Run for the Roses the following spring, but along with the Derby's second and third place finishers, Hard Spun and Curlin, thrived later in the year. So did Tiago and Any Given Saturday, who finished seventh and eighth in the Derby and joined the top three in the starting gate for the Breeders' Cup Classic.
"Maybe they did wind up in the Classic because they weren't burned out," said Hall of Fame trainer Nick Zito, whose undefeated 2007 Two-Year-Old Champion Colt War Pass will attempt to give him his third Kentucky Derby victory. "Last year was an exceptional crop."
The leader of the crop was Curlin, who didn't make his career debut until last February 3rd, showing that not racing at two doesn't preclude greatness at three. After winning the Preakness, Jockey Club Gold Cup and Breeders' Cup Classic, he was 2007 Three-Year-Old Champion and Horse of the Year.
So how do trainers of this year's top Kentucky Derby contenders plan their horses' schedules? Specifically, how much time off do they give their colts between their last start at two and first start at three? Has everything changed because of last year?
The 20 horses that entered the starting gate for last year's Kentucky Derby had layoffs ranging from 20 to 133 days before beginning their three-year-old campaign. Hard Spun's was just 26. Street Sense was 133.
Todd Pletcher, who led North American trainers in earnings for the fourth consecutive year, saddled four other starters in last year's Derby besides Any Given Saturday. "There's an obvious trend toward more time between races," Pletcher said last December. "The spacing of races is obviously critical. You want to peak on the first Saturday in May, but there are big stakes that you also want to do well with. There's a fine line between having a horse ready and fit to run in his first start at three and still be able to build on that. It's a delicate balance."
Pletcher's 2007 Derby quintet had layoffs ranging from 70 to 98 days. "If anything, I would lean toward making my first start even later, and maybe having only two or three starts before the Derby," he said. "If I had a horse with a real good foundation leading into winter, I'd consider going into the Derby with just two starts, one in March and one in April.
That's what Carl Nafzger did with Street Sense, the 2006 Two-Year-Old Champion Colt. Nafzger's work getting Street Sense to last year's Derby was nothing short of brilliant. "I think Carl Nafzger did a masterful job with only the two preps," Zito said.
As a two-year-old, Street Sense had five starts, culminating with his breathtaking 10-length romp in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs after finishing third by 1 ¾ lengths to Great Hunter in the Grade 1 Breeders' Futurity over Keeneland's Polytrack surface.
"I had five starts as a two-year-old, but it's not how many times he ran, it's how many times he played the New England Patriots vs. how many he played against a weaker team," Nafzger said. "We played against the best two starts in a row. My horse wasn't mature. He needed some time. He was still growing and developing."
Nafzger decided Street Sense would enter the Derby off two races at three. Then he delayed Street Sense's three-year-old debut an additional 2 ½ weeks until a showdown with Any Given Saturday in the Grade 3 Tampa Bay Derby last March 17th. "We had a three-week window," Nafzger said. "The horse got light on his feet. He was a little crabby traveling. We needed a couple more weeks. Actually, going into that race, I was scared Any Given Saturday would pull away and he (Street Sense) wasn't going to get enough out of it. I might not be as tight as I needed to be. I didn't want to win it as much as I needed a race I had to work hard in. He won anyway (by a nose)."
Street Sense then was nosed by Dominican in the Grade 1 Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland before winning the Derby by 2 ¼ lengths, Nafzger's second Run for the Roses, following Unbridled's victory in 1990. "If he only had two races as a two-year-old, I wouldn't have given him only two preps," Nafzger said. "I would have run him maybe four times before the Derby. The horse had what he needed."
So did Hard Spun, who had three starts as a two-year-old neatly spaced out. In fact, entering the Derby, Hard Spun had made one start in October, November, December, January, February and, in his final Derby prep, the Grade 2 Breeders' Futurity, on March 24th. His first start at three was just 26 days after his final start at two, and he won both of them. Hard Spun's gutsy second in the Derby affirmed trainer Larry Jones' wisdom in spacing his races.
"We felt like it was the right schedule for him," Jones said. "He got his career started a little late (last October 22nd). We never felt we had the time to put him into the racing wars, then give him time off. We figured how many races it would take to peak without training him hard. We tried to pick spots where he could move forward and not overmatch him. We felt once a month would take him into the Derby and have him educated enough and be able to increase his distance to keep moving forward to the mile and a quarter (of the Derby). We could probably do that 20 more times, and it wouldn't work for 20 other horses."
What will work this year?
The man with the horse to beat is Zito, seeking his third Kentucky Derby following the triumphs of Strike the Gold in 1991 and Go for Gin in '94. Both had four preps at three.
Strike the Gold, who won one of three starts as a two-year-old, had two allowance races at three before finishing second by a length in the Grade 1 Florida Derby and winning the Blue Grass by three lengths leading up to his 1 ¾-length victory in the Kentucky Derby. "He was a throwback in many ways," Zito said.
Go for Gin, who won three of five starts at two, prepped for the Kentucky Derby by winning the un-graded Preview Stakes, finishing second by three-quarters of a length in the Grade 2 Fountain of Youth, finishing fourth in the Florida Derby and running second in the Grade 1 Wood Memorial preceding his two-length victory in the Kentucky Derby, his 10th career start. Last year, the Kentucky Derby was Street Sense's eighth lifetime start.
"At one time, you had to have four races before the Derby," Zito said. "But you're looking at 1991 and 1994," Zito said. "I don't think you can do that now. War Pass can't do that. Anak Nakal (who won the Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club Juvenile at Churchill Downs last November 24th), I don't know. He's not a big horse. Unfortunately, they don't make the horses like they used to anymore."
They also don't follow the same schedule. The inception of the Breeders' Cup in 1984 gave trainers of precocious two-year-olds a tangible reason to have their juveniles peak in late October or early November. "The Breeders' Cup had a lot to do with it," Zito said.
In last year's Breeders' Cup Juvenile, War Pass completed his perfect two-year-old season at four-for-four with a 4 ¾-length romp that left no doubt as to who the winter-book favorite for the Derby would be. Interestingly, Zito didn't follow War Pass's debut victory at Saratoga with a step up to stakes, but rather in an allowance race. War Pass then won the Grade 1 Champagne and Breeders' Cup. "He's a tremendous horse, an exceptional two-year-old," Zito said. "I don't know what he'll be at three, but boy what a heck of a two-year-old."
Zito's initial intention is to give both War Pass and Anak Nakal two or three separate Derby preps. "The thing you love to do is keep them separated until the big show," he said.
Whether War Pass will be the star of that show won't be revealed for months. "It's exciting, but I'm worried," Zito said. "Let's face it. It brings a lot of pressure. I wouldn't say bad pressure, but we'll see. I know one thing. He's talented, that's for sure."
Hong Kong - Far Eastern racing run by an American
By Paul Moran
The view in one direction frames an expanse of the endless Hong Kong skyline, in another the emerald Happy Valley Racecourse, but this is unmistakably the working domain of an American. Portraits of Man o' War, Spectacular Bid and presentation photos made after races at Belmont Park, Aqueduct and Saratoga decorate the walls, the occupant standing beside Orientate, Sulamani and Funny Cide.
Paul Moran (14 February 2008 - Issue Number: 7 )
The view in one direction frames an expanse of the endless Hong Kong skyline, in another the emerald Happy Valley Racecourse, but this is unmistakably the working domain of an American. Portraits of Man o' War, Spectacular Bid and presentation photos made after races at Belmont Park, Aqueduct and Saratoga decorate the walls, the occupant standing beside Orientate, Sulamani and Funny Cide.
In the early years of the Breeders' Cup, which remains a young event when considered within racing's historical context, Bill Nader would leave his various duties at Rockingham Park in New Hampshire, where he took his first racetrack job as a press box aide while still a student, for an assignment on the event's notes team, which gathers information concerning the participants for dissemination in the media. The world looks much different from the corner office on the top floor of the Hong Kong Jockey Club headquarters.
The executive director of racing in Hong Kong - the first American ever appointed to a position of such influence in what is a unique racing and gambling enterprise that has for more than a century impacted on the life of almost every citizen of the former British colony (returned to Chinese control in 1999) – is less than a year removed from New York, where at times it appeared that Nader was single-handedly guiding the daily business of a listing ship that has for years been imperiled.
Nader was the face of the New York Racing Association and its most reliable voice at a time when every day, it seemed, brought new crisis. Five years of tumult began with the turn of the century and a scandal spawned among betting clerks that progressed upward through what most consider the most important of American racing organizations. The guilty clerks were imprisoned on various tax fraud and money laundering changes as were two mid-level executives. Key people left the association, retired or resigned voluntarily, some on the day they qualified for a pension. Highly placed executives were forced to resign. Barry Schwartz, the outspoken and sometimes controversial chairman of the board, stepped down in frustration. The state's politicians and media turned the association's troubles and the question of franchise renewal into a public circus. Nader was left, usually alone, in the storm's eye.
The Association faced an array of threatened federal indictments avoided only by a long period of operation under the thumb of a court-appointed monitor and eventually filed the papers necessary for reorganization within the framework of bankruptcy law. Nader, originally hired to head the simulcasting network, watched the New York Racing Association's workforce shrivel and took up the slack left by manpower and expertise that once departed was not replaced. As the morass thickened, Nader rose to the position of senior vice president and chief operating officer calling on experience and skills honed in the heat of political, legal and financial battle for survival learned in New Hampshire.
Thoroughbreds no longer have a home at Rockingham Park, which now conducts only harness racing.
It was always a bootstrap operation, a fine place for the education of a young person with designs on a career in racing, and Nader steeped himself in a curriculum impossible to duplicate in the traditional halls of academia. He worked in the publicity department, developing relationships with the media; sharpened handicapping skills when charged with assigning morning-line odds; developed relationships with horsemen while working in the racing office, gained an understanding of their concerns and needs; couriered videotape to the local television station for the evening replay programs; negotiated simulcast contracts; learned to call races when the principal announcer was absent. It is also the place in which the direction of his life first took shape and form.
"I lived a bicycle ride away from Rockingham and worked in the press box as a summer job while attending the University of New Hampshire," Nader said. "When I was 21, I became the track oddsmaker. In that role, I further developed my handicapping skills and also my strong interest in the sport.
"I first became interested in racing through one of my best friends, my father, and we would go racing once a week. Racing helped our father-and-son bond and we spent a lot of time together discussing and enjoying the sport, especially in his later years of life and that is something I will always treasure. I had always turned him down when he asked me to go to the racetrack because I was active playing sports and being a horse racing spectator had no appeal to me. It took Secretariat to open my eyes in the 1973 Belmont Stakes. I watched on network television and that was the turning point.
"Rockingham provided a foundation because out of necessity you got an idea of how every department at the racetrack should work. And we had some good races there – the New Hampshire Sweepstakes and the Spicy Living Handicap, races that New York trainers and others would send horses to, so I was exposed to what was at the time a higher level of racing. Still, the move to New York was an awfully big step.
"When I was first offered the job in New York, I turned it down. I didn't feel as though I could leave Rockingham in the middle of a meeting. But when the meeting was over, the job was still open and I moved to New York at the beginning of the fall meeting at Belmont in 1994. Luck. If they'd found someone else during that time, I may never have had the opportunity in New York. The people at Rockingham didn't believe I was going to a place that big, but if you love racing and the New York Racing Association calls, that was it."
New York, however, besieged by posturing politicians and those who sought to take over the racing franchise upon expiration at the end of 2007 quickly became Kafkaesque, far from the utopian professional environment Nader envisioned.
"The problems and politics surrounding NYRA and its franchise were personally challenging and incredibly frustrating at times," Nader said, "but, in all honesty, I could fight the fight with the best of them. I came from a humble racing background and the privilege of being intimately involved with the high quality of racing in New York was a great equalizer. I could take the punishment as long as I knew there was a Grade 1 on Saturday and that Saratoga was only a few months away. With all of the personnel changes over my 14 years at NYRA, I knew there were many people in that organization that looked to me for leadership and for someone they could identify with. There was no chance of my leaving NYRA or so I thought, until the Hong Kong Jockey Club called. I had long admired the HKJC from a distance and I knew I would not get a second chance at the opportunity of a lifetime."
The move from New York to Hong Kong was for Nader like walking through a looking glass. He left pathos, which continues in his absence, for an organization unlike any in the world. In a city of seven million people among whom gambling is central to the culture, racing is not the sport of kings but the king of sports and membership in the Jockey Club, a requirement for those who aspire to ownership of racehorses, is a symbol of status considered almost priceless.
With the possible exception of the Japan Racing Association, the Hong Kong Jockey Club is easily the world's most prosperous racing enterprise, made more so by a gambling monopoly that includes the lottery and wagering on international soccer matches. Originally established as the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club after the introduction of racing in the region by the British, who constructed a racecourse in 1845 on the only suitably flat land on the island –f a drained malarial swamp with the whimsical name, Happy Valley – the Jockey Club, after the Chinese government, is the region's most important organization and in real terms perhaps the most important based on its impact upon the lives of Hong Kong's citizens.
Though the British first brought racing to the island, the native Chinese have taken the sport to heart in a way that has no frame of reference outside Asia, participating with a fiscal enthusiasm unprecedented elsewhere. In 2006, Hong Kong bettors wagered $63.86 billion – $8.2 billion in U.S. funds – though the Jockey Club holds just two days of racing, or 16 races, per week, from September through June. This is more than half the $15.6 billion wagered on 58,851 races run in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico – population 338.5 million – during the same year
The people of Hong Kong, only an hour by ferry from the explosion of opulent casinos in Macau, wagered another $30.2 billion -- $3.9 billion U.S. – on soccer matches and $6.6 billion – more than $848 million U.S. – on the lottery. The Club, conduit for all money wagered legally in Hong Kong, is the region's largest taxpayer and supports the majority of charitable institutions, research organizations, medical facilities and recreational programs. It is impossible to travel far in Hong Kong without seeing the Jockey Club logo on everything from hospitals and schools to parks and animal shelters.
The two Hong Kong racetracks are pristine and in almost perpetual renovation. The management, a multinational team of highly experienced executives imported by the Jockey Club, is progressive, deeply interested in maintaining an atmosphere in which the integrity of racing is beyond question. It meets challenge with action, as it did last year when in response to the migration of high-level bettors to offshore bookmakers offering rebates, the Club responded with its own rebate program, which effectively reversed the trend.
The Club takes virtually every facet of racing into its own hands and employs everyone required for the conduct of racing except trainers, who under the circumstances suffer no burden of payroll or slow-paying owners. The Club maintains testing laboratories and veterinary hospital, pays for feed and medication and though only eight percent of bets are placed on-course, when the gates open at Happy Valley or Sha Tin, the tracks are animated by huge crowds of people with a collective focus – betting, which is in turned shared in the most remote corner of Hong Kong, where the speculators and the tote are joined by wireless device.
In the 16 hours of flight time between New York and Hong Kong, Nader went from holding a finger in a crumbling dike to occupying one of the highest positions of authority in a racing organization that is boundlessly successful, astoundingly affluent and held in a position of almost reverent esteem by the members of the community it serves.
"The thing that impressed me immediately was the attention to detail and the commitment of the people," Nader said. "There is a refusal to settle for second best. Everything is first-class. Then came an appreciation for Asian racing and its structure, which I found fascinating, much more so than I ever expected."
Eight months after arriving in Hong Kong, Nader celebrated his 50th birthday on the day of the Cathay Pacific-sponsored International Races, four Group I events run at the end of a week of lavish parties at the expansive and electric Sha Tin. "Before I moved here, the man I replaced (Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, who was promoted to chief executive officer) told me that it would take two years before I really had a handle on job. I don't think it will take two years, but this has been an eye-opening experience. For instance, the betting on the international races will be less than you would expect because the bettors don't know the foreign horses. But we're running two races after the Hong Kong Cup and the last race of the day has the potential to generate more betting handle than the total for the day at Aqueduct and Hollywood Park combined."
The superficies run deep in Hong Kong.
"This is a place of great wealth. The economy is strong, the stock market is strong and many people are able to afford horse ownership," Nader said. The equine population of horses in training is just 1,200 and no owner is permitted interest in more than four. There is currently a 16-month waiting list of those who have applied for membership in the Jockey Club on a level that permits horse ownership. Those eventually admitted to what may be Hong Kong's most exclusive circle will have survived an exhaustive background check and examination of financial resources and paid a $250,000 (HK) initial fee.
The inevitable and enviable denouement is a model for the world that is impossible to duplicate. "The resources here allow you to do things you'd never consider anywhere else," Nader said, "but other things done here are possible to reproduce anywhere. If you can knock down the barriers and wipe the slate clean, these are things that can be done anywhere."
Foremost, Nader said, is attention to the concerns of every segment involved – from owners, trainers and non-owner members to bettors. "We maintain a customer-friendly racing environment and the state-of-the art drug testing is one thing, but the way the racing is governed is a key element. The jockeys and trainers may complain that fines are too stiff, but safety is a key element in the decision making process and the club demands respect for the rules. What separates racing here from virtually everywhere else is the transparency."
At the end of the day, the unfolding international races, with sprinter Sacred Kingdom and miler Good Ba Ba impressive in victory, only strengthened the upwardly mobile position of Hong Kong-trained horses on the global stage upon which the membership of the Jockey Club aspires to excel in the mold of their British mentors.
If Hong Kong will not be duplicated, it can at least be emulated.
"We have great expertise in specific areas that we are willing to share," Nader said. "The Club has brought great talent here from a number of countries. There is also great expertise here in the construction, drainage and maintenance of turf courses, which is important to all the stakeholders, including the public. European horsemen come here knowing that the ground will always be good to firm, no matter what the weather. There are things that can be learned here and people come here from other parts of the world to observe. We're very interested in doing whatever we can to assist those in the industry from other countries."
There is much to be learned in Hong Kong, but it is first necessary to make the trip.
Spooky Mulder - winning the hard way
The Daily Racing Form’s comments following Spooky Mulder’s 78 past performance lines tell you all you need to know about the nine-year-old gelding named after David Duchovny's quirky FBI TV character on The X-Files.
Bill Heller (01 December 2007 - Issue Number: 6)
By Bill Heller
Came again on rail
Dug in gamely on rail
Dug in gamely inside
Came again inside
Set pace, resolute
Resolute, prevailed
Determined outside
Dug in between rivals
Between, came again
Those aren’t your typical, mundane DRF comments. Then again, there is nothing typical or mundane about Spooky Mulder, who has won 31 of those 78 starts. He also has 16 seconds, four thirds and earnings topping $850,000 despite a 1-for-18 stakes record. Spooky Mulder has made his money the hard way: on the lead or pressing the pace in claiming sprint races at 17 different racetracks throughout the East and Midwest under 24 different riders. He is the ultimate claiming warrior. From June 26th, 2002, when he won his sixth lifetime start in a $12,500 claimer at Churchill Downs, Spooky Mulder made at least one start a month for 35 consecutive months, one month short of three years.While he was most effective at six (17-for-49) and 6 ½ furlongs (6-for-11), he had four wins and three seconds in seven starts at seven furlongs and won both of his starts at one mile.
On wet tracks, he had eight wins in 14. He didn’t let chronic foot problems or a near-fatal infection compromise his career. Courage, durability, versatility and a 40 percent career winning percentage. What else is there for a Thoroughbred to accomplish?
On September 2nd, just two weeks shy of the sixth anniversary of his winning career debut at Turfway Park in 2001, Spooky Mulder shook off a 6 ½ month layoff to take an optional $50,000 claimer at Delaware Park by 3 ¾ lengths wire-to-wire in 1:08 4/5, earning a Beyer Speed Figure of 103. That’s fast, especially for a nine-year-old, but nowhere near his career best of 116 “The one word that would describe him is amazing,” his current trainer Scott Lake said. “It’s the only word you can use to describe him.”
Lake, once again battling Steve Asmussen for the national lead in training victories, knows Spooky Mulder better than anyone, having claimed him three times, for $25,000, $50,000 and $75,000, and having had him claimed away for $65,000 and $100,000. “When you lose him, you hate it,” Lake said. “You feel sick, but we were running him in spots where he could win, running him where he belongs.” Spooky Mulder belongs in the winner’s circle, and he seems to realize that. “He’s the man and he knows it,” Lake said. “If you ever see him in the morning, he struts.”
Lake was anything but enamored with Spooky Mulder when he first saw him in the paddock at Canterbury Park in Minnesota on July 19th, 2003. Lake was running Pelican Beach against Spooky Mulder in the $48,000 Claiming Crown Express. “We were standing in the paddock in July,” Lake said. “He was sweating and washed out and I said, ‘Who is this rat?’” Then Lake looked at the Form and saw that this rat had already won nine races. “I said, ‘I have to wait for him to be put back in a claimer,’” Lake said. “Anybody who wins that many races and looks like that has to be a winner.” That afternoon at Canterbury, Pelican Beach finished second to Landler by a head, 3 ½ lengths ahead of Spooky Mulder, who rallied from seventh to finish third after breaking unusually slow.
Most of his career, he’s been freaky fast. And while he has not acquitted himself well in stakes company, he did knock off 2005 Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner Silver Train in a three-horse race at Aqueduct on April 20th, 2006, when he was claimed from Lake by trainer Pat Reynolds for $100,000. Spooky Mulder won two more starts at that lofty claiming level for Reynolds before Lake claimed him back for $75,000 on Nov. 19th, 2006, at Aqueduct, another race Spooky Mulder won. He finished the year with six wins, three seconds and one third from 13 starts, earning $236,705. Not bad for an eight-year-old claimer. Asked why he claimed him yet again, Lake said, “Because he’s awesome.”
Nearly a year later, Lake believes Spooky Mulder has more victories left in him. “Knock on wood, he has a club foot and a little bit of an ankle, but other than that, he’s remained pretty sound for us,” Lake said.
A son of Brunswick out of Suana, by Jade Hunter, Spooky Mulder was bred by Jeff Allen in Kentucky. Fittingly, Spooky Mulder debuted in a $30,000 maiden claimer at Turfway Park, winning the 6 ½-furlong race by a length and a half. He made just one other start as a three-year-old, finishing a tiring fifth in an allowance race. He returned to the races the following February and began carving out one of the most successful careers a claimer has ever had. Lake crossed paths with Spooky Mulder in the 2003 Claiming Crown, and, true to his word, did claim him later that year. But Lake waited to do so.
After the third at Canterbury, Spooky Mulder captured a starter allowance at Ellis Park, then finished a badly tiring sixth in a $45,000 claimer at Turfway Park. Trainer Don Habeeb dropped Spooky Mulder to $25,000, and on October 10th, 2003, Lake claimed him. Spooky Mulder finished second by 1 ¾ lengths in that final start for Habeeb and wasted little time verifying Lake’s wisdom in adding him to his stable. Following a game second in a $35,000 claimer at Aqueduct - his lone start without Lasix - Spooky Mulder won a $30,000 claimer wire-to-wire by 13 ¾ lengths in 1:08 2/5 at Aqueduct, November 23rd, earning a Beyer Speed Figure of 116. Spooky Mulder twice won an optional $75,000 claimer, one of them at one mile. That induced Lake to try stretching Spooky Mulder out to a mile and an eighth to contest the 2004 Claiming Crown Jewel at Canterbury. Sent off at 4-1, Spooky Mulder finished 11th by 40 lengths. He’d been sixth by 33 ¼ lengths in a previous attempt at nine furlongs.
Showing no ill effect, Spooky Mulder won his next start, a $65,000 claimer at seven furlongs at Saratoga when he was claimed by Mark Shuman. In his first start for his new connections in a $100,000 claimer at Saratoga, attempting to go wire-to-wire at six furlongs, Spooky Mulder was passed at the top of the stretch, only to surge again on the rail and defeat Secret Run by a neck in a snappy 1:09. It was a gutsy, signature performance, one which resonated with fans, bettors and horsemen. But by the following April, Spooky Mulder was dropped back to $50,000, and one of Lake’s owners, Ben Mondello, a 34-year-old accountant in New York City, wanted to own the gritty gelding. “I had just started a business relationship with Scott, and he was on his honeymoon,” Mondello said. “I called him up and told him to take the horse for $50,000. He’s a racehorse. He wants to win. This horse doesn’t like to win unless he’s in a fight.”
Mondello and Lake couldn’t have known Spooky Mulder would immediately be involved in a fight for his life.“He had an infection is his upper hoof and it spread all the way up to his tendon sheath,” Lake said. “We sent him to the New Jersey clinic and (Dr.) Patty Hogan.” Hogan called Lake and told him she was concerned about Spooky Mulder’s life, and that any treatment might be costly. “I said, ‘Do whatever you have to do to save his life,’” Lake said. “She said, ‘That’s all I needed to hear.’ She called me at Gulfstream Park eight days later. She said, ‘I think it’s good news.’ She did a phenomenal job saving his life. Mondello agreed: “Patty saved his life.”
Spooky Mulder was back to the races exactly three months after the April 10th claim in a $75,000 claimer at Belmont Park. “I said to Scott, ‘What do you think?’” Mondello said. “He said, ‘I haven’t trained him that hard.’”Hard enough. Spooky Mulder won by a length and a half in 1:09. Lake tried to win a stakes race with him, but the best Spooky Mulder could do was finish second in three of them, the Icecapade at Monmouth and the Brutally Frank and Paumonok at Aqueduct. After the last one, January 28th, 2006, Lake freshened his horse and he returned two months later to win a $75,000 claimer. On April 20th, 2006, Spooky was entered in an optional $100,000 claimer. He faced two opponents: multiple graded stakes winner Silver Train and Primary Suspect.
Silver Train had won the Grade 2 Jerome Handicap and the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint in his final two starts in 2005, and would win the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap and the Grade 2 Tom Fool Handicap after taking on Spooky Mulder, who spotted Silver Train two pounds and went off at 9-5. Silver Train was 1-2. On the lead, Spooky Mulder was under constant pressure from Primary Suspect. Silver Train shadowed the top pair then tried pouncing on them in the stretch. Spooky Mulder refused to give in, holding Silver Train safe by three-quarters of a length with Primary Suspect a nose back in third after six furlongs in 1:09 2/5.
“That was the day we lost him,” Mondello said. Spooky Mulder had been claimed for $100,000 by trainer Pat Reynolds for owner Paul Pompa, Jr. “After the race, an owner called me up and said, ‘You might be one of the luckiest owners ever; you just had an eight-year-old gelding claimed for $100,000,’” Mondello said. “I told him, ‘I’d rather give the $100,000 back and keep him.’ It was like losing a family member.” Pompa had discussed claiming Spooky Mulder with Reynolds. “I said, ‘I don’t know where to go if we claim him,’” Reynolds said. “He called me from the sales at Keeneland. He said, ‘There are people bidding $800,000, $900,000 on yearlings here who might never get broken. This is a ready-made horse running for $100,000. Buy him.’”
Reynolds claimed Spooky Mulder and is happy that he did. “It turned out to be a real gratifying experience,” he said. “He was like a pet. He knew his name. If you said, ‘Spooky,’ he turned his head.”His head was fine; his wheels were not. “He had terrible feet,” Reynolds said. “One was curved and one was clubbed. And he had a history of shoeing problems. But that’s taken care of by a blacksmith. He did not throw a single shoe while I had him.” Reynolds had him for seven starts, three of them wins and one a painfully close second by a head to Around the Cape in the $75,000 Lure Stakes at Belmont. It would have given Spooky Mulder that elusive first stakes victory. “He almost accomplished something,” Reynolds said. “He got beat by a head. The horse knows how to read. If he doesn’t see dollar signs next to it (for a claiming race), he doesn’t think it’s a race.”
Spooky Mulder’s final race for Reynolds was in a $75,000 claimer at Aqueduct, November 19th at Aqueduct. Under Eibar Coa, Spooky Mulder found himself in a speed duel for six furlongs. Stonewood, a hard-hitter in his own right, was on the rail with Spooky Mulder right next to him. Stonewood held Spooky Mulder off by a half a length through a first quarter in :22 2/5, then spurted clear by a length and a half after a half in :46. But Spooky Mulder came back for more. Then the two were joined on the outside by Morine’s Victory. Spooky Mulder was passed again on the outside by Morine’s Victory, yet came right back in between horses, winning a three-horse photo by a neck over Morine’s Victory with Stonewood just another head back in third. “He was beaten,” Reynolds said. “Anybody who saw that race, even the people who were second and third, couldn’t stop talking about it. They said, ‘If we have to lose, we don’t mind losing to a horse like that.’ Only a horse who knows what winning is would run a race like that. He was an unbelievable animal to be around.”
He wouldn’t be around Reynolds any more. Lake had claimed him back for $75,000. Reynolds still misses Spooky Mulder. “I treated him every day like the class animal he is, and he reciprocated,” Reynolds said. “I wish I had a couple two-year-olds like him in the barn.” Re-united with Lake, Spooky Mulder won one of four starts before getting a deserved rest from mid-February to September 2nd when he resurfaced at Delaware Park in an optional $50,000 claimer. “His ankle was flaring up on him,” Lake said.
By the time Spooky Mulder returned to the races, Mondello had claimed Spooky Mulder’s four-year-old, less accomplished half-sister, Samantha Mulder. Mondello claimed the four-year-old filly for $15,000 last June 17th, when she finished sixth in a maiden claimer at Churchill Downs. Lake gave the filly a seven-week layoff and she won her first start for Mondello, a maiden claimer at the same level, by 6 ¼ lengths at Delaware Park. She subsequently finished second and fifth in a starter allowance and $12,500 claimer, respectively. How would Spooky Mulder fare off a 6 ½-month layoff? He was sent off at 5-1 and wired five rivals off sizzling fractions of :22 1/5 and :44 4/5. He crossed the wire 3 ¾ lengths clear after six furlongs in 1:08 4/5, his 30th career victory. “It’s unbelievable,” Mondello said. “He’s a racehorse. He wants to win. Somebody told me after the race, ‘You might be lucky enough to get to the Kentucky Derby, but you’ll never have another horse like this again.’ He’s probably right. The heart that this horse has, forget about it.”
In his next start, the Hockessin Stakes at Delaware Park October 6th, Spooky Mulder uncharacteristically settled in third, then gamely rallied to win by a head in 1:10, finally securing his first stakes victory. Spooky Mulder subsequently finished a tiring fifth by a length and three-quarters in the Vincent A. Moscarelli Memorial Stakes and third in an optional claimer at Laurel Park on Wednesday. November 21st, the day before Thanksgiving. Lake is thankful he’s gotten to train this incredible claimer. He thinks he understands the secret of Spooky Mulder’s success: “He enjoys what he’s doing. He’s happy. That’s what keeps him going.”
Global Superbet - Can it take horseracing to a bigger stage?
Twenty-five years ago John R. Gaines in Kentucky came up with an idea, the Breeders’ Cup series. Gaines felt that Thoroughbred racing needed a high profile day, which would make it possible for the sport to compete with NFL, NHL and NBA in the media picture. Everyone involved in racing agreed.
Geir Stabell (European Trainer - issue 20 - Winter 2007)
Twenty-five years ago John R. Gaines in Kentucky came up with an idea, the Breeders’ Cup series. Gaines felt that Thoroughbred racing needed a high profile day, which would make it possible for the sport to compete with NFL, NHL and NBA in the media picture. Everyone involved in racing agreed, just as much as they agreed that Thoroughbred breeding and racing needed new innovations, offering opportunities for more international competition with chances of winning bigger purses.
Has it worked? Partly, and the Breeders’ Cup has most certainly been more a star actor than just another face to the stage. This year, the International Federation of Horseracing has been working on another new idea, of a totally different nature. Again, the reason for exploring new products for the sport is that we are badly in need of legs to stand on in the increasingly competitive betting market. While turnover on horseracing, according to figures released by the bookmaking industry, has levelled out, it has increased markedly in other sports. In Europe, football is the sport attracting the biggest betting figures.
One big difference between the two sports, as far as betting is concerned, is how international football has become. The Champions League, the UEFA Cup, World Cup Finals, European Cup Finals and their qualifying rounds, and the Copa America, combine for a huge, huge betting market – just in Europe. Add in markets like Hong Kong and Australia and the total figures are truly staggering. With football fans from all over the world logging on to bet on and tuning in to watch these big international matches on a weekly basis, it is almost unbelievable that no betting firm has come up with a weekly “Football Superbet.” For instance, a multi-leg wager where you need to predict home win, draw or away win in, say, ten or twelve high profile games. With a global, massive pool, it would become a lottery for the thinking fan.
Strange as it may seem, quite a few in this world still prefer to use their brain, their own knowledge, when betting. They do not want to bet on numbers games where the odds are stacked heavily against them. Without products to stimulate them, these brains will soon no longer be potential players, not when it comes to horseracing betting, that’s for sure. They will either turn their backs on betting altogether or they will look for other challenges. There is no longer a shortage of alternatives. Poker and bridge, to name but two card games, are tailor made for internet wagering involving thinking players. And these products are considerably cheaper to produce, and run, than horseracing. There is no comparison.
Let’s get back to the idea of a superbet. While other sports do not seem to have grasped such an idea, horseracing is, for a change, a couple of lengths ahead. This year, the International Federation of Horseracing began developing and testing a new bet, called the “Global Trifecta.” This wager is very much in its infancy, and it has been a complicated baby to conceive, but it is an excellent idea that ought to be given all the backing it can get. It has already been tested with international pools on a small number of flat races this season, but with a “soft launch approach,” according to Totesport’s (Pari-Mutuel operator in the UK) PR manager Damian Walker. If it can be refined, and marketed, in the right way, it has every chance of becoming a big success. Not just as a betting product, but also as a tool to promote the sport of horseracing worldwide. “Mauritz Burggink, at the IFH in Paris, is the man behind the idea of a superbet,” Damian Walker explains, “it is all quite simple. With bigger liquidity in the pool, there will be bigger dividends, and a bet like this can compete with all the lotteries. A lot of work has been done already, and the ultimate aim is to have a Global Superbet every week. We have tested it, but I must stress that the betting on a few races in 2007 has been nothing more than ‘dipping a toe in the water’ as there are various complications to overcome. Not least the fact that different countries have different IT-systems, and local laws also affect what we can and cannot do.”
Walker explains how punters in big markets like Australia, Hong Hong, USA, South Africa, Singapore and Europe were this year given the opportunity of betting into a global trifecta pool on some Group One events. “The product cannot be properly tested without real bets, though testing such a product must begin on a relatively small scale,” he says, “and that is why we have given this a quiet launch. I am convinced that this will be a big success, and it can change the world of betting on horseracing dramatically.
The progress of this project will be high on the agenda when representatives meet in Tucson, Arizona this December.” The global trifecta - where one has to select the first three home in the exact order - was opened for betting on the Prix de Diane at Chantilly in June. This is not a high profile race internationally, my guess is that a large proportion of racing fans in Australia, Hong Kong and USA have never heard of the race. Walker agrees, but a guinea pig is a guinea pig, and he has some interesting figures from this race. “The turnover was 60,000 euros,” he tells us, “and the dividend was 1,767-1. If the bet had been settled on the UK pool alone, the dividend would have been just 929-1. This shows what a difference a bigger pool can make.” That may be, but the pool was nowhere near what it will, hopefully, be one day, and it was too small to provide the operators any sort of hard conclusions. To the customers, however - the punters - a 60,000-euro pool is big enough to enable them to assess the value of the product.
Did this trifecta pay over the odds, under the odds, or just about normal? Well, UK punters probably would not have a clue, as they are absolute beginners when it comes to trifecta betting, most of them not even that. Most gamblers in the USA, on the other hand, would have been able to take a quick glance at the result, the odds for the first three home, the number of runners, and say whether a 1,768-1 return was good or bad value. The Diane had 14 runners and was won by West Wind, who returned 9-2. She beat Mrs Lindsay (14-1), with Diyakalanie (40-1) third. Almost as a rule of thumb, a North American exacta, on a race like this, will return at least the product of multiplying the tote win odds on the two horses involved. Plus some if the shortest priced horse is second, minus some if the shortest priced horse in the winner. In this case that would be 5.50 (9-2) multiplied by 15 (14-1), which is 82.50.
So, with a 40-1 shot finishing third, was 1,767-1 good value? Finding a race to compare this to in the USA is not at all difficult. The Breeders’ Cup Mile has a habit of returning trifectas that include both a winner at a fair price and a real longshot, and also excludes the favourite. And it is a race with a pool made up of punters from all kinds of corners of the world. The 2003 edition of the BC Mile produced an almost identical trifecta to the one seen in this year’s Diane. Six Perfections (5-1) beat Touch of The Blues (12-1) and Century City (39-1). The race had 13 runners. The trifecta returned 2,627-1. Which is a whopping 48% higher than this year’s global trifecta on the Diane. Although interesting enough, this is not at all a fair comparison, as the trifectas on the Breeders’ Cup races nearly always pay well over the odds, simply because the majority of the pool is made up of punters with little or no knowledge of racing. The pool on the Diane was almost certainly made up of punters who knew racing well, and also knew enough about the sport to know that the bet existed. 1,767-1 was therefore a very good return, indicating that it could easily have paid 2,600-1 with a bigger pool. For the record; the trifecta pool on the 2003 BC Mile was $2.3 million. A whole different ballgame, and also where one is aiming to take the global superbet.
NOT NECESSARILY A TRIFECTA
“The global superbet does not necessarily have to be a trifecta,” Walker continues. “There is a good chance that it will be a carbon copy of the Triple Trio, a highly successful bet in Hong Kong.” The Triple Trio is a multi leg bet where one has to select the first three finishers, in any order, in three consecutive races. At last year’s Hong Kong International day, when the bet was made up of two handicaps and the Hong Kong Sprint, the dividend was 301,707-1 No space here to take an analytical look at the combined odds of all the nine horses involved, but it makes sense to mention that the three winners paid 14-1, 5-1 and 3-1. A win treble at these odds would return 359-1.
It may be a pure coincidence but it is interesting to note that the Triple Trio returned 840 times the win treble, which is not at all 840 times easier to predict. We can understand why a bet like this is a real alternative to playing the lotteries. On the other hand, offering a global triple trio may have its disadvantages, as one is then asking punters to analyse three races, possibly staged in three different countries. Nobody, nowhere, will be confidently familiar with the form of all the horses. Thus, perhaps a trifecta on one race is a better way to go. “Another issue we need to address is the cases when the bet is not won, and creates a rollover, or jackpot if you will,” Walker comments. “Punters in one country may not be too happy about their money moving on to a different jurisdiction, where they will be at a disadvantage when getting involved.”
When betting on horseracing, local knowledge does count for a lot, but these are changing times, and he or she who can find the right angles on and the right understanding of international racing will stand the best chance of collecting on a global superbet. Nevertheless, without the local customers - the two-pound, two-euro or two-dollar punters joining in - the pool will never be massive enough to compete with the lotteries. Perhaps there is a simple solution to this problem. The weekly races will probably have to be scheduled in advance, but “reserve races” could be assigned the following week in the country where the race or races take place, meaning that, when there is a rollover, the global bet stays in one place until it is won. Of course, this could take weeks, especially if the bet is a triple trio, though perhaps not if it is a one-race trifecta.
Has an American style superfecta been discussed at all? “Yes, it has,” Walker replies. “The global trifectas we have had this year have mainly been like lab testing, and various models will be discussed and analysed before we land on one model. We are testing technical solutions just as much as we are testing the nature of the bet.”
COMPETITORS WILL EMERGE
I love the idea of a global superbet, but wonder, will it really happen? Will it be a success? This is early days, but, please, make sure that those two words are not too easily swallowed too often within horseracing, in particular when it comes to creating and promoting new products. We have heard them so many times before. Sometimes those ‘early days’ become ‘all time.’ Horseracing authorities and regulators, in Europe in particular, so often come across as so incredibly conservative and as such a stubborn bunch, that the one word that springs to mind is ‘immature.’
Racing still seems to be run from offices that are, if not totally then at least seriously partly, lagging behind the rest of the world. I would be delighted to be convinced that I am wrong about this, as I also fear that this state of affairs will be one of the biggest stumbling blocks for a new global superbet. Things are simply moving way, way too slowly. Take the lack of European racing rules, a topic that came to the fore after this year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. Of course, this has been discussed before, but nothing seems to happen. Why not make a couple of quick moves, why not just do it? Make those changes. Toss a couple of coins if need be to settle a couple of disagreements between the English and the French, and get on with it.
Bookmakers taking more and more and more bets on football, and fewer and fewer on racing, do not care about the lack of a sensible set of international racing rules. They are busy making money, and giving the gambling market new, lucrative products, which is precisely why the development of a new global bet must be speeded up. Why? I’ll tell you why. Because as soon as this concept becomes more high profile, through proper marketing and media coverage, bookmakers will grab the idea, adapt it to some other sport, maybe even other sports, and create a new product within a matter of weeks. All of a sudden, racing will be behind, again.
The International Federation of Horseracing may be a couple of lengths ahead with their development of a global pool bet at the moment. A couple of lengths, however, is not exactly a comfortable and commanding lead on a playing ground which is changing so fast, and is so volatile, as the betting market. Not when you are involved in the race for the betting dollar, euro, or pound. Unless you are by far the biggest, financially strongest player, it can actually be a disadvantage to lead the way. It is only an advantage if you are smarter, considerably smarter. Let’s hope we are.
TRM Trainer of the Quarter - Larry Jones
The TRM trainer of the quarter award has been won by Larry Jones. Larry
and her team will receive a TRM product portfolio worth in excess of
$1,500. The portfolio will consist of TRM tack bags and saddle pads as
well as a large selection of the world famous TRM product range.
Bill Heller (01 December 2007 - Issue Number: 6)
TheTRM trainer of the quarter award has been won by Larry Jones. Larry and her team will receive a TRM product portfolio worth in excess of $1,500. The portfolio will consist of TRM tack bags and saddle pads as well as a large selection of the world famous TRM product range.
Finishing second may be like kissing your mother - as Jones said after watching his gallant three-year-old colt Hard Spun finished second to Curlin in the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic, Oct. 27, at Monmouth Park - but it’s better than no kiss at all. And if you are destined to finish second, there are no better times to do it than in million dollar races.
Jones, wearing his ever-present white cowboy hat, saddled one other horse that day, Proud Spell, and she finished second to undefeated Indian Blessing in the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Filly. Proud Spell had won her three prior starts, including the Grade 2 Matron.
Those two seconds capped a breakthrough year for the 50-year-old trainer, whose $5.7 million in earnings ranked 13th nationally through early November.
“It’s something you only dream of,” Jones said, Nov. 9th. “I never expected it to happen to me.”
It didn’t happen by accident.
By: Bill Heller (01 December 2007 - Issue Number: 6)
Jones, whose other Breeders’ Cup starter, Ruby’s Reflection, finished 10th in the 2002 Juvenile Filly at Arlington Park, is an accomplished horseman whose grandfather and father had horses on their farms. His first ride was on his grandfather’s mule at the age of 3. Jones then rode horses regularly on his dad’s cattle farm, then Quarter Horses at bush tracks in Kentucky, Tennessee and Illinois. He turned to training in 1980 after he purchased a filly, Ala Turf, for $800.
Jones didn’t win a stakes race until 1995 with Capt. Bowl, another horse who cost $800. He improved his stock gradually and won Grade 1 stakes with Island Sand and Wildcat Bettie B, but Hard Spun took him to another level.
“I’ve got to put credit to the horse,” Jones said. “He was a very easy horse to train.”
Jones trained him brilliantly. After Hard Spun won the Grade 2 Lanes End Stakes easily, he finished second in the Kentucky Derby, third in the Preakness and fourth in the Belmont Stakes. Jones freshened him and he finished second to Any Given Saturday in the Grade 1 Haskell at Monmouth.
Rather than backing off with Hard Spun, Jones asked the son of Danzig to cut back from a mile-and-an-eighth to seven furlongs in the Grade 1 King’s Bishop Stakes on Travers Day at Saratoga. First Defence headed Hard Spun in mid-stretch, but Hard Spun responded instantaneously, surging again to win by a length and a half. “Probably 98 percent of the horses in the Breeders’ Cup you wouldn’t do that, but Hard Spun is a real fast horse,” Jones said. “With his natural speed, it was easy.”
But how would Hard Spun respond to being stretched out to a mile-and-a-quarter for the Breeders’ Cup Classic? Hard Spun took the lead early and then attempted to take his eight rivals wire-to-wire over the sloppy Monmouth Park track, zipping his first half-mile in :45.85. He opened a two-length lead after one mile before he was confronted on the inside by Kentucky Derby and Travers winner Street Sense and on the outside by Preakness and Jockey Club Gold Cup winner Curlin. Hard Spun put away Street Sense, but had no answer for Curlin, who won by 4 ½ lengths. Hard Spun held second by 4 ¾ lengths over Awesome Gem, who beat Street Sense by a length for third. “I was very proud,” Jones said. “Curlin is special. You’re always hoping for better, but believe me, we couldn’t have had a much better day,” Jones said.
Or a much better year. “It’s been wonderful, you bet,” Jones said.
Long Layoffs - training a horse to win after months of not running
With Thoroughbreds racing fresher and less frequently these days, traininga horse to win off a month layoff is commonplace. But when a trainerstretches his Thoroughbred’s layoff to six months or longer, and he winsthat first start back, that’s special. Doing it consistently stamps a trainer as one of the best in the business.
Bill Heller (01 October 2007 - Issue Number: 5)
By Bill Heller
With Thoroughbreds racing fresher and less frequently these days, traininga horse to win off a month layoff is commonplace. But when a trainerstretches his Thoroughbred’s layoff to six months or longer, and he winsthat first start back, that’s special. Doing it consistently stamps a trainer as one of the best in the business.
Different trainers take different approaches with workouts trying to reachthe same destination: the winner’s circle, even if the return race is a prepfor an upcoming stakes.
“The training theories are a lot different now,” Hall of Famer Allen Jerkens said. “The horses are not quite as strong as they used to be. They’re bred a lot more for speed. It’s a different game now.”
It’s a game Jerkens, at the age of 78, continues to win. In the space of 10days at the end of May at Belmont Park, Jerkens won the Grade 2 ShuveeHandicap with Teammate and the Grade 3 Jaipur Stakes with 24-to-1 longshot Ecclesiastic and finished second with longshot Political Force in the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap. All three horses are home-breds owned by Joseph Allen.
First up was Teammate, the four-year-old gray filly who was coming off afine three-year-old season, one win and four second in 10 starts in 2006 and earnings of $350,890. She won the Grade 2 Bonnie Miss by six lengths; finished second in back-to-back Grade 1 stakes, the Alabama and the Gazelle, both to Pine Island - Shug McGaughey’s outstanding filly who suffered a fatal breakdown during last year’s Breeders’ Cup Distaff - and concluded her three-year-old season last November 4th, finishing a front-running fourth at 2-5 in the Grade 3 Turnback the Alarm Handicap. “She was running against the best,” Jerkens said. “She looked like she was home in the Alabama.”
Teammate’s first goal this year would be the Grade 2 Shuvee Handicap at one mile at Belmont May 19th. To get her there, Jerkens penciled in herfour-year-old debut in an allowance/optional $75,000 claimer at sevenfurlongs at Belmont, May 3rd.
Teammate’s first published work was April 10th at Belmont Park, when she breezed five furlongs on the Belmont Park training track in a leisurely1:04, only the 21st fastest of 27 working that day at that distance (21/27).Four days later, she worked a bullet five furlongs on the training track in1:00, best of 59 at that distance (1/59). On April 24th, she worked sevenfurlongs in 1:24 3/5, a brilliant move which wasn’t ranked because no other horse worked that distance that morning. Teammate’s final prep came on April 30th when she returned to the training track and again recorded a bullet, covering four furlongs in :46 4/5, best of 28 that day (1/28).
Asked about bringing her back, Jerkens said, “You jog a little bit, gallopand start breezing slow. Some horses get more out of their gallops. Shedoesn’t like to gallop too slow. She’ll gallop along in the morning. Thisyear, she’s been easier to train than last year. She seems to be morewilling. I have a good man get on her.”
The blazing works, especially the seven furlong move, may have been a tad faster than Jerkens preferred, but it didn’t faze him. “Some real goodhorses will work as fast as you want them to,” he said. “When you’re running with good horses, it’s a whole lot different. If you’re running $20,000 claimers, they won’t do it, and they can’t do it. I was looking for 1:26. If she had been racing every three weeks, you wouldn’t want to her to work that fast. Everything is relative to how close the race is. You don’t want to go too fast on top of a race.
“Years ago, I remember watching Eddie Neloy when I was younger. He would take his stakes horses and work them five furlongs in :59 three days out, then walk the next day, then gallop a mile and a half, and then do it again on the morning of the race. I watched him a lot. Ben Jones had a filly named Bewitch. She was a big fat mare. He worked her five-eighths in :59 or in a minute the day before the race.
“I remember Beau Purple (who upset Kelso four times). He worked 1:48 3/5 for a mile and an eighth a week before the (1962) Hawthorne Gold Cup. He was a little fat horse. He shipped to Chicago, then, three days before the race, he went three-quarters in 1:11 3/5. And it was muddy. He beat good horses.”
Surprisingly, in a field of just five in her 2007 debut, Teammate faced good horses, too: Todd Pletcher-trained Yachats, making her return off an even longer layoff, and Her Royal Nibs and Endless Virtue, who’d each wonmore than $150,000 in the last year and a half. Longshot Solarana completed the field.
Yachats, a four-year-old filly owned by Aaron and Marie Jones, hadcompleted her three-year-old season last August 19th, when she finished atiring fifth in the Ms. Woodford Stakes at Monmouth Park, April 19th. For2006, she had two wins and a second from six starts and earnings over $61,000.
Pletcher, who has won the last three Eclipse Awards for trainer and againleads all trainers in earnings this year, wanted to bring Yachats, named fora town in Oregon, sooner. “It was basically frustration,” Pletcher said. “Wehad entered the horse several times at Gulfstream Park. The races didn’tfill. So we entered her here, and we look up and see Teammate was in there.”
Yachats showed six works before her return, all at Palm Meadows, thetraining center in south Florida:
March 4th - five furlongs in 1:01 1/5 handily, third fastest of 19 (3/19)
March 12th - five furlongs in 1:01 3/5 handily (6/21)
March 18th - five furlongs in 1:02 3/5 breezing (16/26)
March 24th - five furlongs in 1:02 3/5 breezing (13/29)
April 8th - a bullet five furlongs in 1:00 handily (1/12)
April 15th - five furlongs in 1:01 4/5 handily (8/9).
Both Teammate and Yachats raced well in their 2007 debuts, Teammate beating Yachats by a neck. In her next start, Teammate won the Shuvee by half a length over heavily favored Sugar Shake. “We were flattered when Teammate came back (and won the Shuvee),” Pletcher said. “Sometimes, you run well and you just get outrun.”
Sometimes you don’t. Eugene Melnyk Racing Stables’ Harlington had suggested greatness early in his career for Pletcher. A son of Unbridled out of the 1992 Eclipse Champion Three-Year-Old Filly Serena’s Song, Harlington made it to the races late in his two-year-old season, winning a one-mile maiden race on a sloppy track at Aqueduct by a neck, November 28th, 2004.
Freshened over the winter by Pletcher, he returned at Gulfstream Park onJanuary 15th, 2005. Racing again on a sloppy track, he won a bottom-levelallowance race by three lengths. Harlington finally caught a fast track inhis third start, the Grade 3 Risen Star Stakes at Fair Grounds. Sent off the6-5 favorite in a field of 11, he raced extremely wide from the 10 post andchecked in sixth, three lengths behind the winner, Scipion.
“We were disappointed right after the race,” Pletcher said. “But he cameout of the race with a filling in his left front ankle.”
Given ample time to heal and recover, Harlington returned to the track,December 4th, 2005, at Aqueduct, and he won an allowance race by fivelengths. Pletcher again freshened him and Harlington moved up the allowance ladder, winning a non-winners of three-other-than by a length andthree-quarters over a future star, Premium Tap, at odds of 3-5, February8th, 2006.
Pletcher upped the ante, and Harlington responded by capturing the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Breeders’ Cup Handicap by a neck, March 4th, 2006.
Harlington moved up to Grade 1 company in the Pimlico Special, May 19th, where he finished a dull sixth to a horse making his first North American start: Invasor. Who knew? Invasor, last year’s Horse of the Year, hasn’t lost a race since.
Again, Harlington came out of the Pimlico Special with a filling in thatsame ankle. “We sent him to Eugene’s farm,” Pletcher said. “They gave him time off. Phil Hronec is there and runs the farm. He knows what level we want. Had several half-mile breezes before he came back to us.”
Pletcher began shopping for a spot for Harlington’s five-year-old debut,eventually selecting a mile-and-a-sixteenth allowance/optional $100,000claimer at Belmont Park, May 24th, a year and five days after his last race.
“A horse like that is going to have to run at least a mile,” Pletcher said.“You have to have a starting point. We were thumbing through the condition book. We circled this race at Belmont. There was a back-up plan for an allowance race at Churchill Downs a couple days later. We were happy the race filled at Belmont.”
Pletcher’s workout pattern is one he has honed. “There’s really not a wholelot of variation you can do,” he said. “I’m not a breeze-him-back in fivedays. I’m a six or seven-day guy. Generally, we’re on a six or seven-dayschedule.”
Harlington had six workouts leading up to his race, the first three on theBelmont Park training track and the next three on the main track:
April 8th - five furlongs breezing in 1:03 3/5 (7/12)
April 22nd - five furlongs breezing in 1:02 (7/20)
April 29th - five furlongs breezing in 1:02 2/5 (10/15)
May 6th - a bullet five furlongs handily in 1:00 3/5 (1/12)
May 14th - five furlongs breezing in 1:00 (6/46)
May 21st - five furlongs breezing in 1:01 4/5 (41/54)
The gap from April 8th to the 22nd was because of a lot of rain on LongIsland. And Harlington’s final work was supposed to be on May 20th, fourdays before his race. “We got rained out again, so I had to make his workout three days back,” Pletcher said. “Because he is a large horse and carries a lot of weight, I wasn’t worried about it. We pulled him up fairly quickly after the wire. Usually, we let them go on for a quarter or three-eighths.”
Harlington won his return easily by 3 ¼ lengths. “I was very pleased,”Pletcher said. “I thought he raced very well. He’s a horse we’ve always feltvery good about. He put us in a position to move into a stakes. He is aGrade 1 stakes horse, and we have to prove it.”
Hall of Fame trainer Nick Zito’s Commentator has already proven himself at the highest level of competition. His neck victory over subsequent Horse of the Year Saint Liam in the 2005 Grade 1 Whitney Handicap was one of the greatest victories in Zito’s career. He had successfully stretched out Tracy Farmer’s New York-bred speed machine to a mile-and-an-eighth. That victory was Commentator’s seventh in eight career starts as he battled an assortment of physical problems.
In his next start, the Grade 1 Woodward Stakes, then at Belmont Park,Commentator was cooked by two rabbits entered by Saint Liam’s trainer, Rick Dutrow, and faded to be a distant third to Saint Liam.
Commentator made just two starts in 2006, winning the Mugatea Stakes for New York-breds easily at 1-9 and then having terrible luck in the Grade 1 Forego, September 2nd, 2006, at Saratoga. Sent off the .90-to-1 favorite in a deeply talented field of 11, Commentator leapt up at the start, gettingaway dead last. He was rushed into contention by Eibar Coa, then faded to10th.
Given ample time to recover, Commentator was pointed to a new campaign this year by Zito. “We’re always talking about having a good bottom,” Zito said.
“A horse needs to have a good bottom before you can even breeze him. I’ve been doing this for a good time. Every single day, you have people come to the barn and say the horse worked great. But they don’t know how much went into it before they work. We had to gallop him for two months because he needed it. We didn’t like the way he came back from the farm.”
Zito takes pride in his ability to win with long layoff horses. “We’ve donepretty well with layoffs,” he said. “The more talented the horse, the betteryou look.”
Wanderin Boy made Zito look like a genius when he overcame a six-monthlayoff to take the Grade 3 Alysheba Stakes at Churchill Downs on May 4th by 4 ¼ lengths.
Could Commentator do the same? Zito chose a softer spot for his return, the Richmond Runner Stakes for New York-breds at 6 ½ furlongs at Belmont Park on May 28th. Only four other horses were entered, all of them considerably overmatched.
Commentator showed six different works before his return, the first at Palm Meadows, the next four at Churchill Downs and the final one on the deep Oklahoma Training Track at Saratoga:
March 31st - three furlongs handily in :36 2/5 (1/3)
April 10th - four furlongs breezing in :48 (9/49)
April 19th - four furlongs breezing in :48 2/5 (11/34)
April 27th - four furlongs breezing in :47 4/5 (2/22)
May 7th - a bullet five furlongs breezing in :58 4/5 (1/27)
May 22nd - a bullet four furlongs breezing in :47 3/5 (1/43)
Commentator ran true to his works, springing out of the starting gate as ifhe’d been shot out of a cannon, then dusting his rivals wire-to-wire by 11 ¼lengths in a sparkling 1:15 3/5 under Corey Nakatani, who barely moved his hands during the race. Commentator was back and ready for harder battles.
Getting back to the winner’s circle in his return could do nothing but help.
Nasal Strips - increasing performance, reducing EIPH
Bill Heller (01 July 2007 - Issue Number: 4)
By Bill Heller
Nasal strips’ future in Thoroughbred racing seemed limitless in the fall of 1999. Just two weeks after longshot Burrito won a race at Keeneland wearing one, 29 of the 101 horses competing in the 1999 Breeders’ Cup at Gulfstream Park November 6th had the 4-by-6-inch strip affixed 1.5 inches above their nostrils.
More importantly, three of the eight winners wore them, including Cat Thief, who captured the $4 million Classic at odds of 19-1 under Pat Day, who was sporting a human equivalent, himself. The image of both Cat Thief and Day posing in the winner’s circle with nasal strips was a powerful one. Cat Thief’s victory was the second that day for Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas, who earlier saddled 32-1 longshot Cash Run to win the $1 million Breeder’s Cup Two-Year-Old Juvenile Fillies. She, too, wore the non-invasive strip designed to reduce an exercising horse’s airway resistance and decrease exercise-induced, pulmonary hemorrhaging (EIPH).
The nasal strips received enormous national publicity after the Breeders’ Cup. Wouldn’t almost everyone in North America emulate Lukas? Stan Bergstein, the executive vice-president of Harness Tracks of America and a columnist for the Daily Racing Form, postulated long ago that if a horse wearing a blue balloon tied to his tail won a race, you’d see dozens of horses with blue balloons tied to their tails in the paddock the next day.
Lukas, however, preached caution regarding the role of nasal strips in Cash Run and Cat Thief’s surprise Breeders’ Cup victories. Regard-less, Lukas and trainer Bob Baffert spoke at a meeting of the California Horse Racing Board Medication Committee meeting, January 12th, 2000, in support of nasal strips. According to a CHRB press release, CHRB Commissioner Marie Moretti expressed hope that using the strips could lead to the decreased use of bleeder medication for some racehorses. That never happened, as Lukas proved prophetic. He saddled three horses in the 2000 Kentucky Derby, two with nasal strips, and none of them finished higher than 12th.
According to Equibase, between October 23rd, 1999, and April 24th, 2000, 8,402 Thoroughbreds wore the strip and 1,077 won, nearly 13 percent. Apparently that wasn’t high enough. Less and less trainers used them, though Lukas still does.
By the end of 2000, there was a story on the Internet site www.suite101.comentitled “The Demise of Nasal Strips.” Published December 12th, 2000, the article began, “The rise and fall of nasal strips was short and sweet.” Noting that the Daily Racing Form had originally listed the nasal strip in past performance lines for all tracks and that by mid-June was only listing them at Hollywood Park, the story concluded, “As quick as they appeared in the spotlight, they vanished.” The obituary was more than a bit premature.
Miesque’s Approval won the 2006 Breeders’ Cup Mile at Churchill Downs wearing a nasal strip for trainer Marty Wolfson, who uses them on all of his 30 horses. “I’ve been using them on all my horses for two years,” Wolfson said in mid-March. “I use them on myself. I run and they help me when I run. I breathe easier. The only time I couldn’t use one was when Pomeroy was in the 2006 Forego Handicap at Saratoga.” Pomeroy won that stakes. He was denied the nasal strip at Saratoga because the New York Racing Association mysteriously banned nasal strips, a day after the New York State Racing and Wagering Board approved them for both Thoroughbred and harness racing.
Currently, New Jersey is the only other state which doesn’t allow them, while Pennsylvania allows them for Thoroughbreds but not for Standardbreds.
According to nasal strip co-inventor and president of Flair Nasal Strips Jim Chiapetta, some 15,000 nasal strips are sold world-wide each year: 9,000 in the United States, 3,500 in Europe, 2,000 in Australia and New Zealand and 500 in Dubai. He said they were used mostly on horses in eventing, then on Thoroughbreds, Standardbreds and Quarter Horses.
Should they be used more often? Are they a realistic alternative to the powerful diuretic Lasix, which is now used by roughly 95 percent of all Thoroughbreds in the U.S., though the rest of the horse racing world bans Lasix and all other race-day medications? Lasix, which is used ostensibly to reduce EIPH, can improve a horse’s performance dramatically the first and/or second time it is used, if for no other reason that its diuretic properties. Horses can lose 10 to 20 pounds through urination after Lasix is injected. That alone improves most horses’ performance. Think about it. If there is an apprentice jockey with even a modicum of ability, trainers scramble for his services just to decrease the weight his horse is carrying by five pounds.
The efficacy of nasal strips can be judged in comparison to Lasix or by itself. “Lasix and nasal strips work in very similar ways,” said David Marlin, a consultant who worked for the Animal Health Trust in Newmarket, England, and co-authored Equine Exercise Physiology. “From scientific studies, they seem to be equally effective in reducing bleeding.”
Breathe Right strips were invented in 1987 by Bruce Johnson, who suffered from allergies. By the early 1990’s, they were being used for colds, allergies, snoring and athletic performance. They work by reducing the partial collapse of the soft tissues of the nose when it is under pressure because of the vacuum caused by the lungs during exercise. The mechanical, spring device maintains optimum air flow. Humans have an option for breathing: nose or mouth. Horses do not. They breathe only through their nostrils. Could nasal strips benefit horses?
That’s a question Jim Chiapetta and his partner Ed Blach decided to explore. They had become friends at the Littleton Large Animal Clinic in Littleton, Colorado.
Chiapetta, 48, returned to his clinic in Shakopee, Minnesota, to finish law school at William Mitchell College of Law. Blach, a former veterinarian who is now an animal products consultant, called Chiapetta in 1996 to discuss a possible equine version of a nasal strip.
“We talked to a bunch of people and they said it wouldn’t work for horses, but I told Ed I think it could,” Chiapetta said. “We went ahead and made some prototypes.”
Then they consulted Monty Roberts, the horse whisperer. “Ed used to be Monty’s resident veterinarian,” Chiapetta explained. Roberts was interested enough to have them test the strip at a track at Roberts’ farm north of Santa Barbara in California. “We didn’t have the adhesive done right,”
Chiapetta said. “The riders were coming back and saying, `This horse felt better, more relaxed.’ So we figured there was something there.”
Having breakfast one morning with Roberts, Chiapetta and Bloch came up with a name. “I was thinking about flaring nostrils, then I was thinking about air, and we came up with the name Flair,” Chiapetta said.
Next, they consulted with CNS, the Minnesota company which manufactured Breathe Right. “They agreed to license it if it showed it reduces bleeding,” Chiapetta said. “They funded a study at Kansas State University.”
That study and a majority, but not all, of a handful of subsequent studies - all involving a standard small sample of horses - showed positive results from nasal strips. “The nasal strips seem to help,” Dr. Howard Erickson of Kansas State University, a co-author of one of the studies, said last February. “We’ve done studies here. There have been studies in Kentucky, California and Florida. In most of the studies, it decreases the bleeding by 50 percent and it also decreases the airway resistance.”
He believes that most horses would benefit from both, because he believes almost all horses suffer from EIPH: “I think it’s nearly 100 percent that have some degree of bleeding for the movement of fluid from the capillaries to the airway. For some, it may be negligible. Quarter Horses will respond the same way. Standardbreds, too. You see it in rodeo horses and barrel horses.”
That sentiment is shared by David Marlin, who has worked with researchers at Kansas State. “The bottom line is that all horses will break blood vessels in a race,” he said. “It happens with camels; it happens with humans, it happens with greyhounds.”
Marlin also believes that nasal strips may be a more preferable treatment than Lasix. “It’s less complicated and you can’t build up tolerance,” he said. “If you think about a diabetic who uses insulin, he develops tolerance and needs more of it. Do horses develop tolerance of Lasix? Generally, when you use drugs repeatedly, there’s a chance of adaptation to it. The nasal strip is different because it’s a mechanical device.”
Then why aren’t trainers around the world, and especially in the United States, using them?
Ironically, Chiapetta believes that the success of Cash Run and Cat Thief in the 1999 Breeders’ Cup is a major reason why. “It was the worst possible thing that could have happened,” he said. “We were on the front page of the New York Times Sports Section, the Wall Street Journal and Sports Illustrated. I think horsemen said, `Hey, this will make us win.’ So they strapped them on. And when they didn’t win, they took them off.”
Some, not all.
“They’re expensive ($7.95 per strip),” Wolfson said. “Some people don’t want to spend the money, but I think it’s worth it.”
Day, the retired Hall of Fame jockey, knew they worked on him. “I found them to be quite helpful when I was riding a number of races back to back,” he said. “It seemed that I was less fatigued because I believed I was getting much more air into my lungs. I would have thought that would be more helpful to horses than riders. Horses only breathe through their noses. They cannot or will not breathe through their mouths. If you can open up the nasal passages, open the airways, you would think it would be beneficial to the horses.”
At the Havemeyer Foundation Workshop investigating EIPH, March 9th-12th, 2006, in Vancouver, Canada, Dr. Frederick Derksen, of the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at Michigan State University, spoke about the role of airways in EIPH. He said, “A series of studies demonstrated that the use of a nasal strip decreases the number of red cells in bronchoalveolar laverage fluid after exercise. In horses, the majority of inspiratory resistance to airflow is located in the upper airway. The nasal valge region, located just cranial to the nasoincisive notch is a high resistance region, not supported by bone or cartilage. These characteristics make this region particularly susceptible to collapse during inhalation. Application of the nasal strip in this region prevents nasal collapse and decreases upper airway resistance during exercise. This in turn is expected to reduce negative alveolar pressure during inhalation and decrease transmural capillary pressures.”
The nasal strips are certainly a hit in New Zealand, especially with harness horses. After reading about the use of nasal strips in the 1999 Breeders’ Cup, Brian McMath, a committee member of the New Zealand Standardbred Breeders Association, imported a few samples. After the strips were approved by Harness Racing New Zealand, several trainers began using them and many had success, including Jim and Susan Wakefield’s Glacier Bay, who won the $105,000 PGG Sales Series Final at Alexandria Park in April, 2000, for trainer Cran Daigety. Eventually, Thoroughbred trainers began using the strip, too. By the end of 2004, more than 700 winners in both harness and Thoroughbred racing won wearing the strip.
“I have a technology background in chemistry and engineering, and what convinced me the strips work was basic physics,” McMath said. “It’s all about windpipe pressures and how a simple mechanical device like the springs in the nasal strip can beneficially alter these pressures.”
The reception in Europe, at least for Thoroughbreds, was decidedly cooler. In an April 11th, 2000, letter, Peter Webbon, the Chief Veterinary Adviser to the British Jockey Club, noted that the senior veterinary surgeons from the European Horserace Scientific Liaison Committee (Britain, France, Italy, Germany) considered the question of nasal strips and decided to recommend to their racing authorities that their use should be banned for the following reasons:
1 “Other `gadgets’, such as tongue ties, which are allowed, are intended to address a specific clinical entity. Nasal strips are seen by trainers as a non-specific way of improving performances.
2 “If they improve performance, they should be banned, in line with performance enhancing medication.
3 “If they are ineffective, they should be banned because they give the impression that we condone practices that are intended to improve performance.
4 The manufacturers claim that they reduce the frequency/severity of EIPH. The EHSLC veterinarians felt very strongly, for the sake of the breed, that horses should run on their merits. What would be the effect on the Thoroughbred in the long term if a horse won the Derby, wearing a nasal strip,that without the strip was unable to win a selling race?”
To this day, they are banned throughout Europe for racing but allowed for training.
Two years ago, Chiapetta met with Webbon and his assistant in Newmarket. “He said, `It reduces fatigue, which improves performance,’” Chiapetta related. “I said, `If you shoe them, do they run better? If you feed them, do they run better? If you train them, do they perform better? Where do you draw the line?’”
Event horses are allowed to use them throughout the world because they were approved by the International Federation for Equine Sports (FEI).On June 26th, 2006, Horse & Hound wrote that nasal strips “are becoming commonplace on the noses of top event horses,” and noted that Andrew Hoy’s Moon Fleet won the Badminton, a premier cross-country event in England. “I started using them two years ago,” Andrew Hoy said. “I’d seen them being used on horses and humans, and discussed their use with a vet. I had used a human one myself when I had a cold, and it seemed to help. I now use them on my horses at top events to give them every opportunity.”
The story said that another eventer, Francis Whittington, uses them on his “advanced” horse Spin Doctor. “I tried the human version and noted the difference,” he said. “I believe it makes it easier for him to breathe so he can last the distance.”
That’s the whole point. “Some people may think that more oxygen makes them run faster,” co-inventor Blach said. “That’s not the case. Rather, horses perform at their optimum level for a longer time so they can do what they’re made to do over the long haul. Maybe it’s too simple. It’s based on very simple physics that if you maintain the size of an opening, you’re going to maximize what goes through it, in this case air.”
Asked if nasal strips help horses, Blach said, “Absolutely.” Perhaps the most confounding question about nasal strips is that even the single negative clinical study about them said that they do not reduce EIPH, but offered no tangible downside to their usage. Asked if there is a downside, Marlin said, “I think, as far as anyone knows from a scientific point of view, there is no evidence that there is.” Referring to that study, Chiapetta said it showed that horses using them “certainly weren’t less healthier. I don’t think there’s any downside to it.”
Dr. Ted Hill, the New York Racing Association steward for the Jockey Club, said on April 11th, “Our only downside was how to regulate it. If a horse comes to the paddock and it falls off, what do we do? Do we treat it as equipment? We can’t put it back on. The significant problem we had originally was it possibly being an aid to bleeders, and relaying that to the public. That came up in an international meeting at a round table in Tokyo last October. It did not receive wide acceptance because it has some efficacy.” So Japan does not allow them. Australia allows them for Standardbreds, but not for thoroughbreds. Yet, nasal strips are allowed for Thoroughbreds in Dubai and Singapore, as well as New Zealand. “It’s probably been embraced more in other countries than here, but in Thoroughbred racing here, furosemide (Lasix) is so embedded,” Kansas State’s Erickson said. “Furosemide reduces weight. It certainly reduces bleeding. But maybe we have to look for something better.” Maybe something better has been out there for eight years.
TRM Trainer of the Quarter - Brian Meehan
The TRM Trainer of the Quarter goes to Brian Meehan. For the second time in 2006, a horse from the Brian Meehan stable gave his trainer a success on one of the sports elite days, when Red Rocks landed the John Deere Breeders' Cup Turf at Churchill Downs on November 4th.
Editorial Writer (European Trainer - Issue 16 / Winter 2006)
Frank Stronach and his growing global Magna empire
WHEN Frank Stronach says he is optimistic that "down the line" his company can control "ten per cent of all the gambling in the world" the queue of punters wanting to bet against him may be very short. He has a record of reaching his targets, and if he ruffles a few feathers along the way, so what.
Howard WrightFirst Published: (19 September 2006 - Issue Number: 1)
WHEN Frank Stronach says he is optimistic that “down the line” his company can control “ten per cent of all the gambling in the world”, the queue of punters wanting to bet against him may be very short. He has a record of reaching his targets, and if he ruffles a few feathers along the way, so what.
Stronach reaches his 74th birthday in September, but he retains the energy and business enthusiasm that took him from his native Austria to Canada as a 21-year-old tool and machine engineer, and launched him into his own company three years later. At the age of 41 he was running a major automotive parts company, Magna International Inc., from which eventually sprung Magna Entertainment Corp. (MEC), now the biggest race-track owner and operator in the United States and the vehicle for his gambling ambitions.
In the States, MEC accounts for 11 racecourses, ranging from the glorious and historical Gulfstream Park, Pimlico and Santa Anita, through the unexpected Breeders’ Cup venue Lone Star Park, to the thoroughbred and quarter horse mix of Remington Park, and accompanying training centres. Then there are two television channels, a betting operation, and a one-third share in AmTote, the leading international totalisator systems provider that will soon become wholly owned by MEC; a plant making horse bedding, and various extensive real estate developments. The Magna empire was not always so big; it was bigger. With losses mounting, Stronach’s frantic purchase of race tracks in the late-1990s was balanced last year by the sale of two harness racing tracks, one in Canada, the other on the Maryland-Virginia axis.
In Europe, Stronach’s immediate influence is less obvious. Personally, the man who has a trophy room full of Eclipse Awards for owning and/or breeding such as the Preakness Stakes winner Red Bullet, Belmont Stakes winner Touch Gold, and Breeders’ Cup winners Awesome Again and his sons Ghostzapper, Perfect Sting and Macho Uno, has only recently dipped a toe into the ownership waters, with horses in training with Luca Cumani and Jeremy Noseda that were collected when he bought for the first time at Tattersalls in Newmarket in 2005.
Corporately, European interests extend to the Magna Racino, a 24-hour combination of racecourse and casino 20 miles south of Vienna that is Stronach’s gift to his Austrian birthplace, a betting website, MagnaBet, and a one-third share in a joint venture with Churchill Downs and Racing UK, the British racecourse rights exploiter and TV channel operator. That last project, set up earlier this year and operating from England as Racing World, is both new and still small, but it sets the tone – and may yet set the standard – for Magna’s global wagering ambitions. It brings together two great race-track rivals, covering most of the top venues in North America, a UK subscription-only racing channel that boasts the best of British racing, bar Ascot, and is pointed towards a European-based betting site, MagnaBet, which feeds all manner of foreign currency into the dollar-rich host-track pools.
Joe de Francis, Magna’s executive vice president and recently promoted to the main board, was at the forefront of negotiations to set up Racing World, and he is not immune to gentle ribbing about the amalgamation of ambitions between his company and Churchill Downs, which together provided most of the funding for the project. “There’s an internet term known as co-opetition, which sums up our relationship,” he says. “We’re vigorous competitors in some areas but collaborators in others. Global distribution of the racing and betting product is the key, and it’s the smart and the right thing for us to work much more closely on an international vehicle such as Racing World. We both have quality content, and that goes for Racing UK, so this is an ideal arrangement. “In addition, we have MagnaBet, the essentially German-language, European sister to XpressBet, our US-based, English-language internet betting site. They have developed side by side, but we are in the process of merging them on to one platform, which will be available globally, with technical expertise sitting in various places around the world.“We need local partners, who understand the idiosyncrasies of the local markets. That’s why it’s important to be with Racing UK, which knows the demands of British punters.”
Magna previously worked for a time with the other UK racing channel, At The Races, through TRNi, but the relationship was never a marriage made in heaven, perhaps because TRNi’s vision clashed with Stronach’s.
The arrangement with Racing UK is working well, says executive chairman Simon Bazalgette, who explains: “I think they are much more comfortable working with a racecourse group that understands how a betting path should operate. They also seemed to be impressed how Racing UK was managing our racecourses’ right in the UK, because they wanted to exploit their rights in the UK and Ireland. “Racing UK was already working with Magna because XpressBet was taking UK racing, but Racing World has strengthened our relationship, which will grow, especially now that we have 48-hour declarations in place in Britain.
“We are in the process of putting pari-mutuel links into the major UK bookmakers, which will transmit bets back to the US pools through the AmTote gateway.
“To distinguish themselves from the betting exchanges, and to help their margins, UK bookmakers are becoming more interested in the kind of exotic bets that overseas pari-mutuel operators provide. We see this as a growth area, especially when UK punters realise they can play the big carry-overs that US pools often turn up.”
Bazalgette, who expects the joint venture to take more UK racing to the States in the future, as the possible precursor to a fully global channel that would include other European racing authorities, sums up his joint venture partners: “Churchill Downs is the more corporate, more conservative organisation, but Magna is very driven and commercial, which reflects Frank Stronach’s business approach. He has shaken up North American racing, buying tracks when no-one else did.”
Magna will need to be commercial if it is to drive down ongoing losses and wipe out the minimum $500m of debts hanging round its neck. This year’s first-quarter net income of $2.2m was the first plus after seven consecutive losing quarters, but the second quarter reverted to recent type, and though revenues for the first six months of 2006 were up from $413m to $465m, compared with the same period in the previous year, costs were also up, largely due to servicing debt, from $433m to $488m. The red ink is back, and the second-quarter loss of around $26m all but matches the same period in 2005. Yet Stronach remains confident. He believes MEC could be debt free, or have very little debt, some time next year. “People may ask, ‘Why the hell are you in this kind of business, losing so much money?’” he said to investors on publication of the first-quarter results. “Well, it’s a huge business, and I’m optimistic that down the road, we have a great opportunity to be the foremost gambling and entertainment company in the world.”
Joe de Francis, a lawyer by profession, has 25 years’ experience in the horseracing business. His family controlled the Maryland Jockey Club, which owns Laurel Park and Pimlico, home of the Preakness Stakes, and he took over as chief executive in August 1989. He retains that position today, but under Magna, which bought 51 per cent of the company from de Francis and his sister in November 2002.
De Francis is well placed to view all sides of the MEC operation. “I came in at the tail end of the cycle of acquiring race tracks and at the beginning of the distribution of the racing and betting products,” he reflects. “I believe Mr Stronach when he talks about controlling ten per cent of global gambling. You can’t climb high unless you aim high. “Magna is both a race-track company and a wagering organisation. It believes strongly in vertical integration. First and foremost it owns race tracks, but to be successful in the 21st century you have to distribute your content as broadly as possible, and that’s where globalisation is important. It’s part of our mission statement. “To be successful, a race-track operator has to be involved in distribution businesses. I compare horseracing to manufacturing. We make the product and we distribute it.
“Since I came into the business, I’ve watched the evolution in distribution, from the days when you got in your car and drove to the track to bet on live racing. There was no simulcasting, very little off-track betting and no home wagering, and it was only about a dozen years ago that things began to change. “The challenges now are to select the best technology, distribution platforms and partners, so that you can take the product around the world. The challenges in North America, which centre on legislation, underscore the importance of developing systems to take the product to Europe, South America and the Pacific Rim.
“One advantage is that horseracing is extraordinarily popular, to varying degrees, around the world. The only comparison for passion and global appeal is football."
De Francis stresses that nailing down the distribution systems will be key to Magna’s success, with three pathways to be negotiated, in no particular order but together.“There’s the bet pathway,” he says. “Since our wagering is pari-mutuel, as opposed to fixed odds, we have to figure out the best way to transmit a bet from the customer to the race track, which is important because the pari-mutuel system allows the customer access to a range of betting opportunities, such as the exotics, that fixed odds cannot provide. “We are exercising our option to purchase the remaining 70 per cent of equity in AmTote, and that will give us control over one of the best companies in the global market. We are working actively with a number of the larger UK bookmakers to allow them to take pari-mutuel bets on our racing, which will enable them to offer exotic bets.”
De Francis is aware of Simon Bazalgette’s observation that UK bookmakers could get one over the betting exchanges from this channel, but he takes no side over the new betting phenomenon itself, saying: “The betting exchange business model is different from ours and it fulfils a market demand, but how we interact with them is a new issue. I don’t have a clear answer on how to work with or against them.”
However, he does have an unobscured view on the second distribution pathway – pictures, “which give the punter the ability to see the race live. People won’t bet as much if they can’t see the race, and that’s where Racing World is so important.” The third pathway involves data and information, which de Francis says is vital to give the punter everything he needs to make an informed wager. “Together they make up a three-legged stool,” he explains. “If one leg is not there, you’ll fall over. In North America we control all three, through AmTote, HRTV and Xpressbet, but in different markets it’s almost certain we will choose to partner others.”
Expansion remains on the cards for Magna, de Francis says, but while he is reluctant never to say ‘Never’, the US race-track portfolio appears to be full – with The Meadows harness racing venue almost sold – and there are no plans to extend beyond Austria’s Magna Racino in Europe.However, AmTote is steadily moving over; the New York Racing Association franchise, which is up for grabs next year, is being strenuously pursued, “with partners”, because “it’s an important part of the North American landscape and provides a very important piece of content,” and 500 slot machines are on standby for Gulfstream Park, as a forerunner of the model for other racecourse-casino sites.
Remington Park’s fortunes have already been transformed by the introduction of slots – much of the $12.5m, second-quarter revenue increase in the Magna’s southern US operations came from the introduction of the casino facility there last November - and de Francis points to improved revenues, better purses for owners and better quality racing as benefits that will flow from these and other developments in technology over the next five years. “There will be an enormous evolution in our business generally,” he forecasts. “We’re going to be in many more geographical markets, with much more content available in homes, so that people will be able to access the racing product like never before. We’re being presented with a unique set of challenges.”
THE MAGNA ENTERTAINMENT CORP. EMPIRE
Original parent company Magna International Inc. is a diversified automotive parts supplier, based in Canada and founded by Frank H Stronach, currently chairman and interim chief executive.
Stronach, born in Weiz, Austria, on 6 September 1932, emigrated to Canada in 1954 with a background in tool and machine engineering. He started his first tool and die company in 1957, branched out into automotive components and after a merger of companies MII was formed in 1973, and has grown into one of the world’s biggest of its kind.
Under reorganisation of the corporate structure in November 1999, the non-automotive businesses and real estates assets, including recently acquired race tracks, were transferred to Magna Entertainment Corp, which became a public company, quoted on Nasdaq and Toronto Stock Exchange in March 2000. Executive office in Aurora, Ontario, Canada, but incorporated in Delaware, USA.
RACE TRACKS
USA
Golden Gate Fields: Albany, California; acquired in Dec ’99; 105 racing days.
Great Lakes Downs: Muskegon, Michigan; acquired in Feb ’00; 120 racing days.
Gulfstream Park: Hallandale Beach, Florida; acquired Sept ’99; races during winter months.
Laurel Park: Laurel, Maryland; majority interest acquired with Pimlico Nov ’02; two near-four-month meetings at either end of year split by three-week August meeting.
Lone Star Park: Grand Prairie, Texas; acquired Oct ’02; thoroughbred racing April to mid-July, quarter horse racing October and November.
The Meadows: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; acquired April ’01; year-round harness racing on 210 days; in process of being sold for $200m.
Pimlico: Baltimore, Maryland; majority interest acquired with Laurel Park Nov ’02; 8-week spring meeting includes Preakness Stakes.
Portland Meadows: Portland, Oregon; operated by MEC since ’01; races from October to April.
Remington Park: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; thoroughbred racing August to November, quarter horse racing March to June; year-round simulcasting and casino.
Santa Anita Park: Arcadia, California; two seasons, 26 December to mid-April, six-week Oak Tree meeting in autumn.
Thistledown: North Randall, Ohio; acquired in Nov ’99; races 185 days March to December.
Europe
Magna Racino (Ebreichsdorf, Austria; built April ’01; thoroughbred and harness racing from April to November; year-round gaming and entertainment.
WAGERING
XpressBet: for US-based punters only, in states where legal; launched ’02; HQ in Washington, Pennsylvania; off-track betting facilities and national account wagering business, by telephone and internet; covers pari-mutuel betting from over 100 thoroughbred, harness and quarter horse tracks in North America and races in Australia, Dubai and South Africa; offers real-time audio and video streaming; bets co-mingled with existing race track pools. MagnaBet: European-based online, mobile phone and SMS service, for non-US customers; launched ’04; covers pari-mutuel betting on races from US, Austria, Germany and UK; offers real-time and recorded audio and video streaming; bets co-mingled with existing race track pools.
TELEVISION
HorseRacing TV (HRTV): owns and operates 24-hour network focused on horseracing; available to more than 11m cable and satellite viewers in US. The Racetrack Television Network (RTN): one-third interest in direct-to-home, subscription telecasting service from MEC and other tracks, made available to betting shops internationally. Racing World: one-third partner since January ’06 with Racing UK and Churchill Downs in international TV channel, currently broadcasting US racing to Britain and Ireland.
OTHERS
AmTote International: leading provider of totalisator services to international pari-mutuel industry; 30% interest bought for $3.8m in August ’03; notice given of intention to take up option on remaining 70% of equity in two stages, September and November ’06, for total of $14m. Thoroughbred training centres: San Diego, California; Palm Beach County, Florida; Baltimore, Maryland. Production facilities: for Streu-Fex, straw-based, horse bedding product, in North Carolina and Austria. Real estate: two golf courses (in Austria and Canada) and related recreational facilities; residential developments in US, Austria and Canada. Employs 5,300 through the group.
PARIMAX
Holding company formed in February ’06 to oversee development of XpressBet, HRTV, RaceONTV, Magnabet, AmTote, Racing World and PremiereWin (TV partner in central Europe).
The Lone Star phenomenon - built for big things
Maybe it’s because of the long, flat stretches of landscape that, when shimmering in the summer heat, have potential for mirage. Or maybe it’s just the capacious grandeur of a land vast as imagination. But whatever the reason, Texas always has inspired dreams and ideas so big and robust they couldn’t sit comfortably anywhere else.
Gary West (European Trainer - issue 7 - Spring 2004)
Maybe it’s because of the long, flat stretches of landscape that, when shimmering in the summer heat, have potential for mirage. Or maybe it’s just the capacious grandeur of a land vast as imagination. But whatever the reason, Texas always has inspired dreams and ideas so big and robust they couldn’t sit comfortably anywhere else.
To attempt anything on a small scale here is an insult to Texas heritage. And back in the mid-1990s, when developers and racing executives were planning a new racetrack for the Dallas area, a racetrack that was to be the jewel of Texas’ inchoate racing industry, they invested their plans with the dream of some day hosting the sport’s championship event. Everything was planned and created with the Breeders’ Cup championships in mind, recalled Corey Johnsen, the first general manager of Lone Star Park at Grand Prairie. Everything was built so that it could be stretched or expanded when necessary to Breeders’ Cup proportions.
And on October 30th 2004, in only its eighth season, Lone Star will become the youngest racetrack ever to be host to, as it’s now called, the Breeders’ Cup World Thoroughbred Championships. The eight races worth at least $14 million typically attract the most accomplished racehorses in North America, as well as many of the best from Europe. This year the Breeders’ Cup will take its excellence and its pageantry and its enduring significance to a new region, specifically to Grand Prairie, Texas.
But don’t misunderstand. Grand Prairie isn’t a hiccup of a town in a Larry McMurtry novel; it’s a fast-growing city in the geographic centre of a metropolitan area of five million people. To the east, about 12 miles distant, the Dallas skyline is visible from the upper levels of the Lone Star grandstand. A few miles west, near one of the nation’s most famous amusement parks, the Ballpark in Arlington is home to Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers. A little farther west sits Fort Worth, which claims to be the only city that owns a herd of longhorn steers, and who would dispute it? Here the West is said to begin. And about 10 miles north of Lone Star Park, the Dallas Cowboys, who have won more Super Bowls than any team in the history of professional football, pursue yet another while playing at Texas Stadium.
In the sports world Texas is probably best known for football and in the general awareness for cowboys of all sorts. But, again, don’t misunderstand. This country, tamed on horseback, was made for horse racing; both the sport and the region have a prodigious capacity for inspiring dreams. And indeed Texas has a rich, if disjointed, history of racing.
In the mid-1930s, Arlington Downs, located about where The Ballpark in Arlington now stands, was one of the most successful racetracks in America. Crowds of 30,000 filled the grandstand on weekends. Newspapers of the time speak of dignitaries from around the world attending Arlington Downs. In 1937, Ben Jones topped the trainers’ standings. Jones, of course, went on to win six Kentucky Derbies, the first in 1938 with Lawrin, who had raced at Arlington Down the previous season. Racetracks also prospered in Houston and San Antonio.
If politicians hadn’t intervened, Texas quite possibly would have become the horse racing capital of North America. But the state’s racing industry instead became the victim of an acrimonious political dispute. In 1938 it was banned in the state. And so for the next 50 years, Texans simply raced elsewhere.
In 1946, as America and indeed the world recovered from an epidemic hostility, a Texas-bred racehorse named Assault supplied the raw material for hope and myth. He was raw-boned and deformed, and he had the most unlikely provenance. Yet with a sweep of the Triple Crown, the little chestnut known as the "clubfooted comet" became a prominent character in the eternally appealing story of determination's triumph.
And for Texans, he was much more; he was their representative.
"The victory of Assault in the Kentucky Derby," wrote an editorialist of the time, "is but one example, if example is needed, that this great southwestern section of America is on the march and will be heard from in increasing proportions in every phase of American activity, and none more strongly than in the field of the horse."Assault was bred, born and raised on a vast expanse once called the "Wild Horse Desert" but later famous as the King Ranch. When he was a weanling, he stepped on a surveyor's spike. It ran through the frog, of the right
front foot and out the hoof wall. The injury left the foot deformed and the horse crippled.
And so even years later Assault walked with a conspicuous limp and would sometimes stumble and fall when going to the racetrack. But once there, he ran
with surprising grace and efficiency and, most of all, courage. Perhaps that was the source of his charisma. Overcoming his misfortune and his lameness to become
the seventh horse ever to win the Triple Crown, he became a popular hero and for many an embodiment of courageous spirit.
After the Triple Crown, Assault was "the main topic" of conversation throughout Texas, according to a contemporary newspaper account. So popular was he that his
admirers developed "some fantastic schemes" to satisfy "the public's clamor" and allow "the rank and file of Texans who were not able to witness the 3-year-old
in action . . . to catch a glimpse" of him.
People petitioned Gov. Coke Stevenson to issue a proclamation honouring Assault and making his jockey, New York native Warren Mehrtens, an honorary Texan.
Sentiment grew for returning horse racing to the state. There was even a plan to raise $100,000 for "a special race, without betting, of course," intended to attract Assault.
"Everybody knew about Assault," remembered Monte Moncrief, who at the time was a Texas A&M student but who later became the King Ranch veterinarian. "We were highly proud. Just as Dallas is proud of the Cowboys, Texas was proud of Assault. . . . When Assault won the Triple Crown, it was like Joe Louis beating Max Schmeling."
Yes, although no horses raced in Texas for more than 50 years – not with legal betting anyway – the state still can boast of a rich racing history that’s fraught with achievement. But most Texans, such as Hall of Fame jockeys Bill Shoemaker and Jerry Bailey and Hall of Fame trainer Max Hirsch, had to leave the state to pursue their racing careers.
Even without racing at home, Texans remained prominent in the sport, developing successful breeding farms in Kentucky and campaigning stakes winners from New York to California and from Ascot to Chantilly. Throughout the 1980s, racetracks in neighbouring states, such as Louisiana Downs and Oaklawn Park, prospered in part because of the many Texans that regularly travelled three-to-six hours to attend the races.
Racing returns
Then in 1987, the state’s politicians, who for 50 years had kept the sport underfoot, finally turned the issue over to the voters, who in a statewide referendum overwhelmingly welcomed horse racing back to Texas.
Problems persisted, however. The Texas Racing Commission, which regulates the sport in the state, could have produced a new translation of the Bible in less time than it took to write the state’s rules of racing. An onerous pari-mutuel tax virtually precluded the substantial investment necessary to develop any large racetrack, and so the first racetracks to open in Texas during this modern period were insignificant.
Once the tax was lowered, the Commission dragged its tentative feet in awarding licenses. The Dallas area was a proven market for the sport, having supplied about 50 percent of the attendance at nearby Louisiana Downs for years. A Dallas racetrack was destined to stand at the centre of the state’s racing industry. But the Commission put off awarding a license in the Dallas area, deciding first to license racetracks in Houston and then San Antonio.
Finally, the Commission awarded the coveted Dallas area license to Lone Star Park over three other applicants. The citizens of Grand Prairie had voted for a half-cent sales tax to help finance the $100 million Lone Star project. Nevertheless, as the new racetracks in Houston and San Antonio struggled, Lone Star developers met with considerable scepticism from banks asked to provide additional financing. But in 1995, famed real estate developer Trammell Crown and his son Harlan injected $10 million into the project. The state’s horsemen pledged another $5 million. And the dirt soon began flying at the Lone Star site.
On a Thursday afternoon in April of 1997, 60 years after the closing of Arlington Downs, a crowd of 21,754 filled Lone Star’s Spanish baroque grandstand and welcomed major league racing back to North Texas. A couple days later, Bob Baffert, the leading trainer in the nation, saddled the winners of two stakes races, Anet in the Lone Star Derby and Isitingood in the Texas Mile. Skip Away, who finished third in the inaugural Texas Mile, would go on to become Horse of the Year.
For its first season, Lone Star averaged nearly 10,000 in daily attendance. The average daily handle of $2.39 million was a record for an inaugural season by any North American racetrack built since 1970. No little house on the prairie, it immediately became the success story many had anticipated for decades; it became, in other words, the racetrack Texans had envisioned when they voted in 1987 to bring racing back to the state.
Since then, most, if not all, of the nation’s leading jockeys have competed at Lone Star, many of them in the annual National Thoroughbred Racing Association All-Star Jockey Championship. And the nation’s leading trainers – such as Bobby Frankel, Bill Mott, Richard Mandella, Todd Pletcher and Steve Asmussen have raced their horses in Grand Prairie. In fact, Asmussen, who currently sits atop the North American standings in both victories and earnings, is Lone Star’s all-time leading trainer. And many of North America’s leading horses have raced around the Lone Star oval, including Congaree, Real Quiet, Answer Lively, Hal’s Hope, Sir Bear, Bluesthestandard and Hallowed Dreams.
Since the track opened, more than 8.8 million people have attended Lone Star and have wagered more than $1.7 billion.
In 2002, Magna Entertainment, which also operates Santa Anita and Gulfstream Park, purchased Lone Star. Since then, in anticipation of the Breeders’ Cup, three new barns have been built, including a 96-stall quarantine barn. When nearly $8 million in capital improvements are completed, the winner’s circle and paddock areas will be expanded and the seating augmented to accommodate a crowd of 50,000. A new banquet room is also under construction.
Lone Star is accepting ticket applications for the Breeders’ Cup at lonestarpark.com. The deadline for applying is June 4.
What you need to know
Lone Star’s regular season runs from April to mid-July. But to accommodate the Breeders’ Cup, the track will have a special championship season, starting Oct. 1 and continuing through Oct. 31.
During October, the North Texas weather is like Goldilocks’ favourite bowl of porridge, neither too hot nor too cold. The average high temperature for the month is 78, with an average low of 56. The average high on Oct. 30, by the way, is 72, and the average low 51. The record high for October is 90, recorded back in 1951. In other words, if you endured the weather in Southern California this past year, you’ll love Texas in October.
Lone Star will offer 14 stakes races, in addition to the Breeders’ Cup events, during its October season. The opening weekend will feature stakes races that could serve as Breeders’ Cup preps – the Silver Spur for 2-year-old fillies, the Middleground for 2-year-old colts and geldings, and the Alysheba for 3-year-old sprinters. The $250,000 Lone Star Derby and the $150,000 Stonerside Stakes for 3-year-old fillies will be run Oct. 29.
The Dallas area is one of the most dynamic sports markets in America, with professional basketball, soccer, hockey, football and baseball teams. Moreover, a series of festive events, including concerts, are planned leading up to the Breeders’ Cup.
Around the ovals
Lone Star has a one-mile dirt track, with chutes for 1 ¼-mile and seven-furlong races. Inside the track, as is typical with American racetracks, is a seven-furlong turf course, with a chute angling across the infield.
When the track first opened and its turf was immature, horses with early speed enjoyed considerable success. Because of that, the turf course developed a reputation for favouring speed. And that reputation, although confuted by hard evidence, lingers. Over the last four years, half of the 480 turf races around two turns have been won by horses that rallied – that is, by horses that were more than four lengths behind the early leader. And only 16 percent of the turf races have been won by horses on or near the early lead.
The main track, on the other hand, seems to offer an advantage to tactical speed. The race is not always to the swift, as the prophet pointed out, but at Lone Star a modicum of early speed generally proves valuable. Horses that have sufficient speed to gain an early advantage or to race within a half-length of the early lead win more than a third of the sprints. But the most effective style is stalking – that is, racing close to the early leaders, within four lengths, and then pouncing in the stretch. Late-running types win about 18 percent of the races.
In two-turn races on the main track, the victories spread out somewhat more evenly among the three running styles. But stalkers again tend to have an advantage, winning nearly 40 percent of the races. Horses that rally from more than four lengths back win about 26 percent of the two-turn races.
Few places in America have packaged the joy and excitement of racing more effectively. Lone Star quite simply is a fun place to attend the races. And on Oct. 30, it’ll become the host racetrack for the sport’s championship event. Lone Star and indeed all of Texas racing could be very much like the diminutive colt who 58 years ago outran early difficulties to attain enduring glory.