|
Post by racinggal on Aug 24, 2013 17:29:09 GMT -5
Oh Jon - Please stop embarassing me! But - Congrats to Mr. Handsome Coach! I played a$1 Exacta 5-All. I would have never picked the 6! It's my lucky day!
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 24, 2013 17:56:52 GMT -5
Jon,
("We really need to find a way to have Nancy meet Coach")
He's not shy, nor is he difficult to pick out. If he has some horses on the card he'll be on the first floor of the Saratoga clubhouse near the finish line. I've seen him many times.
QH, which post are you talking about "you believe that?"?
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 24, 2013 18:22:51 GMT -5
that baffert scratched because of the post? he scratched because he'd rather have a good jock he's familiar with riding GOD then having be put in the position of having to explain to all the media types and women why he didn't put Chantal back up. liason had no chance anyway. this way he doesn't have to even consider her.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 24, 2013 18:32:03 GMT -5
From DRF today:
Bob Baffert trains both Game On Dude and Liaison, but they have different ownership. According to Arnold Zetcher, who owns Liaison, he and Baffert had been thinking of scratching from the Pacific Classic since the race was drawn on Wednesday night, when Liaison landed post 2 in a field of 13 for the 1 1/4-mile race. Instead of running there, Zetcher said Liaison would instead go in the $90,000 Harry Brubaker Stakes on Aug. 31. “Right after the draw, Bob and I started talking about whether to run. We didn’t like him drawing inside, where he could be squeezed,” Zetcher said Saturday morning. “What happened with Rosario and Garcia was almost unrelated to this. This decision really was a separate decision. We’re doing what’s best at this time for Liaison. This is the right move.”
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 24, 2013 18:50:09 GMT -5
like I said............. and you believe that?
|
|
cait
Active Member
Posts: 3,821
|
Post by cait on Aug 24, 2013 18:51:23 GMT -5
that would be the bobby pr firm back at work! agree with wiz - liason had no shot anyway - don't think it had anything to do with chantal - am sure she's been banned by the botox babe lol
|
|
Jon
Administrator
Posts: 4,669
|
Post by Jon on Aug 25, 2013 0:57:05 GMT -5
The NYT covered the Travers, but, it's way down oin the sports page!
In Travers, Colt Finally Attracts Attention of People Besides His Trainer By JOE DRAPE NYT
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — No one was paying attention to D. Wayne Lukas and his colt as the spring turned to summer. If Will Take Charge had distinguished himself at all, it was for competing in all three legs of the Triple Crown. But he did not perform very well: he was beaten by a combined 45 ½ lengths in those American Classics.
In fact, any time anyone stopped by Lukas’s barn this past week, the talk turned to Oxbow, the big horse in the barn who won the Preakness Stakes but is sidelined with an injury. No, this 144th running of the Travers Stakes had more prominent horses hogging the spotlight.
The Kentucky Derby winner, Orb, returned from a Maryland horse spa and was looking better than ever. A speedy colt named Verrazano had recovered from his sole loss, at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May, and looked like a worldbeater in winning two races, including the $1 million Haskell Invitational last month on the Jersey Shore. Finally, there was Palace Malice, who followed his long-shot Belmont Stakes victory with an emphatic one here in the Jim Dandy Stakes.
Lukas, however, was paying attention to Will Take Charge. He believed the colt was talented and thought that perhaps he — a Hall of Famer trainer — was doing something wrong.
For the Jim Dandy, Lukas removed the blinkers that Will Take Charge wore to keep him focused. The colt rumbled home in second. Still, Lukas decided that Will Take Charge needed a more profound change. He needed some softer hands on the colt’s reins, a new seat in the saddle.
Lukas wanted someone who could sit like a hummingbird so Will Take Charge would relax, but someone who also possessed enough power to run the long-striding colt into a steamroller coming down the stretch.
Enter Luis Saez, a 21-year-old Panamanian who came to New York in April from Florida. He has been turning a few knowledgeable heads on the backside for his attention to detail as much as his ability.
“I decided to take a chance on an up-and-coming rider,” said Lukas, who will turn 78 on Sept. 2. “I thought he fit this particular horse.”
When the gates opened on Saturday, the only people paying attention to this bold move were those with a few bucks on Will Take Charge, a 9-to-1 shot. Three posts over, Palace Malice stumbled out of the gate and missed the break badly. Instead, a horse who most observers thought would not figure in the race, Moreno, led the field of nine into the backstretch. His odds were 31 to 1.
Verrazano gave chase, as did Orb, while Will Take Charge galloped along in midpack. Far behind, Mike Smith was trying to relax Palace Malice yet move him along. “All I could do is sit back there, creep up, creep up, creep up and see if I could get him there,” Smith said.
As the field hit the turn, Jose Ortiz seemed to have Moreno in a nice, steady gear, and the challengers immediately behind him were falling back, the most prominent among them Verrazano.
“He didn’t really put in much effort,” Verrazano’s rider, John Velazquez, said.
Inside, however, the race was starting to become interesting as Orb skimmed the rail and took aim at Moreno. He, too, had a new pilot. His regular rider, Joel Rosario, broke his foot Friday and was replaced by Jose Lezcano. Lezcano thought he had the winner beneath him. But only for a moment.
“At the quarter pole, he accelerated, but the other horse kept going, too,” Lezcano said.
In the clubhouse, Lukas was wondering if his rider change may have been too much. He had approached Saez in the morning with a very specific warning.
“I told him these are quality horses, and when they get on the lead and start cruising, they won’t stop,” Lukas said. “This is not the third race on Wednesday. Don’t wait too long to make your run.”
When Moreno hit the stretch, Will Take Charge was in third behind Orb. Saez flipped Will Take Charge’s power switch, and the colt looked as if he were bounding along on a trampoline. He made up two lengths in an instant, but Ortiz had Moreno dug in. Will Take Charge got to his hip. His neck. His head. Finally, at the wire, Will Take Charge edged ahead by a nose.
“Brutal, huh?” the trainer of Moreno, Eric Guillot, said. “Last jump.”
Even in defeat, however, Guillot marveled at the ride Ortiz gave Moreno.
“He couldn’t have done any better — stay in the three-path, stay off the rail, make them come to you, don’t let them go inside you, don’t let them pinch you on the rail,” Guillot said. “The kid rode him just like I told him.”
Lukas and Will Take Charge’s owner, Willis Horton, were rewarded for their patience. The final time of 2 minutes 2.68 seconds was good enough to earn Horton a $600,000 first-place check, while the backers of Will Take Charge were rewarded with $21.20 for a $2 bet.
“When you get those big, long-striding colts that are having a growth spurt in May and June, they take a little time finding themselves,” Lukas said. “This one is finding himself pretty good now.”
|
|