On the morning after his dramatic, last-gasp victory over
favored Game On Dude in the 139th running of the Grade 1 Clark Handicap, Willis D. Horton’s Will Take Charge
was accepting peppermints from visitors and generally looking as if he was ready
and eager for his next racing assignment.
Friday’s narrow victory in which the three-year-old son of Unbridled’s Song powered through the final sixteenth of a mile to edge Game On
Dude and other accomplished older rivals by a head, ended any suspense in regard
to his chances of earning the Eclipse Award for champion three-year-old of 2013.
The Clark was the finale of an old school racing campaign
for the D. Wayne Lukas-trained star that started in January with a victory in
the Smarty Jones Stakes at Oaklawn Park and ended with the Clark, his 11th race of the season.
In between, he won the Rebel at Oaklawn, muddled
through the Kentucky Derby and Triple Crown series in which he had little
impact, and launched a second-half surge on the year that includes victories in
the Travers, Pennsylvania Derby and heartbreaking nose runner-up finish to
Mucho Macho Man in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita.
When he added the exclamation point on his late season rush by overtaking
Horse of the Year contender Game On Dude in the Clark, conventional wisdom
leaned toward an Eclipse Award for top three-year-old being a certainty for Will
Take Charge. Bob Baffert, trainer of Game On Dude, even suggested after the
Clark that Will Take Charge should be one of those under consideration for
“Horse of the Year.”
Although he had been the center of big event and very
significant win just hours earlier, Lukas said his colt was very well on
Saturday morning.
“He’s very good,” the veteran condition declared. “It’s amazing how composed
and everything he was in the winner’s circle. He wasn’t blowing much, or
anything. I think he struggled with the racetrack a little bit. But maybe the
others did, too.”
The victory improved Will Take Charge’s record for his
sophomore season to 11-5-2-0 with earnings just shy of $3 million at
$2,960,977.
Lukas smiled at the notion of how close his durable colt
had come to a $3 million season, and suggested, in jest, that he might have one
more race in him.
“Well, Turfway’s about to open,” he quipped. “There’s always the Holiday
Inaugural.”
That $50,000 race at the Northern Kentucky track is clearly
not on the agenda for Will Take Charge, but Lukas was more confident on Saturday
that the improving chestnut would return to competition in 2014.
While Horton continues to negotiate on a deal for stallion
duty for Will Take Charge when the colt ends his racing career, his Hall of Fame
trainer is increasingly optimistic that fans will see the colt on the track
again.
“We’ve got four farms that are very strong, interested
players,” Lukas explained. “What I think is gonna happen is either they’ll go
partners (with Horton) and run him next year, or they’ll tie him up for the
breeding shed and run him next year. I think Willis wants to run him next year.
At first there was talk about an outright sale and take him to the breeding
shed, but I don’t think that is going to happen.”
Taking that optimistic approach, Lukas said Will Take
Charge will take it easy for a while and he would look for a race, probably in
March, to launch a 2014 run for the colt. Until then, the glow of the sizzling
stretch run that saw Will Take Charge collar Game On Dude in the last instant
will be a moment to savor.
“It was a real good race for fans,” Lukas stated. “With those two good horses
and the way it came down, it was really good.”
The Clark victory, which was the first stakes victory for
Lukas at Churchill Downs since 2009, makes the year of the resurgence of the
78-year-old Lukas all the more impressive. In all of Lukas’ stellar seasons in
which he has topped the earnings list or trained one or more champions, he has
never quite had a year like 2013.
“I think we did more with less than maybe most of the
guys,” Lukas said. “Todd (Pletcher) had a great year and (Charlie) LoPresti was
strong. But when you consider what we started with in the barn and look at our
year, we had some very good days. But we had a lot of gaps in there between the
big races.
“We didn’t have much in our barn to really say too much about. But I
think to develop those three-or-four that we did — (Preakness winner) Oxbow,
Will Take Charge and (two-year-old Hopeful winner) Strong Mandate — it’s not a
bad run.”
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