Forster reflects on training Cal Chrome’s sire
With all the success that Kentucky Derby winner California Chrome has achieved in his
sophomore season, his sire Lucky Pulpit also has been enjoying a significant
amount of attention.
Lucky Pulpit was bred, raced and continues to be owned outright
by Larry and Marianne Williams of Parma, Idaho. In 2004 the Williamses sent Lucky
Pulpit to Churchill Downs-based trainer Grant Forster for his four-year-old
campaign.
Forster talked about his time with Lucky Pulpit and some similarities
to the 2014 Kentucky Derby winner.
“Lucky Pulpit was a really smart horse,” Forster said. “Obviously California
Chrome is very intelligent.
“Lucky Pulpit had figured out how to play with us and
make our lives difficult at some point, but he was a really talented horse. A
lot of people wondered why we kept sprinting him on the grass, but he had been
doing well at the time with that so there was no need to do anything else. He
was a very pretty horse just like California Chrome.”
Lucky Pulpit made eight starts under Forster, six of which were on the turf and
all were between five and seven furlongs.
“I didn’t think there would be any distance limitations with California Chrome,”
Forster said. “Obviously people looking at Lucky Pulpit’s form were somewhat
questionable of that.
“The best race I had him for was probably the Smile Sprint at Arlington on the
grass. He had a couple other races in some of those grass sprints where he had a
couple tough trips and got in some traffic trouble. I remember the Keeneland
race (a sixth-place finish in the 2005 Woodford Stakes) where he
wasn’t beaten by too many lengths, but just had a tough trip that day. He was
just a horse with a ton of personality, a really neat character.”
Lucky Pulpit entered stud in 2007 at Harris Farms near Coalinga, California, where he
still stands. Forster was delightfully surprised to see the horse he had
trained sire a Kentucky Derby winner.
“You really don’t expect anything like that,” Forster said. “His owners sent him
to me as a four-year-old with the goal of winning a stake because they thought he
had a good enough pedigree and was already graded-placed. They thought he had a
good chance to at least stand at stud somewhere like California where they have
a lot of horses. So we accomplished that goal anyway.”
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