Little: Wicked Strong has the pedigree to get the Derby
distance
Centennial Farms’ Wood Memorial winner Wicked Strong galloped 1 5/8 miles Wednesday morning during the 8:30
a.m. (EDT) window reserved for Derby
and Oaks runners at Churchill Downs.
“He’s as good as I could hope,” trainer Jimmy Jerkens said. “I still don’t know how he is going to be on Derby
Day, but I’m happy with how he is so far. Nothing else has bothered him.
There’s a lot activity and that hasn’t bothered him at all.”
There are 28 members of the Wicked Strong partnership group. Twenty of them are new to racing ownership.
Centennial Farms was formed in 1982 by Donald Little Sr. and campaigned a number of top horses, including
Colonial Affair, winner of the Belmont Stakes, Whitney and Jockey
Club Gold Cup; sprint champion Rubiano and Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile
winner Corinthian. After his father died in 2012, Donald Little
Jr. restructured the company with partners Peter and Peggy
Horvitz of Seattle and opened it to smaller investors.
Wicked Strong
was part of the first three-horse group purchased by the revamped
Centennial Farms at the 2012 Keeneland September yearling sale. They purchased him for $375,000.
“When they brought him out of the stall and stood him up, he was one of those that instantly sort of caught our eye,”
Little said. “What is that exactly? Well, he had a great presence. He
stood over a good amount of ground. A very, very impressive shoulder
angle.
“I put quite a bit of emphasis on their eye and he was very attentive, very aware of everything going on around him and
had a wonderful stride in his walk. He had that shoulder angle
and he would reach out. It’s very obvious and you could see in
prominently in the Wood. When Rajiv (Maragh) got him straightened out,
literally his whole body dropped about a foot. He lowered in his running
style and his stride lengthened about three feet.”
The other important element in the selection was the colt’s pedigree. He is by Hard Spun and is out of a mare sired by
1999 Derby winner Charismatic. Centennial’s goal is to purchase
horses with pedigrees that indicate they would be suited for
classic races on dirt like the Kentucky Derby.
“It’s definitely a distance pedigree,” Little said. “His
daddy was second in the Derby. Yeah, he won the King’s Bishop, but he was able to get a distance being by Danzig and the
mother was by Charismatic.
“He trained like that, right from the get-go at the farm.
He was the one guy in the group of yearlings we had in 2012
that kind of said, ‘I’m the kingpin here.’ And he was right from the
beginning sort of the favorite of the group.”
The colt received his name following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. The term Boston Strong quickly became
popular as a show of support for the victims. Centennial is based
in Beverly, Massachusetts, and Little said he tried to rename the
two-year-old colt Moyne Spun as Boston Strong, but it already had been
claimed by another New England partnership company, Sovereign Stable
of Manchester, New Hamphsire. Boston Strong, a New York-bred son of
Pioneerof the Nile, in training at Belmont Park, but has not made his
first career start.
Little decided to go with the suggestion of a friend,
Wicked Strong. In New England slang, wicked adds emphasis to
adjectives: wicked cool, wicked fast, wicked funny, wicked strong. The
28-person partnership decided to contribute a portion of the colt’s
earnings to the One Fund, which aids victims of the bombing.
“When we named him, it was more out of anger,” Little said. “Like Sovereign, we didn’t do it as a promotional
thing. It’s more of a reaction to what had happened and what was going
on in the city with the intention of something good coming out of
it and being able to donate some money to the One Fund and be able
to help the families and the victims. Here we are.”
Jerkens will be saddling his first Derby starter. He was working for his father, Hall of Famer H. Allen Jerkens, in
1992 when Devil His Due ran in the Derby. One part of his Derby experience — the parade of horses from the stable area
through the first turn to the paddock — remains a vivid memory.
“I’ll never forget the walk over there,” Jerkens said. “I’ll
never forget it as long as I live. I never saw anything like it.
People are just up and around you. It was incredible.”
Jerkens smiled when someone asked if he was ready to make the walk with his own horse.
“I guess as ready as I’ll ever be,” he said.
Multiple Grade 3 hero Samraat had an eventful visit to the track Wednesday morning where he
galloped 1 3/8 miles under exercise rider Rodney Paine.
“He was very sharp,” trainer Rick Violette said. “He had a horse doing a two-minute lick coming at him when he turned
corner coming on the racetrack and almost lost his rider. It was
all of four seconds, but…”
Violette said his colt reared, ducked and tried to get away from the pony during that brief but frightening event. He
then went on for gallop around the track for Paine.
“He moved great, was very sharp, handled the racetrack and was happy to be here,” Violette said.
“No changes
necessary.”
Violette said he will have the Noble Causeway colt school in the gate Thursday and perhaps again Friday.
Samraat won the first five starts of his career and was second to Wicked Strong in the Wood Memorial. In the
Withers and Gotham, both Grade 3 races at Aqueduct, he engaged in
extended duels with Uncle Sigh, who also is in the Derby. He showed
grit to finish well in the Wood and Violette likes bringing a
battle-tested runner to the Derby.
“I think it’s invaluable,” he said. “That he has won is
great, but there is no question that he has been looked in the eye
and has had the right response. And they are long drives, too.
“In the Wood he passed a couple of little internal tests
that he hadn’t been confronted with before. We’ve stalked but
we’ve been in the clear and for the first time down the backside he
had horses in front of him, horses outside of him, horses inside of him.
You would be amazed how that dynamic makes 17-hand horses look like Shetland ponies. All of a sudden they are not the dominant
horses. It wasn’t a factor.
“The other little battle was at the half-mile pole. We kind
of set sail and Kristo was on the outside of him and it took a
good eighth of a mile to shake him. He was off the bridle and riding hard
to get away from him so we could focus on Social Inclusion.”
Samraat did make up the ground, but the Wood favorite wasn’t done.
“Social Inclusion kind of busts chops and opens up two at the head of the lane,” Violette said, noting how that move
can discourage the competition, but Samraat kept trying.
“He finally changed leads in the shadow of the wire and nailed him for second,” Violette said.
“A lot of those
little educational tests he was not only was confronted with but passed them.
Coming into his next race you’re not going to be that concerned
and he’ll deal with it even better.”
In other Derby news:
Wildcat Red galloped 1 1/2 miles under exercise rider Juan Belmonte
Wednesday morning at Churchill Downs.
The son of D’wildcat, who won the Fountain of Youth and Hutcheson, will be saddled by Jose Garoffalo, a Gulfstream Park-based trainer who never has started a horse
in the Kentucky Derby.
“I’m not nervous. I’m very optimistic. I’m a little bit
surprised that I’m not nervous, but I’m a pretty calm person,” said
Garoffalo, who began his training career in his native Venezuela
before venturing to the United Stakes in 1999.
Garoffalo’s calm demeanor before the Derby may be attributed in part to the success he had at the highest
level in Venezuela.
“I have experience in big races. In Venezuela, trainers are
very used to being in contact with the media — TV, radio, the
press is always at the track. We’re pretty much used to that,”
Garoffalo explained. “And I’ve been involved in the big races there.”
In 1991, Garoffalo saddled his father, Jose Garoffalo Sr.’s, champion homebred filly, Climalba, for a victory against
the boys in the 1991 Clasico Simon Bolivar.
“It’s Venezuela’s biggest race,” he said.
Garoffalo, who completed law school before deciding to dedicate himself to training, always had a goal to venture
to the United States to train Thoroughbreds.
“It was a personal challenge to prove that I could make it here,” he said. “I
think it was a good decision.”
Garoffalo, who settled in South Florida, became a U.S.
citizen four years ago.
Calvin Borel is no stranger to big race days either and the Hall of Fame
rider, who is seeking his fourth Kentucky Derby victory, is high on the
chances of Ride On Curlin.
“I like him a lot,” Borel said Wednesday morning of the Arkansas Derby runner-up.”I think he’s coming up to
the race at the best time, peaking a little bit. I think every race up
to this race, he always had a little excuse. He wasn’t exactly ready, or,
you know, had a bad trip or something. I think he’s peaking at the right
time. He sure is training good.”
Borel, who won the Kentucky Derby on Street Sense in 2007, Mine That Bird in 2009 and Super Saver in 2010, said
that Ride On Curlin has the mental make-up to handle Derby Day.
“He’s pretty smart,” Borel asserted. “He’s not perfect at the barn. You don’t want to pet him or nothing like that. But
once he gets on the racetrack, he’s all right. He’s a hard horse to get
along with at the barn. He’ll bite you and stuff like that. But once he
gets on the track, he’s all business.”
Trainer Billy Gowan said he has no concerns about Ride On Curlin’s mind.
“He’s got the mind to handle it, believe me,” Gowan stated. “He’s got the perfect mind for this because
that’s something you can’t train in them. They’ve either got it or
they don’t. He’s had it from Day One.
“When I ran him in the Iroquois as a two-year-old, it was night racing. They had live bands, people everywhere.
Never turned a hair. I took him to the paddock (On Tuesday) and
schooled him, never turned a hair. That’s the least of my worries is his mind.”
The 1 1/4 miles shouldn’t be a problem for Ride On Curlin, either, according
to Borel
“I don’t think it’ll bother
him,” the reinsman said. “Sit and wait. Sit and wait. Sit and wait. I think the more you sit and
wait, he’ll go as far as you want him to go.
“He’s a smart horse. If he does how I think he’s going to
do — everything right — we’ll be all right.”
Ride On Curlin galloped Wednesday under exercise rider Bryan Beccia.
All that’s left to do, Gowan said, is to bring Ride On Curlin to the race
healthy and sound.
“Every morning, I check his legs,” Gowan said.” You always hold your breath when you check his
legs. Man, they’ve been cold and tight. I’m tickled to death.”
Pablo Del Monte was vanned from Keeneland to Churchill Downs Wednesday, arriving shortly before the 8 a.m.
deadline set for Kentucky Derby entrants to be on the grounds.
The Wesley Ward trainee sat 21st in the points standings when entries were taken Wednesday morning and will be the only
horse on the Derby also-eligible list. He could draw into the field
in the event of a scratch prior to Friday at 9 a.m.
Due to an unexpected delay in his morning commute, the son of Giant’s Causeway didn’t go to the track with other
Kentucky Derby candidates at the appointed 8:30 a.m. time.
Pablo Del Monte went to the track at 9:45 a.m. for a jog around Churchill with jockey Jeffrey Sanchez aboard.
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