BREEDERS’ CUP FRIDAY
THEY SAID IT
NOVEMBER 2, 2012
“It’s such a matter of pride to have a horse of that quality and
obviously to have the quality of people that I have to surround her and to work
with her and, you know, we’ve had a lot of confidence in her from the beginning
and to bring her back in this race is — I thought she could do it again if
things went well and they did. We had a little bit of a rough trip from New
York, when we left, trying to beat the hurricane out of there, they had to load
in the middle of the night and she got excited backing into her stall on the
plane and she scraped herself up and that caused me worry this week. But, whew, I can tell you I feel a whole lot better right now.”
—trainer Bill
Mott after ROYAL DELTA captured the Breeders’ Cup Ladies’ Classic for the second
straight year
“It’s a real
sigh of relief and a big joy to watch her run and to have the opportunity to run
her again next year and we’re going to take on some big boys if we go back to
Dubai. But I think we’re up to the challenge and whatever happens, happens, and she
has done her job for us so far and she has always been a good representative and
good servant for us.”
—Mott
“You think sometimes that you learn everything about a horse after you’ve run
’em two or three times and that’s not true, you keep learning and learn and go
learning, you know, until they retire. You’re always constantly trying to tweak things a little bit and make
adjustments but without making a complete turn-around. We got
her there today.”
—Mott speaking
about Royal Delta’s loss to Love and Pride in the Personal Ensign
“I believe you’ve got to run these horses. We’ve got ’em to run ’em and enjoy
them and if you’re afraid to get beat you’re going to have an awful frustrating
time in this business and obviously we do get frustrated when we loose but you
cannot be afraid to. I see people that only want to run when they
think they have to win, and I don’t think that’s the case. You can’t always have
a champion like Royal Delta and you’ve got to give them all a chance to develop
and sometimes that’s going to take a few races where they’re not going to be
winning races. “
—Mott
on not being afraid to be beat
“It’s thrilling. We came close in ’05 with Gorella (third in the
Mile) and maybe we will get another shot tomorrow with Noble Tune (in the
Juvenile Turf), but this is a special horse. You know how you fall in love with
them and she just — I can’t remember, I think she has been out of the money just
a few times. She is all heart.”
—owner Martin
Schwartz on his first Breeders’ Cup victory with ZAGORA in the Filly & Mare
Turf
“I never had a problem with that. Chad and I discuss things and we made a
decision — at first we were going to take her to the Spinster because he said
when she was at Keeneland she trained beautifully over the Poly. Then I said why
don’t we try the Flower Bowl at a mile and a quarter, so we feel confident she
can get the distance. And as you know it was a bog that day and she lost in the
last few jumps, and that gave us total confidence.”
—Schwartz on
any concerns about Zagora’s handling 1 1/4 miles
“He’s absolutely remarkable. When he tells me the horse is ready to run, they
never run poorly. They just don’t — he’s just a great talent. I’ve never seen
anything like it. He is a meticulous guy and he’s an Ivy-leaguer, and there
aren’t too many of those around.”
—Schwartz on
up-and-coming young trainer Chad Brown
“When Javier rode (rival) Winter Memories (to win the Diana),
Zagora was coming off a splint issue that summer, and they made the call to put
Javier on Winter Memories and left me at the altar. So I put Javier on probation
for a few months and brought him back.”
—Schwartz on how
Javier Castellano lost the mount on Zagora to Ramon Dominguez, who rode her in
her past three starts
“The interesting thing was Ramon and Javier are very close
friends, and in the last few weeks, I looked at all of Zagora’s tapes and I felt
Javier was a half a length better on her than Ramon. And I love Ramon, and I
told him I would pay part of the jockey’s fee when I took him off because I had
such an extraordinary feeling for him, but it’s just part of the team.”
—Schwartz on how
Castellano regained the mount for the Breeders’ Cup
“She is spectacular. I will show you a picture of her on my
phone. We were just in Keeneland a few weeks ago. She is at Dell Ridge Farm. Mr.
Yoshida bred her to Smart Strike, and I’ve tried to drive a van up there and
sneak her off the property, but I haven’t had any luck.”
—Schwartz
on last year’s beaten Filly & Mare Turf favorite, champion Stacelita, whom he
later sold to Teruya Yoshida
“I don’t know about that. I know that her numbers as a two year
old are — I don’t know if anyone has ever done what she did with a
two-year-old, so I
frankly, from as a prejudice point of view, consider her the best two-year-old
filly in the country and maybe in the world.”
—trainer Richard
Mandella when asked if BEHOLDER should be named champion two-year-old filly
after winning the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies
“About 100 yards out I was concerned, but I saw her dig in and
you could see the look in her eye that she wasn’t going to give up.”
—Mandella on when
he saw Executiveprivilege go after
Beholder in the Juvenile Fillies stretch
“The horses always have to tell you. You don’t always want to
listen, but they’re trying to tell us.”
—Mandella on
deciding whether Beholder would go in the Juvenile Fillies or Juvenile Sprint
“When I turned for home I just automatically told her ‘let’s go’ and when I
started to tell her that, she started getting a little attitude with me and I
didn’t have time to start trying different things to try to get her back up on
her feet. I gave her a couple of spanks left-handed and by the time I got into her a
couple of times and told her ‘let’s go,’ her stride kept shortening. But then
all of the sudden the horses from behind started to catch up and it revived her
and she quit paying attention to me and was paying to them and when she was
paying attention to them her true grit of wanting to win the race, her
competitiveness got back up into her bloodstream and played off.”
—jockey
Garrett Gomez on his ride aboard Beholder
“I don’t speak any Spanish and they don’t speak any English and
it came together in a nice way and we have had a lot of laughs and I’ve had some
great translators, one being my agent and obviously Mr. (Breeders’ Cup South
American representative John) Fulton, thank you for letting me be part of this.”
—jockey Aaron Gryder on
dealing with the Argentinean connections of Marathon winner CALIDOSCOPIO
“We were shouting for Argentina. That’s what you do when you win
something.”
—trainer
Guillermo Frenkel describing what the
connections of Marathon winner Calidoscopio were singing in the winner’s circle
“It’s not real difficult, especially with two-year-olds, to
shorten horses up and get them to accelerate in sprint. The hard thing is to get
the two-year-olds that be going six furlongs, to get them to
stretch out and do over a mile. This is not that big of a deal, they get happy,
they run. All the
sprints when you watch them, you clock it and then you get a fearless rider that
gives you room on the rail and you say come on out here we’ll get that done.
That simple.”
trainer
D. Wayne Lukas, who saddled HIGHTAIL to victory in the Breeders’ Cup
Juvenile Sprint off a pair of 1 1/16-mile runs against graded company
“We agonized and found out that this race was light and that
the Juvenile tomorrow was light also and we probably could have gotten him in
either place and I thought they might give me the little purse not the big one
so I decided to go with this one.”
—Lukas
on his decision to run Hightail in the Juvenile Sprint instead of Saturday’s
Juvenile