Fort Larned ‘got everything’ Wilkes wanted from Homecoming Classic

Fort Larned ‘got everything’ Wilkes wanted from Homecoming
Classic

Fort Larned was resuming from an injury-induced, two-month break on Saturday night (Rickelle Nelson/Horsephotos.com) While his win as the odds-on favorite in the first running of Churchill Downs’ $191,275 Homecoming Classic was anything but a surprise, the effort by the victorious odds-on favorite Fort Larned has trainer Ian Wilkes smiling as he looks down the road toward his star’s bid for a repeat victory in the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita. Janis R. Whitham’s five-year-old son of E Dubai led from start to finish under jockey Brian Hernandez Jr. in his 1 1/2-length victory over the late-running Windswept to score his second victory in five 2013 races. The winning time for 1 1/8 miles over a fast track was a very solid 1:48 2/5. The race was the first for Fort Larned since a disappointing fifth-place run as the favorite in Saratoga’s Whitney on August 3. A planned start in the August 31 Woodward over the New York track was scrapped by Wilkes when Fort Larned was determined to have suffered a muscle strain in his rear end. Training time lost to that injury made Saturday’s run in the Homecoming Classic critical to Wilkes’ preparation of Fort Larned for his bid for back-to-back Breeders’ Cup Classic wins. “The horse needed the race,” Wilkes said on the morning after the Homecoming Classic victory. “He got everything out of it that I wanted from it, because we had to miss a little bit of training with that muscle issue early on after the Woodward. He just wasn’t 100 percent. But he looked bright and alert this morning and he got a lot out of the race, so that was good.”

Saturday’s win was the second in five 2013 starts for Fort Larned, who
collected his other win over the same surface with a dazzling run in the
$536,300 Stephen Foster Handicap on June 15.

With the Homecoming Classic underneath Fort Larned, Wilkes can now fine-tune
his reigning champion in the weeks leading up to his Breeders’ Cup Classic
defense on November 2 at Santa Anita.

“Everything has to go right now,” Wilkes said. “Everything has to be perfect,
timing has to be right, everything has to be spot-on. You can’t make any
mistakes now going to the Breeders’ Cup.”

The Homecoming Classic victory boosted Fort Larned’s career record to 10-2-1
in 24 races and lifted his earnings to $4,171,322.

Smiles also were the order for the morning about an hour west off Interstate
64 at the Keeneland barn of trainer Charlie LoPresti, who witnessed a flying
runner-up finish to Fort Larned by the Estate of Elaine Klein (Richard Klein)
and Bertram Klein’s Windswept.

The strong Homecoming Classic run snapped a two-race win streak for the Klein
homebred. But it was good enough for LoPresti to circle the 139th running of the
$500,000-added Clark Handicap — a 1 1/8-mile race for three-year-olds and up
scheduled for November 29 — as the next target for his rising star.

“We’ll shoot for the Clark if everything goes right, with no races
in-between,” LoPresti said. “He seemed to come out of his race good. We thought
he ran good. He was flying late and we’re proud of him.”

The runner-up finish to Fort Larned improved the career record for the
lightly-raced five-year-old son of Arch to 3-2-1 in nine races with earnings of
$205,168.

LoPresti has been a regular participant in the Clark in recent years. He won
its 2011 running with Mort Fink’s homebred Wise Dan, who would earn Horse of the
Year, champion older male and turf male honors in 2012. Fink’s Successful
Dan finished first in the 2010 Clark, but the older half-brother to Wise Dan was
disqualified for interference in the stretch and placed third when Giant Oak was
awarded the victory.

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