Three major qualifying points races for the Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve were held last Saturday and televised nationwide. This upcoming week is highlighted by the final points prep for Derby 149, the Stonestreet Lexington Stakes Saturday, April 15 at Keeneland.
Month: April 2023
Ride A Comet, Half To Tapwrit, To Enter Stud In Argentina
Ride a Comet, a multiple Grade 2 winner and half-brother to Belmont Stakes winner Tapwrit, will begin his stallion career at Haras Los Notables in Argentina for the 2023 Southern Hemisphere breeding season, the South American publication Turf Diario reports.
The 8-year-old son of Candy Ride retired with eight wins in 18 starts, and he earned $593,743 for trainer Mark Casse and owners John Oxley and My Meadowview Farm.
A $375,000 purchase by Oxley at the 2017 Ocala Breeders' Sales Co. Spring 2-year-olds in training sale, Ride a Comet broke his maiden in his fourth career starts, winning a rained-off-the-turf maiden special weight at the Fair Grounds in December of his 2-year-old season. He followed that effort with a 3 1/2-length allowance optional claiming score over the Fair Grounds turf in his 3-year-old seasonal bow.
After a brief try on the Kentucky Derby trail in the Grade 3 Jeff Ruby Steaks at Turfway Park, where he finished eighth, Ride a Comet returned primarily to the turf and won six of his next seven starts, if in abbreviated fashion.
He shipped to Woodbine for the summer of his sophomore campaign and tallied an allowance win before scoring his first black type victory in the Charlie Barley Stakes. Ride a Comet then shipped to Saratoga to finish third in the G2 National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame Stakes, and he finished the year with a win in the G2 Del Mar Derby.
The injury bug caught up to Ride a Comet after his Del Mar Derby score, and a pair of tendon injuries kept him away from the races for 25 months. He returned in October of his 5-year-old season with a two-length allowance optional claiming win over the all-weather Tapeta at Woodbine, then he returned to the graded stakes ranks with a sweeping victory in the G2 Kennedy Road Stakes over the same surface.
Ride a Comet's 6-year-old campaign then started on a winning note in the G3 Tropical Turf Stakes at Gulfstream Park. He raced through the end of the season with the highlight of the rest of the year being a runner-up effort in the G1 Maker's Mark Mile Stakes at Keeneland.
Bred in Kentucky by My Meadowview, Ride a Comet is out of the Grade 1-winning Successful Appeal mare Appealing Zophie, making him a half-brother to 2017 Belmont Stakes winner Tapwrit, a resident of Gainesway whose first runners are 3-year-olds of 2023. He is also a half-brother to the Grade 3 winning Frosted filly Inject.
Ariel Lusardi of Haras Los Notables told Turf Diario that Ride a Comet already had about 90 mares committed to him before he even arrived to the farm, and he aimed to have a final book of at least 120 mares.
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Trainer Faucheux Wins Fair Grounds Title and Walks Away
On the surface, trainer Ron Faucheux could not have been doing any better. He came out of the Fair Grounds meet on Mar. 26 with his third straight training title at the New Orleans track, his 42 winners five more than Bret Calhoun and Brad Cox. He had a career best 81 winners in 2022 and his stable earned $2,066,757. But when Louisiana racing moved to Evangeline Downs last week, Faucheux was conspicuously absent from the entries. The latest horsemen to say it has simply become too difficult for a trainer to make a decent living, he is now a jockey agent, representing rider Jose Luis Rodriguez.
“Basically, the last couple of years, I was just breaking even doing what I was doing,” Faucheux said. “I love training horses, but I wasn't getting the kind of day rate trainers in places like New York and Kentucky get and our expenses are pretty comparable to their's. This was a lot of work and, in all honesty, over the last several years, I wasn't making any money doing it.”
Faucheux, 40, started training in 2009 and quickly became established as one of the top trainers on the Louisiana circuit. In 2021, he won his first training title at the Fair Grounds, finishing ahead of Steve Asmussen, Cox and Tom Amoss.
“That meant so much to me,” he said. “I was a kid growing up in New Orleans and I idolized the trainers like Asmussen, Amoss, Al Stall, Dallas Stewart. Three leading trainer titles at the Fair Grounds is three more than I ever thought I'd get.”
He had arrived, with a big stable and the type of horses that could compete at a top-tier track like the Fair Grounds. But it came at a cost. He said that the bigger his stable got the harder it became to make money. His overhead kept growing and his income couldn't keep up.
“Over the last couple of years, the prices for everything kept going up,” he said. “The more horses I got the less money I made.”
His day rate, which was $75, was a problem. He said that the trainers who come and go between the Fair Grounds and Kentucky, like Asmussen and Cox command a higher rate. But the trainers like himself who spend the entire year in Louisiana had to charge less. It was not, he said, enough.
He was able to stay focused throughout the Fair Grounds meet and secured the title with three winners on closing day. But he was already looking ahead to the next chapter in his racing career.
Rodriguez, a native of Venezuela who had been riding in Panama, came to the U.S. in August and had an immediate impact. He was 22-for-104 (21%) in 2022 and stayed hot at the Fair Grounds, where his 35 wins were good enough for sixth in the standings. Faucheux saw him as an up-and-coming rider who could be a force at Evangeline, where Faucheux was fifth in last year's trainer standings.
“My kids are getting a little bit older and I can spend a little bit more time with them being a jock's agent,” he said. “There is quite a bit of work that goes into it, but not nearly the amount of work that I was used to as a trainer. He's a good rider and he finished sixth at the Fair Grounds, his first full meet ever in the U.S. This is a good opportunity to spend more time with my family, have a little more free time and a little less stress and try this out. I'll see how it works.”
There are things about training that he misses and others that he does not.
“There's no question that I am going to miss training,” he said. “So far as the training and the horses and connections I made with my owners and the people around me, I'm absolutely going to miss that. Being an agent, I'm still a part of it. But I trained a lot of horses, had a lot of employees and there were a lot of expenses. That's all part it. So there are things I won't miss.”
Faucheux said he might train again.
“I could go back to training for the next Fair Grounds meet,” he said. “I'm not sure. Or I could never go back to training. I'm just going to enjoy this meet at Evangeline and not make any decisions until the meet is over with.”
Should he come back, winning races won't be the problem. Faucheux has won 740 in his career and his winning percentage is 23.7%. But will those numbers, as good as they are, ever translate into making a decent living? It's the problem he needs to solve.
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America’s Best Racing, NSA Join Forces for Coverage of Middleburg Spring Races
America’s Best Racing, a fan-development and awareness-building platform launched by The Jockey Club to increase the profile and visibility of horse racing, has partnered with the National Steeplechase Association to broadcast the Middleburg Spring Races at Glenwood Park in Virginia later this month.
