Cody’s Wish Breezes for Whitney

Cody's Wish (Curlin) worked five furlongs in 1:00 (1/15) Saturday over the Oklahoma training track in preparation for the $1-million GI Whitney Aug. 5.

The Godolphin homebred is currently on a six-race winning streak topped by a powerful 3 1/4-length score last out in the GI Hill 'n' Dale Metropolitan H. June 10 at Belmont Park.

“He was very good. He went five eighths and went well and appeared to be well within himself,” Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott said. “We're uncertain about the nine furlongs (in the Whitney), but we're going to remain optimistic. Until they do it, you never know. Maybe now that he's more mature than he was early on, maybe he'll do it. He's more seasoned.”

His stablemate and last year's GI Breeders' Cup Sprint winner Elite Power (Curlin) worked a bullet five eighths in :59.60 (1/13) Friday over the Oklahoma training track and could make two starts at the Spa for Mott this summer in the GI Alfred G. Vanderbilt H. July 29 and the GI Forego S. Aug. 26.

“His work was very good,” Mott said. “He'll go to the Vanderbilt and then possibly the Forego.”

Cox Barn Loaded for the Spa…

Last year's GI Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint winner Caravel (Mizzen Mast) worked a half-mile in :48.88 (6/20) Saturday over the Oklahoma training turf as she prepares to take on the boys in the GIII Troy S., a 5 1/2-furlong turf sprint for older horses Aug. 5.

“Really good. She's an outstanding workhorse,” trainer Brad Cox said of the last out GI Jaipur S. winner. “It's her first move up here on the turf. She breezed last weekend at Churchill. It's just a maintenance move and she's doing great. She's pointing to the Troy right now.”

He continued, “Physically, she looks amazing. She's happy. I don't know if we need her to get any better, she just has to continue to be as good as she's been the first half of the year. If we can duplicate that in the second half, we'll be in great shape.”

The stretch-running Wet Paint (Blame), fourth as the favorite in the GI Kentucky Oaks and second in the Monomoy Girl S. June 17, worked five furlongs in 1:00.60 (6/15) Saturday over the Oklahoma training track in preparation for next Saturday's GI Coaching Club American Oaks.

“Really good move this morning. She went five-eighths from the half in 1:00.60 and out in 1:13.60,” Cox said. “She's not the flashiest workhorse, but this morning she was on it and she was wanting to do it. I loved what I saw from her. She's set up for a big run next week.”

West Will Power (Bernardini), winner of the GI Stephen Foster S. July 1, worked a half mile in :51.40 (88/95) at Churchill Downs Saturday in preparation for a possible start in the GI Whitney Aug. 5.

“It was just a really easy half mile and if all is well he make the trip up this week,” Cox said.

Angel of Empire (Classic Empire) and Hit Show (Candy Ride {Arg), who dead-heated for fourth last out in the GI Belmont S., worked five eighths in company in 1:00.90 (5/13) Friday over the Oklahoma training track.

“Very good move. I'm very happy with them,” Cox said.

Both horses will point to the nine-furlong GII Jim Dandy S. July 29 with an eye towards the 10-furlong GI Travers S. Aug. 26.

“I don't know if any of these horses want to run a mile and a half, but they ran big races in the Belmont and got really good figures,” Cox said. “They've had time to recover and had some really good moves down at Churchill.”

Tapit Trice Haskell Bound… 

'TDN Rising Star' Tapit Trice (Tapit), a close third in the GI Belmont S., breezed a half mile in :49.15 (27/84) over the Belmont Park main track on Saturday in preparation for the GI Haskell Invitational on July 22 at Monmouth Park.

“He just did what he normally does which is work well and gallop out strongly,” trainer Todd Pletcher said. “He was moving great. It was everything we wanted to see.”

Luis Saez will ride Tapit Trice in the Haskell.

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This Side Up: Old Stagers Keep Us to the Script

Though divided by a continent, the Grade I sprints on either coast Saturday have an evocative bond that opens a far less navigable gulf between the golden era they preserve, and our own drab times. For each honors an icon of American glamor in the last century–and if a day at Saratoga or Del Mar retains a certain magic, in 2021, then that's partly because we can almost still sense the smiling, shimmering presence of Alfred G. Vanderbilt and Bing Crosby, respectively.

The prestige and panache contributed by these gentlemen to the heyday of the Turf lingers even against popular inattention or distaste today. Obviously they rode very different trails to the social summit: one the scion of capitalist royalty, the other a son of a Spokane bookkeeper. But both shared a conviction that the heartbeat of the sport–in an era when it truly enjoyed mass appeal–was measured not so much in its bluebloods as among its blue-collar fans.

Crosby, as founding father, famously manned the turnstiles for Del Mar's opening day in 1937. And Vanderbilt, who took over Pimlico the following year, would sometimes plunge into the crowd incognito to sample their experience, and recount any dissatisfactions at the next board meeting.

Though unshaven and tieless, it's surprising nobody recognized him: “Say, don't I know you? You're Jimmy Stewart!” The resemblance, an enviable one of course, was quite uncanny. Stewart would seal his rise with The Philadelphia Story (1940), the screwball classic which burdens the 1956 musical remake, High Society, with a nearly insurmountable air of desecration. In this version the patrician sportsman C.K. Dexter Haven, originally played by Cary Grant, was awkwardly reprised by Crosby as a jazz composer. To be fair, a similar anomaly was even then being achieved just down the road, where the producer John Hammond–whose mother actually was a Vanderbilt–had helped to set up the Newport Jazz Festival. But if that was an exercise in bringing proletarian culture to the plutocrats, then the reverse challenge was being embraced by Vanderbilt and Crosby: how to achieve public engagement with the sporting rivalry of millionaires?

Both came up with a very similar answer. They recognized how the Thoroughbred, though the ultimate emblem of pedigree, could transcend class. And that was how both Vanderbilt and Crosby featured as impresarios in the saga of the Depression hero Seabiscuit.

Crosby's partner in Binglin Stable, Lindsay Howard, was the son of Seabiscuit's owner Charles S. Howard, himself a founding director of Del Mar alongside Crosby. In 1938, only its second year of operation, together they posted a $25,000 match between Seabiscuit and Binglin's Argentinian import Ligaroti. Crosby went into Hollywood overdrive and the place was packed out. A section of the clubhouse was roped off for those rooting for his horse, while Clark Gable and Spencer Tracey were among the hundreds brandishing pennants in the Binglin colors. In a finish of notorious rough riding, Seabiscuit won by a nose.

Del Mar had put itself on the map. But that, of course, was only the prelude to Seabiscuit's showdown with War Admiral at Pimlico that November. Vanderbilt had been lobbying the owners for months. He had, in fact, just married the niece of Charles Howard's second wife, Marcela, herself the sister of Lindsay Howard's wife Anita. (Lindsay and Anita divorced soon after–and she then married Vanderbilt's brother!) Vanderbilt landed the match of the century by chasing War Admiral's owner Nelson Riddle through Penn Station and preventing him from boarding his train until he had signed the contract.

But while both understood showmanship and spectacle, Vanderbilt and Crosby first and foremost trusted the inherent narrative power of the sport. It was just a case of improving access. At Pimlico, that meant a public address system, and leveling off the mound that gave Old Hilltop a nickname but deprived its patrons of a backstretch view. A starting gate was also introduced to promote wagering confidence.

At Del Mar, meanwhile, Crosby had hired an optical engineer from Paramount Pictures to inaugurate the photo-finish camera. And he persuaded NBC to broadcast a radio show from the track every Saturday, so that celebrities could say what a splendid time they were having.

Apt, then, that Vanderbilt should have raced the sport's poster boy for the television age, Native Dancer, who made the cover of Time in 1954. And likewise that Del Mar still bookends the day with Crosby, himself a breakout star of multimedia, singing “Where The Surf Meets The Turf.”

But their real legacy is example. Yes, we face heavy challenges. But don't forget that it was between Depression and war that Vanderbilt and Crosby went out and captured imaginations with the racehorse as a conduit of hope, or at least escapism, for ordinary people.

In its essentials, the game was much as it remains today: a contest of horses and horsemen in repeating, mesmerizing circles. They didn't try to gimmick it into something different. They just swung open the theater doors and turned on the footlights. So often deplored as too arcane for an urban, 21st Century audience, the Turf is actually hugely accessible–if only you provide that access.

Many of our problems now boil down simply to whether we have or not have a show we can display with pride. Cheating trainers, for instance, don't just cheat their honest rivals and imperil the noble agents of their corruption. They also validate a sense, in the world beyond, that our community has something to hide.

Conversely, our community's nearly universal devotion to the horse needs only to be seen to be understood and, very soon, to be shared. We have all, surely, seen friends outside our business become intrigued, once the door has been prised open to them.

Admittedly the sprint division doesn't quite offer the layman the kind of slower-burning drama that tends to unfold round a second turn, but there's no lack of character development. And that's especially precious at a time when Thoroughbreds tend to be sighted about as frequently as Halley's Comet, a trend plainly inimical to fan engagement. These, in contrast, are horses on whom you can really hang your hat. Whitmore (Pleasantly Perfect) and Firenze Fire (Poseidon's Warrior) bring to the Alfred G. Vanderbilt H. a joint record of 29 wins in 75 starts for a few cents short of $7 million. I love the fact that the reigning GI Breeders' Cup Sprint winner ran in the Derby won by Nyquist. Meanwhile the 7-year-old C Z Rocket (City Zip), who chased home Whitmore at Keeneland last fall, takes his 11-for-26 record into the Bing Crosby S.

Whitmore and C Z Rocket are geldings, of course, which is one obvious reason why both should have stuck around. Thoroughbreds may be born to run but nowadays that is seldom why they are conceived. So many of them are brought into the world for a purpose that is accomplished the moment they walk out of the sale ring, yet to feel a saddle on their back.

Unfortunately, that is pretty much how some racetrack operators view their own participation in our sport–as the bottom line in a page of numbers. Crosby and Vanderbilt both had their local loyalties, on either coast, but what would men of their time and stamp think to see the home of the Derby in the hands of what appears to be primarily a gaming corporation?

No doubt the accountants cashing in another of the sport's jewels, at Arlington Park, can only see demographic disaster coming down the tracks. As Crosby sings with Frank Sinatra, in High Society: “Have you heard, it's in the stars, next July we collide with Mars?” But if horseracing becomes merely an incidental adjunct to the soulless stimulations plied to casino addicts, then the only “match of the century” we'll ever know will be the one lighting the bonfire of our heritage.

Vanderbilt and Crosby, remember, were brilliant promoters precisely because they were communicating their own excitement, their own belief. So let's get out there, while we can, and tell everyone just “what a swellegant, elegant party this is!”

The post This Side Up: Old Stagers Keep Us to the Script appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Trainer Alexander Remembered For His Role At Maryland’s Sagamore Farm

Frank Alexander passed away at the age of 82 June 26 after retiring in 2012 from a distinguished training career best known for conditioning 1994 Eclipse Award-winning sprinter Cherokee Run, the 2013 Preakness (G1) runner-up.

Long based in New York, Alexander began training on his own full-time in 1974 after spending four years as the racing manager for Sagamore Farm, the historic property in Glyndon, Md., bequeathed to Alfred G. Vanderbilt Jr. for his 21st birthday in 1933 as a gift from his mother.

Alexander's first win came with Maryland-bred Solo Jim at Pimlico Race Course in 1974. In his later years, he owned a home in upstate New York near Saratoga Race Course and wintered in South Florida.

“My family has known him for years, and I usually only saw him in Saratoga,” Sagamore Farm president Hunter Rankin said. “Stan Hough trains for us and he loved Stan. He would come by and always tell old stories about Sagamore. He loved the farm and he loved Maryland. What a nice man. What a professional.”

Vanderbilt, who died in 1999, was still very much a part of the operation during Alexander's tenure before he sold it to developer James Ward in 1986. Maryland native Kevin Plank, founder and CEO of Under Armour, purchased the farm, once home to Hall of Famer Native Dancer, in 2007.

“I had a lot of respect for him and what he accomplished here and what he accomplished throughout his career in racing. He loved the game, he loved the farm and he was a great man,” Rankin said. “Since we've been here we've tried to build on the tradition that was here starting back … with Mr. Vanderbilt. There have been a lot of people through here that have accomplished a whole lot in the sport. I think it says a lot about the place and, obviously, Mr. Vanderbilt, and Frank was a big part of that.”

Alexander won 997 races and $28.5 million in purses according to Equibase statistics, including Grade 1 winners K.J.'s Appeal, Lucky Roberto, Wallenda and Nonsuch Bay. Other stakes winners trained by Alexander included Babae, Beru, Flash Runner, Good and Tough, Killer Diller, Richmond Runner, Timmy and Windsor Castle.

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