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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Both Orseno, Imprimis Breathing Easier Ahead Of 2020 Turf Sprint

Though it's been 20 years since Joe Orseno saddled a pair of winners at the Breeders' Cup World Championships, the 64-year-old trainer could be on the cusp of adding another victory to his record this fall at Keeneland.

In 2000, while employed by Stronach Stables, he sent out Macho Uno to win the Breeders' Cup Juvenile and Perfect Sting to win the Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf. Last Saturday, the Orseno-trained Imprimis won the $700,000 Turf Sprint at Kentucky Downs, earning an expenses-paid berth in this year's Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint.

“It's a long time between, that's for sure,” Orseno said. “It's just a matter of you have to have the horses; you have to obviously get lucky. I believe you make your own luck in this business with hard work and paying attention. I get the most I can out of my horses, but the ability has to be there.”

Imprimis, a 6-year-old son of Broken Vow, finished sixth in the Turf Sprint in 2019, but Orseno said the gelding is in much better form in 2020. The difference, the trainer explained, can be chalked up to a pair of throat surgeries that have allowed him to breathe in more air during his races.

“I didn't feel like his race in the (2019) Breeders' Cup showed what he was capable of,” explained Orseno. “You know, I was looking at the same horse, his bloodwork was good, he was training the same way he always had. We finally galloped him with an aerodynamic scope because he'd always made a little bit of noise, and we found that he was getting little to no air through his throat. It's just unbelievable what this horse was accomplishing not being able to breathe; he's always trying.”

After the first surgery, Imprimis was better, but he still made a little more noise than Orseno liked when he was training. He decided to scope the horse again and found that one of the structures in Imprimis' throat was still interfering with his breathing.

“We just thought, 'Let's fix it so we have no excuse,'” Orseno said. “The horse didn't owe us anything, but we wanted to give him the best chance for success. The owners (Breeze Easy LLC) are all about the horse, I'm all about the horse, and we weren't trying to make any particular race, so why not fix it.”

It all seems to be going the right way for Imprimis now. The gelding has crossed the wire first in both of his 2020 races thus far, though he was disqualified for interference and placed third in the G3 Troy Stakes at Saratoga last month.

Orseno and daughter at Gulfstream Park (Gulfstream Park photo)

Now, heading into the Breeders' Cup with the potential favorite for the Turf Sprint, Orseno is even more grateful for the horsemanship lessons he learned early on his career; he was taught to always put the horse first, and it's paying off.

A native of Philadelphia, Orseno didn't grow up in a horse racing family. His father enjoyed the racetrack for the gambling opportunities, so Orseno was able to get an up-close look at the horses from an early age, but he didn't start to fall in love with the sport until high school.

“I lived in a town not far from Garden State Park,” he explained. “When I was in high school I had plenty of jobs, and one of them was parking cars across the street from the track. I wound up meeting a lot of owners and trainers and jockeys, just talking to them, and every now and then someone would give me a horse to bet on. I'd put my two dollars on the horse and sometimes it would win, and I just enjoyed seeing the sport from that new angle.”

Orseno's father was a builder who owned his own business, and he'd always imagined they would go into business together when he graduated high school.

“I grew up playing football, basketball, and baseball, so I probably would have gotten into business with Dad,” Orseno said. “But then Dad passed away after high school, so I went to the track full time. I was walking horses on weekends anyway. I did it all on my own, worked hard and learned all I could learn.

“I feel like I came around in a time when the trainer who brought me around, Mickey Crock, was a real horseman. He was a small trainer with about 15 horses from New England, and he went to Garden State in the winter. He was a horseman, he taught me from the ground up what I needed to know.

“There's a lot of trainers in the game now that aren't horsemen. I'm glad I came up the way I did; it allows me to be all about the horses.”

Orseno took out his training license in 1977, and did well during his early years, winning training titles at Atlantic City, Garden State Park and Delaware Park. By 1993, however, he was down to just seven horses at the Meadowlands, and thought he'd have to leave the business.

That's about the time owner Frank Stronach first noticed Orseno and sent him a few horses. By 1998, Stronach had hired Orseno to take over his 40-horse stable entirely.

It was for Stronach that Orseno won those two Breeders' Cup races in 2000. That year, he also saddled upset Preakness Stakes winner Red Bullet, as well as Pimlico Special (then a Grade 1) winner Golden Missile.

In 2002, Orseno reopened his stable to the public. He's sent out at least 30 winners and accumulated over $1 million in earnings almost every year since then, racing mostly out of Florida year-round.

In fact, Imprimis was purchased specifically for that Florida program. The Sunshine State-bred gelding didn't race at all as a 2- or 3-year-old, but won on debut in February of 2018. In his second start, Imprimis won an allowance optional claiming event by 2 3/4 lengths.

Orseno had tried to claim the horse that finished second to Imprimis that day, and took notice of the dark bay's turn of foot. When the chance came up to buy him with Breeze Easy, Orseno was all in. Even he didn't expect the horse to be this good, however.

“When we bought him, we never dreamt he was going to take us to this place and time,” Orseno said. “After his first start for us (a 4 1/4-length allowance win), I told them he might be better than we thought he was.

“He just accelerates at the top of the stretch, just poetry in motion. After that race I sat down with (Breeze Easy owners) Sam Ross and Mike Hall, and I told them, 'He's better than we thought guys, we might have to travel a bit with him.'”

Orseno was right, and Imprimis has taken them on a journey all the way to Royal Ascot: in 2019, the gelding ran a good sixth, beaten just four lengths, in the Group 1 King's Stand Stakes.

“None of us were disappointed, though I think I should have run him in the Diamond Jubilee over six furlongs instead, and we might have been third behind Blue Point,” Orseno said, laughing good-naturedly.

This year, with his breathing fixed and all systems firing toward the Breeders' Cup, Orseno believes he really has a shot to compete with the best of the best at Keeneland.

“He doesn't need his racetrack, and he'll run over just about anything,” the trainer said. “I just have to keep him happy, that's my job now.”

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Two Mighty Hearts Beat As One In Queen’s Plate

Mighty Heart may have had just a maiden win under his belt when he entered the starting gate for Saturday's Queen's Plate at Woodbine, but the one-eyed colt burst from the starting gate on top and ran away from his 13 rivals to win by 7 1/2 lengths. In fact, the 13-1 longshot turned in the second-fastest time in the race's 161-year history, completing 1 1/4 miles over the Toronto, Ontario, track's Tapeta surface in 2:01.98.

Owner Lawrence Cordes couldn't have imagined that his homebred colt would live up to his namesake so perfectly, but the result has been better than any storybook ending crafted in Hollywood.

“You're just not going to believe what I'm about to tell you, but it's all completely true,” Cordes said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “I couldn't make this up if I'd tried.”

The original Mighty Heart weighs in at just 1.76 pounds, significantly less than his equine counterpart; he is a Sphynx cat, and he never should have survived.

The story begins with Cordes' long-time girlfriend, Kimberly Rutschmann, a registered nurse who also breeds Sphynx cats as companion animals. Cordes insists he isn't a “cat person,” but his first Sphynx, named Floyd, convinced the longtime horse and dog lover to reconsider.

Mighty Heart, the cat, belongs to Rutschmann. Seven years ago, he was born the runt in a very large seven-cat litter. His mother quickly rejected the mouse-sized kitten; he weighed less than an ounce when Rutschmann began working to save his life.

For three months she fed the tiny kitten every two hours, around the clock, with an eyedropper. Mighty Heart improved and grew to weigh eight ounces, and Rutschmann began feeding him a special mush with a spoon for two more months until he doubled in size.

Mighty Heart the Sphynx cat (photo courtesy of Angela Perrin)

By now it was late November, and somehow, the door to the cat area blew open while Rustchmann and Cordes were both at work. Cordes came home first and found little Mighty Heart cold and not breathing.

“I took him in my hands and started rubbing him to warm him up, and I called Kimberly,” Cordes remembered. “She ran home, took him and massaged him, then gave him mouth-to-mouth until he started breathing again.”

A month later, the little kitten stopped breathing again in the middle of the night. Rutschmann was able to bring him back once more.

Mighty Heart was small and a bit frail, but very determined to be a “normal” cat. Tragedy struck again when he turned four, however; he suffered a stroke that left him mostly paralyzed for months.

With what must be an infinite capacity for caring and patience, Rutshmann began her regimen of feeding little Mighty Heart three times a day and taking him to the litter box every couple of hours.

“He's using up his nine lives, for sure,” Cordes said. “The vets said if he was going to recover, it would take about three months to see any improvement. At 3 ½ months, he sat up on his own, and Kimberly let out this yell of pure joy that I'll never be able to forget.”

After another year, Mighty Heart was able to walk around with just a slight limp. Another problem arose more recently when his stomach began to expand abnormally. Initially thought to be a tumor, Mighty Heart's issue turned out to be an abscess, which was easily treated by antibiotics.

“Somebody should write a book or make a movie about Kimberly and this cat,” Cordes said. “If you just sat in a chair and watched what goes on between those two, he thinks she's his mother. He didn't know his mother, and she did everything for him. You should see how he's become attached to her, and he's like a baby, he sleeps in her arms… She loves this cat, she says, 'Larry, I don't know what I'd do if we lost him.' It's just like a baby.”

Cordes had just gotten back into breeding racehorses after a 15-year hiatus in 2014, starting with a one-horse broodmare band in Emma's Bullseye. When she gave birth to her third foal in 2017, the colt faced long odds of making it on the racetrack when he lost his left eye in a paddock accident at just two weeks of age.

“So then when I'm looking for a name for this horse, I kept thinking about that cat,” Cordes said. “Here's Mighty Heart, this cat with incredible will to live, living with all these problems for a full life of seven years, and here's this horse with a major handicap as well to deal with. I said, 'You know what? I'm gonna honor that cat by giving his name to this racehorse.'”

Mighty Heart, the horse, never seemed to notice he was any different than the other racehorses. The farm that started him under saddle in Lexington, Ky., had nothing but positive reports during his early training.

“They said to me, 'This horse is something else. One eye or not, he's gonna be a nice horse. He's a very determined horse and he wants to please,'” Cordes remembered. “Well, they were right.”

Mighty Heart didn't race as a 2-year-old, and when he made his first start at 3 this February at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans, La., trainer Josie Carroll told Cordes she wasn't quite sure what to make of his strange behavior.

“On the first turn he threw his head up and went almost to the outside rail, losing about 12 lengths,” said Cordes. “On the next turn he did the same thing. The jockey brought him back in, and in the stretch he was 20 lengths behind when they were half way down the stretch, and he made up 14 lengths in not even half the stretch. We were like, 'Whoa. Imagine if he hadn't lost those 24 lengths on the turns!'”

It took several months to find the issue, because it was well-hidden. Mighty Heart had impacted wolf teeth sitting below the line of his jawbone, right where the bit would lay in his mouth. As soon as those were removed, the colt broke his maiden with ease, besting a field of Queen's Plate-eligible entrants by 5 ½ lengths at Woodbine.

Cordes admits he and Carroll rushed Mighty Heart into his next start, an allowance race where he was collared late and finished third.

Then, Carroll came to Cordes with a unique proposal.

“She said, 'Let me train this horse up to the Plate,'” Cordes said, laughing. “She said, 'Just leave it to me, six weeks, I'll train this horse up to the Queen's Plate. Larry, if you let me do it, you will not be dissatisfied. Let's unveil him at the Queen's Plate.' Well, I just about had a crap in my pants; she had the favorite in the Queen's Plate with Curlin's Voyage, and here she is touting this horse!”

Mighty Heart responded with his giant victory, running the fastest Queen's Plate since 1957.

“The jockey (21-year-old Daisuke Fukumoto) told me, 'I could have had this horse run two seconds faster if we wanted,'” said Cordes. “When he started moving away from the crowd, he just took off like a jackrabbit. When turned for home was on the rail, a horse came up outside him, and the jock said he just cocked his head to the outside and switched into fifth gear and never wanted to stop. He actually ran a mile and a half race, then they had to send an outrider out to pull him up!”

Cordes desperately wanted to bring the feline Mighty Heart with him to Woodbine for the race, but the COVID-19 restrictions meant the cat had to stay home. The pair have met before, however, and will likely do so again before the horse's racing career is over.

Up next, Cordes said he doesn't want to rush the colt back in 17 days to make the Prince of Wales's Stakes, the Canadian Triple Crown's middle jewel, so the third leg, a 1 1/2-mile turf contest in the Breeders' Stakes, will likely be Mighty Heart's next outing.

“I said to the Woodbine CEO that I know pressure's on for me to run him because it's for Canada, but I have to think about the horse's well-being,” said Cordes. “Horse injuries occur from fatigue, not so often from just a misstep, but the misstep that is caused by fatigue. I don't want to do that to him.”

Before Mighty Heart, there was one more horse Cordes named in honor of a Sphynx cat: Floyd, the one that made him fall in love with the breed.

“Floyd (the cat) was my best friend,” Cordes said, his voice wavering with emotion. “It's in my will and all my kids know, his urn will be with me in my coffin when it's my time.”

One-eyed Mighty Heart wins the Queen's Plate by 7 1/2 lengths under Daisuke Fukumoto

The Thoroughbred “In Memory of Floyd”, Mighty Heart's year-younger half-brother, had a touch of second-itis through his first several races, losing by a nose, a nose, a neck, and a head, before finally breaking his maiden in late 2019. The gelding needed a chip removed but developed arthritis after the surgery, so Cordes retired him to be his personal riding horse.

“It's special to have that connection with the horse, after how much Floyd meant to me,” Cordes said. “This horse, a month after he'd been off the track, you could put a child on him. He's so gentle and kind.”

Floyd the horse, and both the equine and feline Mighty Hearts, will have forever homes with Cordes and Rutschmann. The story of the cat who survived and the horse who overcame the odds at this year's Queen's Plate will be something the pair will cherish for the rest of their lives.

“Winning the Queen's Plate, it's something I wish everybody could experience, especially with a horse like him,” Cordes summarized. “It was just an incredible, exciting thing.

“You know, I've been in racing 40 years. I haven't bred a lot, but I really enjoyed the excitement that people were having leading up to the Queen's Plate. You could just hear in their voice the excitement they had about seeing him, and we've had hundreds of phone calls since the race. It was really something.”

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Derby Roses For ‘Miss Syl’

Horse racing has long been an integral part of daily life for the neighborhoods near Churchill Downs. Homes full of large, close-knit families surrounded one another, and it seemed everyone knew at least a few people who worked at the track, or later, a few others who owned a couple racehorses. Any time someone got a hot tip on a horse one afternoon, the news spreads like wildfire as the die-hard racing fans gather would beneath the grandstand in an area they called the “snake pit.”

There was camaraderie, a fair bit of rivalry, stories about wagers won (and more stories about those almost won), and if one of the owners' horses was racing that day, there'd be the chance to stand in the paddock and hopefully then in the winner's circle. It was a community beyond that of the racetrack itself, and it had been that way since before 84-year-old Sylvia Arnett can remember.

So, even though spectators were not allowed at this year's Kentucky Derby, the long-time racing fan found a way to use pen and paper to share that community connection with one of the contenders. Much to Arnett's surprise, her sentiment was returned a thousand-fold with a bouquet of red roses even more precious than those on the winner's garland.

Arnett grew up in a house just two blocks from Churchill, which her family still owns today. The youngest of 11 children, she has been watching (and wagering) on races since her earliest Derby day, when Arnett remembers parking cars for a quarter and racing over to the track to get someone to place a bet for her (at six years old, she was too young to do it herself).

Arnett even owned a few racehorses with her late husband, which she recalls was quite a feat for an African-American in the early 1970s, and several members of her family are still involved in the racing business.

For the past 30 years, however, “Miss Syl” has served her community as the owner and operator of the popular Syl's Lounge in West Louisville.

“It's like a 'Cheers' bar, everybody knows everyone, and it's like the 40 and over crowd,” Arnett explained. “They come religiously, and I had gone down to just three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and they'd stay late into the night singing and listening to music.”

The bar has drawn figures like champion boxer Muhammad Ali, former Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, the first prominent civil rights activist to become chief executive of a major American city, and multiple Grammy Award-winning musical group The 5^th Dimension, among many others.

It is simultaneously the kind of place where the community would gather to unwind and where they would go for important local events, including the Kentucky Derby. “Miss Syl” runs it all with the kind of old-school charm and iron wit that makes you feel immediately like part of the family.

This year has been an exception. The coronavirus pandemic has forced the bar to stay shut down since March, so Arnett has found herself with a lot of free time on her hands.

No matter. Tracing back to her roots, she followed this year's delayed Kentucky Derby with even more zealous scrutiny than usual and found herself especially touched by the story of trainer Tommy Drury and his first Derby contender, Art Collector.

“I saw this article in the local newspaper, and it mentioned that he had been working with the horses since he was 18 years of age,” said Arnett. “So, I thought, 'Wow, all that hard work has paid off and he finally made it to the big one. I'm gonna write him a letter and congratulate him.'

“It was something about him, he just worked hard for it and I know what that feels like.”

Her hand-written letter, the first Arnett had ever written to a Derby hopeful, took a slightly convoluted journey across town to get to Drury's barn at Churchill Downs.

As it turns out, Art Collector's groom Jerry Dixon was staying in the same hotel at which Arnett's son is employed. Dixon, a lifetime racetracker, happened to mention to Arnett's son that the colt was going to win the Ellis Park Derby, and after that, hopefully the Kentucky Derby.

“We bet the Ellis Park Derby, bet it good, and won good,” Arnett said, smiling big. “We was ready for the Kentucky Derby, we were gonna put money on the Kentucky Derby!”

Arnett gave the letter to her son, her son gave it to Dixon, and Dixon finally dropped it off at Drury's office at the track.

Unfortunately, Art Collector's eleventh-hour scratch from the Run for the Roses ended the dream prematurely. Though she couldn't have known about the scratch when she penned her letter, Arnett had made the fortuitous decision to include the story of her brother-in-law and his horse that almost ran in the Derby; it became a balm for Drury's disappointment in more ways than one.

Jacob Bachelor was an African-American Thoroughbred trainer by passion, but with a wife and five kids, he worked a day job at International Harvester in Louisville. In 1975, he had a horse named Naughty Jake who won the Spiral Stakes at what was then Latonia (now Turfway Park), and then ran third in the Derby Trial at Churchill Downs.

Arnett, the youngest of 11 children, remembers that most of her family, along with the rest of the neighborhood, wanted Bachelor to enter the horse in the Kentucky Derby, but he didn't have the money for the nomination and entry fees.

“If we had gone around the neighborhood and taken up a collection, I think we would have come close to getting whatever he needed to get that horse in the race, because it was such an exception and such an opportunity for an African-American,” Arnett said. “I just think my brother-in-law should have taken the chance and run that horse. Just think, he would have been the owner and trainer. That would have been something.”

Bachelor had other successes, like winning the 1972 Debutante at Churchill with the filly “Sylva Mill,” named after Arnett and her sister, Mildred. That day, nearly the entire neighborhood gathered in the winner's circle to celebrate the win; it felt like the filly belonged to all of them.

The horses Arnett and her husband owned were never major stakes contenders, but she clearly remembers the feeling of walking into the paddock on race day.

“You would hear people say, 'Those African American people over there, they own that horse!'” Arnett said, closing her eyes and reliving the moment. “Man, we thought we were celebrities. We may not have had much, but those were big days.”

The neighborhood has changed over the ensuing years. Most of the big manufacturing companies have shuttered their doors, homes are now boarded up and in disrepair, and the community has lost a lot of the institutions that used to make it unique. Civil rights movements have grabbed hold of west Louisville, and the entire country, once again.

Nonetheless, Syl's Lounge has persevered.

“Those of us who remember west Louisville when there were movie theaters, restaurants and more strong, stable families” view Syl's as “a throwback to what we used to have,” Rev. Kevin Cosby told the Louisville Magazine in 2018. “And I think maybe psychologically people see in her institution the hope of what is yet possible.”

Arnett has continued to carry out her role as a pillar of her community, even without the physical space of the bar. She calls the regular patrons on a weekly basis, just checking in, and looks forward to a time they can be together in person once again.

When Drury read Arnett's letter, the community sentiment really hit home. He was reminded just how lucky he was to have the horse and the ownership to make it as far as they had, and that Art Collector would go on to fight another day.

Drury, his teenage daughter Emma and her friend Molly Andrews, decided to take a trip to the florist. They picked out a bouquet of red “Derby” roses for Arnett, and sent them over to the extraordinary woman who'd been able to share both Drury's excitement and his disappointment, without ever having met in person.

“I couldn't have been more happy had it been the whole garland of roses,” Arnett said, a sparkle in her eye as she showed off a photograph of her with her bouquet just after it arrived. “As for Mr. Drury, I'm going to write him another letter and tell him it's okay he had to scratch, we'll just have to settle for Black-Eyed Susans on Preakness day!”

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Chariot Racing World Champ Finds Success With Thoroughbreds

Trainer Ryan Hanson was excited to earn his first graded stakes win with Thoroughbreds at Del Mar recently, saddling Weston to victory in the Grade 2 Best Pal Stakes, but it was hardly the first major horse racing victory for the 39-year-old native of Idaho.

Hanson conditioned multiple graded stakes-winning Quarter Horses, and he is also a World Champion in the sport of chariot racing.

“In my office, the chariot racing photos are the ones that get the most people talking,” the trainer said. “It's the one thing I really miss about being in the northwest; I don't miss the snow or the cold, but I miss chariot racing.”

Both Hanson's father and grandfather also earned World Champion titles in chariot racing, which is conducted by hitching two horses side-by-side and competing over a quarter of a mile. Hanson won the title in 2006, just before the family moved to Southern California.

“It's a really, really huge family activity, but it's still ultra-competitive,” Hanson explained. “By the time I was doing it, we were claiming Quarter Horses from Los Alamitos, hooking them on the chariot and racing in Idaho.”

Unfortunately, it was hard to make a living during summertime Quarter Horse racing in Idaho, and chariot racing is exclusively a winter activity. Hanson's father James “Jim” Hanson moved the family racing operation to Los Alamitos in 2006, and everyone pitched in to help climb the ranks.

A jockey for his father from age 16, Ryan Hanson outgrew those boots and became his father's assistant and top exercise rider. Eventually Hanson took the horses under his own name, saddling 2013 AQHA World Champion Distance horse Honoroso, who the family had claimed for $6,250 in 2012.

Ryan Hanson in a 2006 chariot race

In 2015 Hanson went home to Idaho for the summer, racing at what turned out to be the final season in Boise. Returning to Southern California that winter, Hanson made a change. He took a job galloping Thoroughbreds for trainer Robertino Diodoro, and worked his way up to assistant.

“It's really hard to make a living in Idaho,” Hanson explained.

Two years later, Diodoro left California, and Hanson felt he didn't really have a choice but to try to make a go of it on his own. He hung out his shingle over a single horse, True Ranger, a $12,500 claimer.

That chestnut gelding may not have won a race for Hanson, but he did hit the board in most of his starts at Santa Anita and Del Mar. Hanson would win just one race in 2017, with a horse he co-owned with his father named Poshsky, but he started to make his presence felt on the Southern California circuit.

In 2018 Hanson began to train for outside clients, first in partnerships between his father and Robin Dunn. Dunn recommended Hanson to an owner named Chris Drakos, who had actually lived 15 minutes away from Hanson in Idaho, but the two had never met face to face.

Drakos took a chance and sent Hanson four horses, and the two are now co-owners of Grade 2 winner Weston.

Weston and Drayden Van Dyke after the Best Pal

“It was nice of Robin and dad to partner with me, but I wasn't able to make it on that alone,” Hanson explained. “I'm so appreciative of Drakos, because not too many people want to give a young guy a chance, and he did.”

Hanson started winning a few more races, and today he conditions a 25-horse string at Del Mar alongside his wife, Michelle Yu. Yu works afternoons as an on-air handicapper at Santa Anita, and the couple have two children under the age of four.

“They're my pride and joy,” Hanson said. “They get to come with us to the ranch, and before COVID, they'd come to the track in the afternoons as well.”

Every morning, seven days a week, Hanson rides at least 10 horses over the track before heading out to a ranch in Pico Rivera, where he, Yu, and a couple exercise riders spend another two hours or so starting babies and riding out the young horses in the river bottoms.

“Riding them yourself, I just thing you get a better feeling of the horses, you can see how they're doing,” Hanson said. “When I'm getting on them, I can make split-second decisions. When I'm out there we take them two at a time, so if I see the horse next to me doing something and think he needs to do something different, we can make that decision on the track right then.

“I do think Quarter Horses are a bit smarter than Thoroughbreds, because the Thoroughbreds you have to get out on the track every day. We try to do something different with them every day, gallop in a different way, or jog them, just something different to keep them thinking differently.”

Weston, a $7,000 purchase at the Keeneland September yearling sale, was one of those started through Hanson's program at the ranch.

“Honestly, he was miserable to break and miserable to ride,” Hanson said. “We brought him in (to the track on) April 1, and I remember thinking I couldn't wait to get him into the track and geld him. It didn't really help.”

Hanson rode the 2-year-old son of Hit It A Bomb for his first several workouts but didn't think too much of the gelding, so he decided to turn the reins over to exercise rider Emily Ellingwood. Now Ellingwood gallops Weston every day, and the gelding seems pleased with the new arrangement.

He won his debut on June 21 at Santa Anita by 1 1/4 lengths, then came back on Aug. 8 to win the G2 Best Pal by a neck.

“I was happy to win it for Ryan Hanson,” jockey Drayden Van Dyke told Del Mar publicity after the race. “He's such a kind man and a good horse trainer. And this horse showed some class, too. Ryan told me he never got to paddock him (prior to the race), but he was just standing in there like an old pro. I knew I got there in the end and I'm real glad I did.”

Hanson was thrilled, of course, but the pragmatic trainer not sure what the next step will be with Weston.

“I'm happy we got the race, but I don't know how good of a horse he is,” Hanson said honestly. “We caught the right field, and we were very ready. I'm not happy that we don't have another place to go with him besides the Del Mar Futurity, but if he continues to do well, I want to take advantage of it.”

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