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Mitchell Road Fends Off Challengers To Win Ellis Park Turf

The $50,000 Ellis Park Turf proved Mitchell Road's path back into the winner's circle as she held off upset-minded Strike My Fancy to triumph by a neck.

The class of the field, Mitchell Road was a Grade 3 winner last year but came into the Ellis Park Turf 0 for 3 in 2020, finishing seventh in Churchill Downs' Grade 3 Mint Julep following a pair of seconds.

“I think we were just looking around for a good spot for her,” said Kenny McCarthy, who oversees the Churchill Downs operation for Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott. “I mean, she tries hard every time we run her. I think sometimes mentally it's nice for them to win one, when they put forth so much effort. She's been pretty consistent, so it was good to get the win today.”

Mitchell Road was unprepared at the start and broke last but was content to briefly settle behind Harmless, who at 33-1 was the longest shot in the field of six older fillies and mares, before lapping on alongside her rival. Harmless actually stuck her head back in front in midstretch, but Mitchell Road shook her off and then held Strike My Fancy at bay.

“It worked out pretty well,” said Joe Talamo, winning his first stakes at Ellis Park in his first year making Kentucky his base. “The pace was really slow. I just let her gather up her stride and slowly get up there. She got into a really good rhythm down the backside, the whole way around there. Then turning for home, I had a lot of horse. When that other filly came to me, she fought her off pretty nicely. When she got to the lead, I felt like she might have been waiting a little bit, so I was actually happy to see that other filly come to her. I think it made her pay attention a little bit more. Because even galloping out, she was still full of run. I was just thankful for the opportunity. She's a very nice filly.”

Mitchell Road toured 1 1/16 miles over firm turf in 1:43.12, quickening to cover the final sixteenth-mile in 6.10 seconds. The daughter of turf champion English Channel paid $3.60 to win as the 4-5 favorite.

“She's a filly, if you watch her races, she loves a dogfight,” McCarthy said. “It's like she kind of gets there and then is waiting there for that next one to come. I saw the 6 (Strike My Fancy) coming, but I felt she was still going to hold. That's the kind of filly she is.”

The Matt Shirer-trained Strike My Fancy closed with a rush under Colby Hernandez to make a close race out of it.

“My horse ran a big race. She tries every time,” said Hernandez, the younger brother of Kentucky mainstay Brian Hernandez Jr. “She's a very easy horse to ride. She puts you where you need to be in a race. At the sixteenth pole I thought I had a chance at the winner.”

Harmless — claimed for $62,500 in her prior start, and finishing eighth that day — came in another 1 1/4 lengths back in third under Alex Achard, thrilling new trainer Michelle Lovell.

“That was good,” she said. “I thought she may hang in for second. She hung in there for a long time.”

Mintd, who hit the gate at the start, came in fourth. Timeless Curls, who pushed the early pace in her first start in 13 1/2 months, and Our Bay B Ruth founded out the field. Sister Hanan, Makealitlemischief, Mighty Scarlett and Complicit were scratched.

Mitchell Road now has won races at ages 3, 4 and 5, with three stakes victories last year — including Pimlico's Grade 3 Gallorette two weeks after her younger half-brother Country House gave Mott his first victory in the Kentucky Derby. Both horses are out of the War Chant mare Quake Lake. Mitchell Road now is 7-5-0 in 15 starts, earning $501,060 for Mrs. J.V. Shields Jr. and E.J.M. McFadden Jr.

“Any year you can win a stakes is a great year for it,” McCarthy said. “Obviously this is probably her last year of running, so let's look around for her and try to find her some good spots and let her pad her resume.”

A good spot easily could be Ellis Park's $100,000 Kentucky Downs Preview Ladies Turf on Aug. 2. The winner of that race gets a fees-paid spot in the $500,000, Grade 3 Three Chimneys Kentucky Downs Ladies Turf on Sept. 12, a race Mitchell Road ran second in last year.

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‘Right Horses In The Right Spot’: James Graham Hoping Luck Holds Again This Summer At Ellis Park

James Graham won last year's Ellis Park riding title amid what likely was the toughest jockey colony in track history. Now he'll try to repeat his crown against an even deeper assembly of riders during the RUNHAPPY Summer Meet at Ellis Park that begins Thursday and runs through Aug. 30.

Graham won the 2019 Ellis title with 26 wins to nip the 25 accrued by three-time defending champion Corey Lanerie and Tyler Baze, who had just relocated from California to Kentucky. Graham has been adept this past year in winning meet championships in photo finishes, taking the Fair Grounds winter title in New Orleans with 63 victories, one better than Mitchell Murrill and three more than Colby Hernandez, both of whom will be based at Ellis Park for the first time.

Lanerie, who has won five Ellis titles overall, was out of state riding on the last day of the 2019 meet, when Graham won two races to secure his first crown at a Kentucky track.

“We got lucky,” Graham said. “Corey was out of town the last weekend, just about. If Corey had been there, would he have won two or one? Would Tyler have gotten lucky? With a couple of better trips from the horses he rode, he might have won it, too. Just luck. Riding the right horses in the right spot in the right time.”

But don't think that the 41-year-old doesn't take deep pride in winning his first riding title in Kentucky, after having won riding titles at Chicago's Arlington Park and New Orleans' Fair Grounds.

“Always, always,” Graham said. “Every win is an achievement.”

Still, he insists he didn't think about winning the title until the final days.

“I don't think about stuff like that,” Graham said. “I just think about the here and the now and riding races. I didn't realize I was as close as I was. I was just doing my work, enjoying it, because I enjoy riding. And that's what it's about. It's not about, 'Yeah, we knew we were close, but we didn't know if we were actually going get there.' Because you're worried about now and not what's going to happen in three or four days from now.”

With 15 wins, Graham also had a big meet at Churchill Downs, whose meet ended this past Sunday.

“You can never expect too much in horse racing,” he said. “You hope to have a good meet. The bonus is coming out of it without being hurt, making it through and making a living for yourself.”

Graham, a married father of three, grew up in Dublin, Ireland, coming to the United States in 2002 and working as an exercise rider in Lexington. His first summer as a jockey in America came in 2003 at Ellis Park before he moved on to ride at Chicago's Arlington Park in the summers and then on to California before returning to Kentucky fours years ago.

As the purse money got better at Ellis Park, so did the competition to win races.

Last year Florent Geroux and Baze were among those deciding that it works well to stay in Kentucky for the summer, riding at Ellis Park except when stakes business drew them out of state. Geroux is a five-time Breeders' Cup winner, including on Horse of the Year Gun Runner and Kentucky Oaks winner and champion Monomoy Girl. Baze was the Eclipse Award-winning apprentice jockey in 2000.

New for 2020 are two-time Eclipse Award-winning jockey Julien Leparoux, California mainstays Joe Talamo and Martin Garcia, Louisiana stalwart Colby Hernandez (brother of Kentucky-based Brian Hernandez) and the up-and-coming Mitchell Murrill, along with the return of two-time Ellis champ Rafael Bejarano after 13 years in California. That's in addition to the strong cast of regulars: Graham, Lanerie, Brian Hernandez, Miguel Mena, Shaun Bridgmohan and — oh, by the way — three-time Kentucky Derby-winner and Hall of Famer Calvin Borel.

“No matter where you go in Kentucky, it's always tough,” Graham said. “You've got a lot of good riders. Miguel Mena has a fantastic meet wherever he goes because he's a very good rider. You've got Mitchell Murrill coming in; he's been second at the Fair Grounds a couple of times. It's not like it's going to be easy anywhere being leading rider. And you've got Corey and you've got Brian. You got Colby Hernandez. A lot of guys are staying in Kentucky this year.

“… The riders here win races everywhere. To me, you hope everything goes well, hopefully get on some pretty nice stock. You look at the stock that ran last year, there were a lot of good horses who went to the Breeders' Cup, a lot of good 2-year-olds that broke their maidens at Ellis. The quality of horses in Kentucky has always been good. The quality of the maidens at Ellis Park have always been decent, but they've gotten better over the past couple of years. People don't want to go to New York and run against the heavy-heads like Todd Pletcher, Chad Brown and a couple of those guys who are always loaded. But we've got good horses. It's been very competitive the last couple of years in Kentucky with young horses and everybody kind of wanting to stay at home.”

With the exception of Churchill Downs meet-leader Tyler Gaffalione and Ricardo Santana Jr., who both will go to Saratoga for the summer, Ellis Park's jockeys' room will be much the same as the Louisville track. And Santana is riding the first two days at Ellis.

“I don't think there's ever been an Ellis Park jockey colony this deep, and I've been going to every meet since I was a kid,” said Jimmy McNerney, Ellis Park's announcer and race analyst. “Since we raised our purses and the quality of racing, every year the colony has gotten better. This is obviously the strongest one to date. You can go 12 deep in here. There's never been that many Derby and Breeders' Cup-winning jockeys at Ellis.”

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‘Got Him At The Right Time’: Ohio Derby Winner Dean Martini May Target Ellis Park Derby

Dean Martini made his first start at Ellis Park last Aug. 4, finishing second at 24-1. Now, after winning last Saturday's $500,000 Ohio Derby, Louisville-based Raise the BAR Racing's 3-year-old gelding could be coming back to Henderson for the $200,000 RUNHAPPY Ellis Park Derby on Aug. 9.

“It's definitely under consideration,” said trainer Tom Amoss. “Absolutely timing-wise we'll look at the race at Ellis.”

It was Dean Martini's second start for his new owners and Amoss after they claimed him out of a $50,000 maiden-claiming race at Churchill Downs, which made him a winner on his eighth attempt. Yet even in defeat, there was only one race in which Dean Martini did not run well. That was his second start, which came at Del Mar in California.

Dean Martini won by 6 3/4 length the day he was claimed, the only time he was in a claiming race. He returned to finish a good second after breaking from post 12 in an allowance race won by Man in the Can, a strong contender for Keeneland's Grade 2 Toyota Blue Grass Stakes. That encouraged Amoss to go hunting bigger game in the Grade 3 Ohio Derby, whose runner-up was stakes-winner South Bend and whose third-place finisher was 2019 Breeders' Cup Juvenile winner and Eclipse Award champion Storm the Court.

Amoss is a disciple of the Ragozin handicapping sheets, which chart form cycles by taking into account variables such as ground lost, traffic trouble and how fast or slow the track is playing in assigning a number for each horse's race. The lower the number, the faster the performance, regardless of what the official time might be.

“I liked the fact that he was a horse who looked like on the 'sheets' that he was developing,” Amoss said of the claim. “The day we claimed him, he ran a very big race. In the allowance race, he ran just as well…. I just got lucky. I didn't do anything special with this horse. He came in great shape. I think I got him at the right time. I claimed a horse that was in the process of developing, getting better. I did nothing more than pick up where the old barn left off.”

Raise The BAR Racing's name is a shout out to the first letters of the first names of partners Brad Rives, Annie Jessee and Rick Riney — along with the fact that they're all lawyers, and they might also occasionally have gone to a bar. Diane Jessee, Annie's sister in law, also is a partner.

The Ohio Derby victory fell on the 81st birthday of former Kentucky governor Brereton Jones, who with his son Bret bred Dean Martini, bloodhorse.com noted.

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‘Nothing Has Been Typical This Year,’ But Asmussen Ready To Chase Training Title At Ellis Park

Hall of Famer Steve Asmussen shoots for his fourth training title in five years at the RUNHAPPY Summer Meet at Ellis Park, which opens Thursday and concludes Aug. 30.

Ellis Park runs Thursday through Sunday, then takes next week off in order to let Keeneland Race Course make up five days and many of the Lexington track's biggest stakes races from its canceled April meet. Ellis then resumes July 17 with its Friday through Sunday format, closing a week earlier than normal in order to let Churchill Downs conduct a delayed Kentucky Derby Week.

Asmussen comes into Ellis Park off a record-setting Churchill Downs session. While collecting a record 23rd training title at Churchill Downs, Asmussen also replaced Dale Romans as the all-time win leader under the Twin Spires, now by a 747-744 margin.

Asmussen hadn't raced regularly at Ellis Park in years when he created a large division at Kentucky's second-oldest racetrack in 2016, lured by increasing purses and a good racing surface. He promptly won the Ellis training title in that year, followed by 2017 and 2019, with Brad Cox winning in 2018. When Asmussen regained the crown last year by a 24-18 victory margin over Cox, he also came away with the distinction of being the meet's leading owner with five wins.

“Everything is different this year,” Asmussen said last week, referencing life in the COVID-19 era while adjusting the protective mask on his face as he stood outside of Churchill Downs. “It's going to take us a while to get the right horses there to run. I'm anxious to see what races go, who you'll be able to run. Nothing has been typical this year with anywhere we are running now.

“Purses have taken a hit everywhere, pretty much, very few exceptions to that. We are running the same horse for a little less money, but the pandemic caused that financial situation in a lot of things. We should be represented in most categories there. It is a bit different with Keeneland running five days in there, (with) their traditional stakes. We run a couple of days at Ellis, then five days at Keeneland then we resume. I think once we get through the Keeneland meet and you get horses moved back around, we'll have the right horses to run there.”

Each win at Ellis this summer will bring Asmussen a step closer to a goal he has long coveted: being the winningest thoroughbred trainer in history. He currently has 8,889 wins in a career dating to 1986, trailing only the late Dale Baird by 556, which puts Asmussen on pace to take over the lead next year.

Asked about not being shy in wanting to be No. 1 all-time, Asmussen laughed and said, “As opposed to not be? You do. We're blessed with opportunity. I feel we should win a lot more than we do already, and hopefully we'll correct that soon.”

Asmussen can get off to a fast start this meet in his defense of both his trainer and owner's titles, with a horse in three of the first four races Thursday, two of whom he owns. In the fourth race, Asmussen will send out Three Chimneys' first-time starter Fuego Caliente, the 7-5 favorite in the field of eight 2-year-olds. Fuego Caliente is a son of champion Will Take Charge, who stands in stud at Three Chimneys Farm in Woodford County. His mom is the Hook and Ladder mare Noble Fire, whose four winners from her first four foals to race include female sprint champion and $1.5 million-earner La Verdad and Grade 3 Charles Town Oaks winner Hot City Girl.

Asmussen has high praise for Ellis' track surface, which always has been known as a very good, safe surface, with former Keeneland track superintendent Javier Barajas taking over its care this year.

“We've been stabled at Ellis Park for a couple of weeks now, and I'm extremely pleased with the surface,” Asmussen said. “I think it's better than it's ever been.”

The trainer said he expects to be in the Aug. 9 RUNHAPPY Ellis Park Derby, whose purse was doubled to $200,000 and distance extended to 1 1/8 miles. The winner will receive 50 points toward qualifying for the Sept. 5 Kentucky Derby, almost assuredly guaranteeing a spot in the 20-horse starting gate for America's most famous race.

“I have horses I do plan running there,” Asmussen said. “I'm not positive who I plan on running, but we will run at least one. I think unprecedented is the situation we're in right now: Who you will run that may need points to secure your spot (in the Derby), or the fact that it is simply a good financial spot for who you have has yet to be determined. With having already run the Belmont Stakes, it's just a very different time for horse racing.”

Asmussen's Ellis Park operation is overseen by assistant trainer Mitch Dennison.

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