With His Exercise Rider Aboard, Promising Post Time Wins Again

The Week In Review, By Bill Finley

When Eric Camacho retired from riding in 2016, he thought he knew what his future would be. He'd work as an exercise rider in the mornings and step aside in the afternoons and let someone else get all the glory and the big paychecks. Never did he imagine he'd win another race, let alone get the mount on an undefeated 2-year-old who might just be good enough to be pointed toward the GI Kentucky Derby. But after Post Time (Frosted) won Saturday's Maryland Juvenile at Laurel with Camacho aboard, it's beginning to look like anything is possible.

“It's been amazing,” Camacho, 39, said. “Words can't express it.”

Camacho rode regularly from 2004 through 2016 and won 787 races and captured Laurel Park's 2005 winter meet riding title. But he won just 16 races in 2016 and was having a hard time lining up decent mounts.

“I needed to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life,” he said.

So he quit riding and took a job galloping horses for trainer Keith Nations. It was his first stop of many before he signed on to work for trainer Brittany Russell in May. That was just about the time that Russell was starting to prepare Post Time for the races. In the son of Frosted, she knew she had a talented prospect but one who was a handful and was immature and quirky. Someone needed to teach him the right way to go about things and she assigned the job to Camacho. The two hit it off.

“He liked to rear up, he liked to play around,” Camacho said. “This horse liked to do things way he liked to do things. I have a lot of experience with younger horses trying to get along with them. We had a bond. Don't get me wrong, we had our bouts. But he came to respect me. He's a very smart horse.”

Post Time's debut was delayed due to a quarter crack, but Russell, whose husband, Sheldon, is a jockey, had him ready to go by early fall. It was around then that Camacho came to her and said whoever would be riding Post Time in the afternoon needed to get on him in the mornings beforehand.

“I told her that if she put somebody on this horse they first need to come by and get on him in the morning,” Camacho said. “I don't want them to afraid of him in the afternoon.”

Russell considered his advice and started to think that maybe the best option was to let Camacho ride Post Time.

“I asked him if maybe he should ride the horse,” she said. “At first, I was kind of just joking around.  But then I thought, you know what, he has a good relationship with the horse's owner, Ellen Charles, and I know he'll get this horse to the starting gate. Whatever tricks this horse might have up his sleeve on race day I know Eric will remain confident in him and will let him run anyway.”

The Maryland-bred debuted Oct. 7, facing off against open company in a 5 1/2-furlong maiden race at Laurel. Camacho, who had one mount in 2017 and another in 2021, had not won a race for nearly six years, since Oct. 20, 2016. Post Time won by two lengths, but it was far from smooth sailing. After making a sweeping move on the turn and gaining the lead in upper stretch, he swerved in and out down the lane.

He returned for an allowance race on Oct. 27 and it was a case of more of the same, a bold move on the turn followed by his ducking in and out down the stretch. He won by 6 3/4 lengths.

The Maryland Juvenile was next. Facing fellow Maryland-breds, this time Post Time closed from last, made an eye-catching move on the turn and drew off to win by 3 3/4 lengths. Though the competition may not have been that strong, it was a very impressive effort. And it was delivered without any antics in the stretch, giving Camacho his third win on the year from just three mounts. He has not ridden anybody else this year.

“This horse really turned a comer in the last two weeks or so,” Camacho said.

With the worst behavior perhaps a thing of the past, maybe now is the time for Russell to go to a different jockey, maybe even her husband, who is one of the top riders on the Maryland circuit.  Russell said she has no plans to do so.

“I don't know where we'll go with him next, but it's kind of hard to pull somebody off a horse that knows him so well and has done nothing wrong on him,” Russell said. “I think this has meant a lot to Eric. And it should. He's done a lot of work with this horse, who has had his good days and his bad days. Yes, he has a lot of talent, but I'm sure there are a lot of days when Eric wakes up and thinks, 'Oh, gosh, I've got to get this sucker to the racetrack this morning.' We gave Eric an opportunity, but he has done a great job.”

It's clear that Post Time is ready for a tougher assignment, but it's hard to tell how good he is. He has been winning easily, but that doesn't mean that he can step up from Maryland-bred competition and be competitive in a prep for the Derby. Then again, Russell isn't ruling it out.

“That's why you're in this business,” she said. “Everybody wants a horse like this in the barn and everybody wants to dream. The Derby or Derby preps? I can't say no, but he has a lot to prove before you can start talking about something like that. He won the Maryland Juvenile against a horse that had just won a restricted race. He's going to have to step up. Ellen is Maryland through and through, so she might like to see him run through the series here in races like the Tesio. But it's not a far ship to New York, so something there might be in the cards.”

Wherever Post Time goes next, it will be with Camacho, his exercise rider aboard.

“People say this horse has so much ability, why do you let the exercise rider ride him in the afternoon?” Russell said. “You have to realize that Eric had to work really hard with the horse to get him to show his talent in the afternoon. I don't know where we'd be without him.”

 

In Appreciation of Mind Control

There have been better horses to run over the last few years than Mind Control (Stay Thirsty), the winner of Saturday's GI Cigar Mile H., but perhaps none tougher or more game. You don't want to get into a dogfight in the stretch with this horse because you will lose. That was the case Saturday when he was passed in the stretch by Get Her Number (Dialed In) only to fight back and win by a head. It was his 11th career stakes win and his third victory in a Grade I event.

In the last four races in which he has crossed the wire first, he has won by a head every time. The chart comments have included the following: “battled back gamely,” “bid stretch, came again,” and “dueled.” Outside of his maiden win, which he won by three lengths, he has never won by more than 1 1/2 lengths and he won both the GI H. Allen Jerkens S. and the GIII Toboggan S. by a nose.

He's also been remarkably durable, winning the GI Hopeful S. as a 2-year-old and the Cigar as a 6-year-old in his last career start.

“If you like horse racing, you've got to love this horse,” said winning trainer Todd Pletcher after the Cigar.

Well said.

The post With His Exercise Rider Aboard, Promising Post Time Wins Again appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Stakes Winner Anna’s Bandit Retired

No Guts No Glory Farm's 7-year-old mare Anna's Bandit, whose resume includes 11 stakes wins at three different tracks in two states as well as purse earnings of $806,655 over six seasons, has been retired from racing and will become a broodmare.

Bred and owned and trained by Maryland-based John 'Jerry' Robb and his wife, Gina, and ridden in 33 of her 39 lifetime starts by Xavier Perez, Anna's Bandit retires with a career record of 17 wins, five seconds, and eight thirds.

The Maryland Jockey Club will honor Anna's Bandit with a retirement ceremony between races during the 37th Jim McKay Maryland Million Day program Oct. 23 at Laurel Park.

“We're very excited. It's always hard, especially with a horse like Anna that's done so much, that you have to make this decision,” Gina Robb said. We couldn't be prouder of her. Now she's coming home and I'm so grateful, I really am.

“She means the world to us. She's like one of our children, basically. I think anybody who breeds horses can kind of relate to that, especially when it's a mom and pop kind of thing like we are,” she added. “We're a little operation. They're all there with us on the farm, and bringing her home to the farm that we built means so much to us. I'm really happy for her that she had such an incredible career, and now she's able to start over in a new chapter.”

In her most recent race, the daughter of Great Notion out of the No Armistice mare Onearmedbandit ran fifth in a six-furlong optional claiming allowance July 26 at Colonial Downs in New Kent, Va., behind fellow multiple stakes winner Never Enough Time.

“We were pretty much decided that this was going to be her last year regardless, it didn't matter if she was good, bad, or indifferent,” Gina Robb said. “She came out of that Colonial race a little tired, and we were kind of shaking our heads because we thought it was one of her easier spots.

“When she came back from Colonial, we just kind of didn't like the way she was going,” she added. “She doesn't have anything major where we had to stop her, but I think in all of our minds and our hearts and how much she means to us, we really didn't want to take any more chances.”

Perez, who reached 1,000th career wins in June at Delaware Park in Wilmington, Del., rode Anna's Bandit to 14 wins, four seconds, and seven thirds, and all but $114,540 of her purse earnings. Other jockeys to ride Anna's Bandit were Eric Camacho and Katie Davis in 2016 and 2017 and Gerald Almodovar in the May 29, 2020 Original Gold at Charles Town in Charles Town, W.Va., her last win.

“She deserves it,” Perez said of retirement. “She doesn't owe anything to anybody. She did her job and she made us proud. She's safe and where she belongs. I'm happy for her.”

In 2019, Anna's Bandit won nine of 11 starts and more than $400,000 in purses, tying for the most wins of any horse in North America. Her career stakes wins included the 2018 and 2019 Conniver, 2019 Maryland Million Distaff and 2019 Politely at Laurel Park in Laurel, Md., and 2019 Timonium Distaff.

In West Virginia, where she was bred, Anna's Bandit won the Down Town Allen and Sadie Hawkins in 2018; Original Gold, Sadie Hawkins, and West Virgina Cavada Breeders' Classic in 2019; and Original Gold in 2020.

Her Maryland Million win came just a week after Anna's Bandit won the Cavada, a feat Gina Robb felt was at the top of a laundry list of accomplishments.

“That one year that when she won all those stakes, it was kind of like a blur,” she said. “After she won the West Virginia-bred race and came back in seven days … I have the goosebumps thinking of it. That had to be the most incredible of all the races.”

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Anna's Bandit also placed in 10 other stakes, including a third behind Majestic Reason and Victim of Love in the 2020 Grade 3 Runhappy Barbara Fritchie, her lone graded-stakes attempt. Majestic Reason was a three-time stakes winner that was retired following the race, while Victim of Love went on to win back-to-back editions of the Grade 3 Vagrancy in 2020 and 2021 and run third in the 2020 Grade 1 Ballerina.

“She's amazing. She's always going to be one of the best horses I ever rode, or anybody rode,” Perez said. “They don't come around too often. You have to be lucky and be in the right place at the right time. It worked out for me.”

Anna's Bandit's success has been nothing short of remarkable. She showed she was special early on, debuting with a 6 ¾-length maiden special weight triumph May 6, 2016 at Laurel Park in Laurel, Md., and jumping straight into stakes company. She finished third in the Astoria at Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y., and second in the Debutante at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., the latter in July, before going to the sidelines.

She went 14 ½ months between races, the result of multiple operations to repair leg injuries that went undiagnosed during her formative years.

Anna's Bandit was limited to four starts in 2020, due to both the coronavirus pandemic that paused live racing in Maryland for 2 ½ months from mid-March to late May, and a minor foot issue in late summer that prompted Robb to give her the rest of the year off. She began this year running fifth in the June 13 Shine Again at historic Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Md., and second in the July 10 Dashing Beauty at Delaware Park.

Plans call for Anna's Bandit to be bred in 2022, though the details have yet to be worked out.

“We are just trying to get over the fact that she's retired. We do have time to discuss where we're going on February 15th, because we plan on trying to get her in foal early,” Gina Robb said. “We would like to ship her and bring her home and not have her stay anywhere else. I don't know that I'm ready to let her go. I'm just getting her back.

“I think the first year we might keep her local, to a Maryland sire or on the East Coast, somewhere close so we can ship and go and keep her home where I don't have to worry about anything else. I'm very excited to be a part of her broodmare career, and to have her first foal on this farm is going to be one remarkable day.”

The post Stakes Winner Anna’s Bandit Retired appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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