kent sweezey | Horse Racing Free Tips

Summer Breezes: Aug. 4, 2022

Some of the most highly anticipated races during the summer racing season are the 'baby' races during the boutique meetings at both Saratoga and Del Mar and at Ellis Park, which attracts its fair share of high-priced offspring from a variety of top national outfits. Summer Breezes highlights debuting 2-year-olds at those meetings that have been sourced at the breeze-up sales earlier in the year, with links to their under-tack previews. Already this year at Saratoga, City Man (Mucho Macho Man), Mo Strike (Uncle Mo) and Empress Tigress (Classic Empire)–each a graduate of the 2-year-old sales–have already struck at stakes level, while the likes of juvenile purchases and 'TDN Rising Stars' Taiba (Gun Runner), We The People (Constitution) and Onesto (Ire) (Frankel {GB}) have also left their mark on graded/group competition this season. To follow are the horses entered for Thursday:

Thursday, August 4, 2022
Saratoga 2, 1:39 p.m. ET
Horse (Sire), Sale, Price, Breeze
Gormleyesque (Gormley), OBSAPR, $55,000, click
C-Six K's Training & Sales, Agent; B-Arch Bloodstock, agent
Illicit (Into Mischief), OBSAPR, $525,000, click
C-Gene Recio, agent; B-Kent Sweezey, agent for R S Evans
Tattered Heart (Kantharos), FTMMAY, $65,000, click
C-Kings Equine, agent; B-Jason Barkley, agent for Ryan Scott

Del Mar 1, 5:00 p.m. ET
Heart of the Night (City of Light), FTMMAY, $275,000, click
C-de Meric Sales, agent; B-JDT Racing, R Dalyn Jones, agent
La Paloma Blanca (Kitten's Joy), OBSJUN, $30,000, click
C-Gene Recio, agent; B-Peter Miller, agent
La Peer (Girvin), OBSAPR, $87,000, click
C-Top Line Sales LLC, agent; B-Little Red Feather, J Dowd, agent

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Sweezey Hoping Home Track Advantage Helps Phat Man In Iselin

To beat a horse like multiple Grade 1 winner Code of Honor in Saturday's Grade 3 Philip H. Iselin Stakes at Monmouth Park, trainer Kent Sweezey knows he needs every edge he can get. That's where the home track advantage comes in for Phat Man.

Code of Honor, the 2019 Kentucky Derby runner-up and Travers Stakes winner, will ship in from Saratoga for the $250,000 mile and a sixteenth race that serves as the headliner on a 14-race card.

Phat Man, the only other graded stakes winner in the seven-horse field, merely has to travel from Sweezey's barn on the Monmouth Park backstretch.

“I feel he's getting a real advantage running out of his own stall,” said Sweezey. “He's been a tricky horse. We've had minor issues with shipping him for the past year. Being able to run out of his own stall makes a huge difference.

“When we went to Belmont (June 4) we shipped in four days early. When we went to Churchill Downs (May 1) we came in the morning of the race. We've had to be really careful with what we do with his shipping because he's a bit of a worrier. He's tricky that way. So being at home for this race is huge for him.”

Two other factors could play to Phat Man's advantage. One is Code of Honor's seven-month layoff, with the Shug McGaughey-trainee idle since a fifth-place finish in the Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup on Jan. 23 at Gulfstream.

Phat Man, meanwhile, is coming off a win that Sweezey said was “one of the best races he's ever run for us.”

Now 7 years old, Phat Man rolled to a two-length victory in the Battery Park Stakes at Delaware Park on July 10 as a prep for the Iselin.

“I wanted to see that and got to see that,” said Sweezey, who is enjoying a solid Monmouth Park meet with 11 wins from his 40 starters. “I spoke to (jockey) Florent Geroux right after he got off the horse and he said `man, your big horse ran great.' I asked him how much he had to ask of him, if he really had to get to the bottom of him, and he said `not even close.'

“So that's encouraging to me.”

Phat Man, owned by Marianne Stribling, Force Five Racing LLC and Two Rivers Racing Stable LLC, will always hold a special place with Sweezey since he provided him with the first graded stakes win of his career in the Grade 3 Fred W. Hooper Stakes at Gulfstream on Jan. 25, 2020. That was just six months after ownership group bought the son of Munnings for $65,000 at the Fasig-Tipton July Selected Horses of Racing Sale on July 8, 2019.

Overall, Phat Man shows a 9-8-2 line with career earnings of $621,609 from his 35 starts.

“He's a really smart horse and he takes care of himself,” said Sweezey. “He knows when it's go time and he also knows when he can lollygag in the mornings. He's kind of an old school type of horse who will tell you what to do.”

Sweezey believes there's enough speed in the Iselin to help set up Phat Man's late run, saying “he's a horse who needs to get into a rhythm.”

“He's a huge horse,” said Sweezey. “I would say he's one of the biggest horses on the backstretch as far as weight and height go, meaning he is a freight train. You can't stop and start a big horse like that. He's not a Ferrari. He needs to be kept in a rhythm. That's what happened in Delaware.

“Obviously, Shug's horse is the one to beat. But on Phat Man's best day and at this distance I think we have a real shot.”

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Trainer Kent Sweezey Building Momentum Toward Best Overall Year

As he continues to balance divisions at Monmouth Park and Gulfstream, doing so well enough to be in the top 10 of the trainer standings at both tracks, J. Kent Sweezey is quick to point out that it's more than just a one-man operation.

So his success, he insists, is really team success, with the latest being yet another milestone in a season that is well on its way to being the best year of his five-year training career: Epic Bromance's third-place finish (at odds of 61-1) in last Sunday's $500,000 United Nations at Monmouth Park.

It marked the first time the 35-year-old Lexington, Ky. native had hit the board in a Grade 1 race since he went out on his own in 2017. Epic Bromance was beaten just three lengths by race winner Tribhuvan.

“It's great, of course, but when you have a split string like I do and you have success or win races – and if we win at Monmouth and I'm at Gulfstream, or vice-versa – owners in both places understand it's the team,” said Sweezey. “It's not just me out there doing all of the work. It's the rest of the guys doing their jobs so I can manage everything.

“Until you show up and have the results we're having I think there are a lot of questions. I think this year has answered some of those questions. We have a really good team in both places.”

A year after winning just seven times from 59 starters at Monmouth Park, Sweezey is already 7-for-24 at the current meet, including a victory in the Boiling Springs Stakes with Por Que Non.

Those numbers are good enough for 10th in the Monmouth trainer standings (he is ninth in the Gulfstream standings). It's a long way from when he first arrived at Monmouth Park in 2018 with a small string of horses. He now has 70 overall.

“I think it's the best progression I could have hoped for,” Sweezey said. “We started out with only a few horses the first year we were at Monmouth, then came back with a lot more and the year after that is when we filled the barn that we're in right now.

“I think things are going as well as I could have hoped for. I've got some graded stakes horses in the barn, I have horses for new people I have not had before. Our stock has risen because we have better horses but we still have bread-and-butter horses that are winning races for us and keeping this thing going.”

Sweezey, who has 39 winners from 232 starters with earnings in excess of $1.2 million overall this year – he won 59 races worth more than $1.4 million a year ago – is looking to add to his success at Monmouth in the coming weeks.

He will send Grade 3 winner Phat Man into the Grade 3 Iselin Stakes on Aug. 21 and is pointing Epic Dreamer to the Oceanport Stakes on Aug. 8. He may have another starter in the Oceanport as well, having recently purchased millionaire 5-year-old gelding A Thread of Blue at the Fasig-Tipton July Sale for Horses in Training.

A Thread of Blue, a Grade 3 winner, won the Saratoga Derby in 2019.

“He's a new shooter in the barn that we're looking forward to seeing run,” said Sweezey. “I think he has a lot of miles left in him. We might run him in the Oceanport as well.”

Meanwhile, Sweezey will keep juggling his two divisions, hoping the early momentum he has built up continues through the summer. When Monmouth Park resumes racing on Friday he will send out Destinique in the fourth race, a $12,500 claimer.

“You have to keep the ball rolling,” he said.

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Por Que No Sets Pace, Sails To Easy Win In Boiling Spring Stakes At Monmouth

As the lone speed in a short field, trainer Kent Sweezey and jockey Ferrin Peterson weren't about to overthink the strategy with Por Que No in Saturday's $75,000 Boiling Spring Stakes at Monmouth Park in Oceanport, N.J.

Get to the front, slow down the fractions and leave plenty in reserve. Good in theory but even better in practice, as it turned out.

Por Que No led every step out of the gate and then cruised to a 4½-length victory, posting her fifth win in her past six starts and first in stakes company.

Seasons, the 7-10 favorite in the field of six 3-year-old fillies, faded to third after chasing the slow fractions set by Peterson and Por Que No throughout the mile and a sixteenth turf feature.

“I knew there were some really good horses in this race and my thinking was I need to make them catch me. I'm the speed in the race,” said Peterson, who notched her first stakes win of the meet. “So if I can get the lead, save ground and let her relax – which she did; in the backstretch, she was in her own element – and then take a deep breath and don't stress I thought she would be able to do what she did.

“At the three-eighths pole, I saw out of my peripheral vision another horse coming, so I thought `okay, I've got to make them catch us, I've got to break their confidence.' I shook her up a little and she had another gear. At the top of the lane, she just took off.”

The winning time over a turf course rated firm despite rain showers prior to the race was 1:42.43.

Por Que No, a daughter of Wicked Strong owned by Fano Racing, returned $9.60 to win.

Peterson basically won the race in the opening half, with a first quarter in :25.82 and the half-mile in :49.60. Seasons and jockey Paco Lopez chased most of the way around before fading late. Shantisara, making her U.S. debut for trainer Chad Brown, finished second, three lengths ahead of a tiring Seasons.

“I know she can fight her jockey sometimes, so I was trying to slow her down as much as I could without taking energy away from her,” Peterson said.

Lopez said the moisture in the turf from the rain did not appear to affect Seasons.

“She got frustrated chasing those slow fractions,” he said.

For Sweezey, it marked his first stakes win at Monmouth Park since capturing the Good Magic Stakes with Phat Man in 2019.

“Ferrin was aware we were the lone speed and what the game plan needed to be,” said Sweezey. “I didn't think Paco Lopez would be that close, especially with the slow fractions. We wanted to make (Seasons) catch us. I knew my filly was doing good. I knew she'd be fine on the lead and would last.

“I wasn't worried with the rain before the race. I thought it would make everyone else a little more timid. It wasn't going to affect what we wanted to do. I knew she would be good today and she was.”

Por Que No had raced exclusively at Gulfstream in her first six career starts before Sweezey shipped her north for this race.

He said the ownership group, which owns a house in nearby Monmouth Beach, “wanted to see her run at their home track.”

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