Tag: Kentucky Derby

Tiz The Law Delivers Redemption For New York Connections In 152nd Belmont Stakes

A deluge of rain at Belmont Park derailed the Triple Crown dreams of the gutsy gelding, Funny Cide, in 2003, but 17 years later Sackatoga Stable and trainer Barclay Tagg finally captured the elusive Belmont Stakes with a decisive four-length victory by Tiz the Law. Their triumph in the 152nd running came in front of a nearly-empty grandstand and over a shortened distance of nine furlongs, punctuating an unprecedented year in which the Belmont has been run as the first of the three-race classic series.

The 2020 Belmont Stakes awards 150 Kentucky Derby points to the winner, virtually ensuring Tiz the Law a spot in the starting gate for the Run for the Roses, rescheduled for Sept. 5 at Churchill Downs.

A New York-bred son of Constitution, Tiz the Law completed the one-turn, 1 1/8-mile contest in 1:46.53 over Belmont's fast main track, becoming the first New York bred to win the Belmont in over 100 years. The 4-5 post time favorite gave New York-based jockey Manny Franco his first win in the Triple Crown series.

Unbridled Stakes winner Dr Post finished second, about four lengths behind the winner, while Withers winner Max Player closed from near the rear of the field to check in third. Pneumatic, also up close early, finished fourth.

Tagg had been preparing Tiz the Law for the Belmont since the colt won the G1 Florida Derby in late March, making the goal official as soon as the new Triple Crown dates were announced. The trainer worked his charge regularly at Palm Meadows in South Florida through the end of May, shipping him up to New York in early June and recording two local breezes over the Belmont main track.

When the gates opened for the first major sporting event since the coronavirus shutdowns, Tiz the Law was right up with the frontrunners but sensibly allowed Franco to ease him back into third position for the long run up the backstretch. As expected from his inside post position, the speedy Tap It To Win went straight to the front with a one-length advantage over Fore Left. Franco kept Tiz the Law in the clear three-wide, biding his time and watching the race unfold.

Tap It To Win set fractions of :23.11, :46.16, and 1:09.94, the Mark Casse-trained allowance winner looking comfortable under Hall of Fame rider John Velazquez. However, when Franco sent Tiz the Law after the leader with a three-wide bid in the far turn, Tap It To Win faltered.

Tiz the Law galloped by that rival and easily cleared the rest of the field, leaving the hard-charging Dr Post in his wake as he stretched toward the wire. Franco took a peek under his arm near the eighth pole to make sure no one was coming, then hand-rode his charge through the finish to win decisively by about four lengths.

Dr Post had been mid-pack early in the race, and moved into third around the far turn but was no match for Tiz the Law in the lane. Max Player, second-last of the 10-horse field up the backstretch, closed well to finish third, just a half-length behind Dr Post. Pneumatic threatened briefly around the far turn, but couldn't keep pace when the others accelerated and had to settle for fourth.

The remaining order of finish was: Tap It To Win, Sole Volante, Modernist, Farmington Road, Fore Left, and Jungle Runner.

Bred in New York by Twin Creeks Farm, Tiz the Law is out of the Grade 2-winning Tiznow mare Tizfiz. Her 2014 daughter by Tapit, Awestruck, was placed in multiple stakes races and ran out earnings of over $350,000, so the result of the mating to freshman stallion Constitution, by Tapit, drew some attention at the 2018 Fasig-Tipton New York-bred Yearling sale.

Jack Knowlton, Sackatoga principle, secured the colt with a final bid of $110,000, and he rewarded the stable's faith with a debut victory and a second-out win in the G1 Champagne. Tagg and Knowlton opted to skip the Breeders' Cup with Tiz the Law, and brought him to Churchill Downs for the G2 Kentucky Jockey Club in late November only to see him finish third after being blocked in for part of the run around the turn.

Rested until February, Tiz the Law returned with a bang when he won the G3 Holy Bull by an easy three lengths over eventual Fountain of Youth winner Ete Indien. A rematch in the Florida Derby saw Tiz the Law successful once again, winning by 4 1/4 lengths this time.

Overall, the colt has won five of his six starts to earn just shy of $1.5 million.

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Belmont Stakes Kicks Off Upside Down 2020 Triple Crown

ELMONT, NY — Shortened to 1 1/8 miles and to be contested free of spectators, the reshuffled Triple Crown gets underway with the 152nd renewal of the GI Belmont S. Saturday.

The winner will have to wait until the first Saturday in September for the GI Kentucky Derby, however, to continue a bid for what would have to go down as the most unique of sweeps if able to join the legendary previous 13 to do so. The series concludes with the GI Preakness S. at Pimlico Oct. 3.

Welcome to horse racing amidst a global pandemic in 2020.

Jack Knowlton and trainer Barclay Tagg have been here before. Well, sort of. In 2003, the folks at Sackatoga Stable famously packed a school bus and made winning stops in Louisville and Baltimore with the popular gelding Funny Cide (Distorted Humor) before coming up short in Elmont.

Tiz the Law (Constitution), a dominating winner in his two starts at three, led by the GI Curlin Florida Derby at Gulfstream Mar. 28, can provide some redemption for the group at 5:42 p.m. ET Saturday. He is the 6-5 morning-line favorite.

Both New York-breds, Funny Cide and Tiz the Law were produced by first-year WinStar stallions.

“We’re excited to have an opportunity to be in the Belmont again,” Knowlton said. “The pressure isn’t quite as great this time given the fact that we were trying to end a Triple Crown run at Belmont the last time and win a $5-million bonus from Visa, so there was a lot more at stake in that sense going into that race.

Knowlton continued, “But this is exciting. It’s historical and we’re hoping that we can win the first leg of the Triple Crown at Belmont and complete Sackatoga Stable’s Triple Crown, albeit with two different horses, and be the only horse that has a chance in this crazy upside down year to make a Triple Crown run.”

They won’t be able to gather at the races this weekend due to the COVID-19 epidemic, but that won’t stop a good portion of the 35 partners in Tiz the Law-representing 13 states across the country–from getting together, following proper social distancing guidelines, of course, Governor Cuomo.

“About half of the partners are going to descend upon Saratoga Springs,” Knowlton said. “One of our partners, Bruce Cerone, owns a restaurant named Pennell’s and he has an outdoor patio. Current plans are to get the group together and enjoy three hours of the NBC telecast.”

Knowlton added, “This group has a number of people that have been in Sackatoga for many years and some other people that are very fortunate and it’s their first horse. It’s a good group. We’ve expanded-a lot of people from all over have joined Sackatoga.”

Tiz the Law was picked up for $110,000 as a Fasig-Tipton Saratoga New York-bred yearling, Sackatoga’s only purchase at public auction in 2018. Out of the graded stakes-winning Tiznow mare Tizfiz, Tiz the Law hails from the extended female family of Horse of the Year Favorite Trick. He was bred in the Empire State by Twin Creeks Farm.

“It’s all Barclay Tagg and Robin Smullen,” Knowlton said. “They’re our trainer and assistant trainer, and our bloodstock advisors. They’re very good at what they do and we’ve now had two very serious horses. We buy typically one, maybe two horses a year, and always New York-breds. The most we’ve ever spent on a horse was $180,000.”

Tiz the Law’s resume also includes a visually impressive win at two in the GI Champagne S. going a one-turn mile at Belmont last fall. Shortened from its traditional 1 1/2-mile distance, the Belmont will also be contested around just one turn this year.

The lone hiccup from the bay so far in five career starts was a close third with a less-than-ideal trip over a sloppy track in last November’s GII Kentucky Jockey Club S. beneath the Twin Spires.

Manny Franco will be aboard for the fifth straight time Saturday.

“It’s going to be a long time before we get to go to Churchill [for the Derby], but we’d love the opportunity to go there as the winner of the first leg,” Knowlton concluded.

“If we’re fortunate enough to be healthy and sound by that time, we will be back in maybe a couple of school buses for social distancing purposes.”

Saturday’s forecast on Long Island calls for a mix of sunshine and clouds and temperatures in the low 80s. A stray afternoon thunderstorm is possible, per weather.com.

Potential Belmont Upsetter?

With Grade I winners like Cuvee (Carson City), Pyro (Pulpit) and Olympio (Naskra) sprinkled all over his catalogue page, and the product of a stakes-placed Tapit mare to boot, the Winchell family will be very well-represented by blue-blooded homebred and ‘TDN Rising Star’ Pneumatic (Uncle Mo) in Saturday’s Belmont.

Pneumatic’s fourth dam is foundation mare Carols Christmas (Whitesburg), who was claimed for just $25,000 by the late Verne Winchell in 1981.

This is the family of graded winners such as War Echo (Tapit), Wild Wonder (Wild Again), Fun House (Prized), Early Flyer (Gilded Time), Will He Shine (Silver Deputy) and Bien Nicole (Bien Bien).

The aforementioned Fun House went on to produce champion Untapable (Tapit) as well as GISW and GI Kentucky Derby third Paddy O’Prado (El Prado {Ire}).

“The best $25,000 claim ever,” David Fiske, racing and bloodstock manager for Winchell Thoroughbreds, said of Carols Christmas.

“Mr. Winchell was sitting at his desk one day looking at the Racing Form and just decided, ‘I’m gonna go claim this mare.’ She had some of the worst confirmation, she hooked in at her ankles in front, both knees were offset, and she was horribly swayback. But she was a good-sized mare and she had a pretty head. She was actually pretty fast, though, and that’s what kind of attracted her to him.”

He continued, “She produced Olympio, who could’ve been 3-year-old champion in his year and [graded winner] Call Now (Wild Again), who was the third best 2-year-old in her crop behind Flanders and Serena’s Song. But where she really made her mark was four of her daughters who never earned any black-type went on to produce and produce and produce. Four of them were graded stakes producers and it just exploded from there.”

Pneumatic earned his Rising Star badge with a visually impressive late run going a mile at Oaklawn Apr. 11, then battled throughout after drawing the rail en route to a solid third-place showing in the GIII Matt Winn S. at Churchill Downs May 23.

Also under consideration for the GIII Ohio Derby June 27, Pneumatic punched his ticket to New York with a five-furlong bullet in :59 4/5 (1/14) at Hall of Famer Steve Asmussen’s Churchill Downs base June 8.

What would it mean to add a Classic win to this storied family from Pneumatic?

“It would be like the cherry on the sundae,” Fiske replied.

Pletcher Takes Two Swings at Number Four

Seven-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer Todd Pletcher will have a pair of chances to capture his fourth win in the Belmont.

Dr Post (Quality Road), fourth in his Belmont unveiling behind subsequent GSW & GISP Green Light Go (Hard Spun) going 5 1/2 furlongs last summer, has been perfect in two attempts at three, led by a tenacious score while making his route debut in the Unbridled S. in Hallandale Apr. 25. Dr Post, a $400,000 KEESEP yearling purchase by Vinnie Viola’s St. Elias Stable, is listed as the third choice at 5-1 on the morning line.

“In Dr Post’s case, he’s really a beneficiary of the change in schedule and I think under a traditional Triple Crown calendar, he would’ve probably been just behind schedule a little bit,” Pletcher said. “We were unsure like everyone else of exactly when New York would be able to reopen, but we also had an idea that should it reopen, that they might have to cut the distance of the Belmont. So after Dr Post won the Unbridled, this became our target. We’ve been very happy with the way he’s trained and progressed. This is a big class test against some really high-quality horses, but he’s been indicating to us in his training that he’s that kind of horse as well.”

The stretch-running Farmington Road (Quality Road) sprinkled in a second-place finish in the Oaklawn S. Apr. 11 between a pair of fours in split divisions of both the GII Risen Star S. Feb. 15 and GI Arkansas Derby May 2, respectively.

In addition to winners Rags to Riches (2007), Palace Malice (2013) and Tapwrit (2017), Pletcher has also saddled five second-place finishers and three third-place finishers in the Belmont.

“Belmont is home for us and the Belmont S. always takes on special meaning,” Pletcher said. “It’s traditionally the third leg of the Triple Crown and such a prestigious race, and to be able to participate in it a number of times and be fortunate enough to win it three times, it’s one of our stable’s favorite races and list it up there very high on the races you hope that you could possibly win.”

Two Return on Quick Notice

Woody Stephens may be smiling somewhere if either Tap It to Win (Tapit) or Sole Volante (Karakontie {Jpn}) are covered in white carnations Saturday evening.

The legendary late horseman won the 1982 GI Metropolitan H. with Conquistador Cielo, then added the Belmont just five days later. Woody’s Corner, a tribute to Stephens and his five straight Belmont winners, greets fans at the Belmont clubhouse entrance.

Live Oak homebred Tap It to Win, two for two this term for newly minted Hall of Famer Mark Casse, couldn’t have been more impressive running a salty group of allowance runners off their feet going 1 1/16 miles at Belmont June 4. He earned a 97 Beyer Speed Figure for the effort.

Sole Volante, winner of the GIII Sam F. Davis S. Feb. 8 and runner-up in the GII Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby Mar. 7, returned from a break with a well-timed, come-from-behind tally going a one-turn mile in a Gulfstream optional claimer June 10. Patrick Biancone trains the 9-2 morning-line second choice.

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Vincent Viola: ‘The Belmont Is Absolutely The Race That I Covet The Most’

As a horse racing enthusiast, owner, and a native New Yorker, Vincent Viola holds the Grade 1, $1 million Belmont Stakes in the highest of regards. When asked by friends and family which race he most wants to win, he said he holds the American Classic at Belmont Park in the same regard as the Kentucky Derby.

Viola was able to cross the “Run for the Roses” off the checklist when Always Dreaming took him and numerous other owners, including wife Teresa Viola and fellow Brooklynite Anthony Bonomo, on a memorable ride in winning the 2017 Kentucky Derby. Two years later, the successful businessman again found himself heading to the winner's circle on one of the racing's biggest days when Vino Rosso, whom he co-owned with Repole Stable, captured the Grade 1 Breeders' Cup Classic at Santa Anita en route to earning the Eclipse Award for Champion Older Dirt Male.

But when Dr Post goes into the starting gate for Saturday's 152nd edition of the Belmont Stakes, he'll be attempting to give his owner a victory in the race that he holds the nearest and dearest to his heart.

“The Belmont is absolutely the race that I covet the most,” Viola said. “The race has a fantastic tradition. It's a different race this year given the circumstances at hand, but it still carries the history and memories of fantastic editions in the past. I've always put the Belmont right up there with the Kentucky Derby.”

Owned by Viola's St. Elias Stable, which is a nod to his father's middle name, Dr Post will be a second Belmont Stakes contender for Viola, who launched the electronic market making company Virtu Financial in 2008, five years before becoming owner of the National Hockey League's Florida Panthers.

Frequent visits to Belmont Park and Aqueduct as a child with his father piqued Viola's interest in the sport of kings.

“I went to the racetrack as a young man with my dad regularly,” Viola recalled. “My dad taught me how to calculate odds, watch odds and figure out the impact of money in the mutuel pools, so from a mathematics and handicapping standpoint he taught me a lot about the game. I've been a real fan of the sport, but I never imagined that I would own a horse or help manage horses at this level. I would say it was a childhood romance. It's a heart and soul sport, I just wish more people would be blessed with opportunity to be introduced to it.”

Viola got his first taste of being a part of the Belmont Stakes when Vino Rosso ran fourth to Triple Crown-winner Justify in 2018.

Though light on experience, Dr Post gives his connections reason to believe a celebration could be imminent as he enters this year's Belmont Stakes – his graded stakes debut – having demonstrated noticeable progression in each of his three career starts.

Highly regarded early on, the dark bay son of Quality Road was fourth as the favorite on debut at Belmont Park in July, where he finished behind subsequent stakes winners Green Light Go and Another Miracle.

“We were very excited about Dr Post's maiden opportunity. He didn't run to his form and was training a lot better than he ran that day,” Viola said. “He may have hung a little bit but when we did work on him. We saw he was a little banged up. He's always been mature, easy to train, very professional. He's almost so talented that he measures up to the challenge at hand and taking our time with him proved to be the right thing to do.”

Since returning off the bench, the lightly raced Dr Post has rewarded that patience by scoring two victories this year at Gulfstream Park. After breaking his maiden on March 29 following a nearly nine-month layoff, he handled his first two-turn test with aplomb, capturing the Unbridled Stakes going 1 1/16 miles on April 25.

“If you watch his maiden win, he was really perfectly mature in the race,” Viola said. “If you watch the Unbridled Stakes, which was a decent field, he did not have an easy time and he displayed a tenacity and a real champion's heart that I hope carries him forward. People are down on the quality of the field this year, but I think these are some good horses. It's a well-stocked race. I'd love to run against [Grade 1 winners] Maxfield and Charlatan for sure, but it wasn't meant to be.”

Dr Post is named after Viola's family doctor, for whom his father was a patient, and has become close to Viola's family over the years.

“He really was a saving grace in my father's life. He had heart disease and he kept him healthy for 20 years. He became my doctor and he's really become more than just a doctor for me,” Viola said.

Dr Post , listed at 5-1 on the morning line, will attempt to make Viola's dream a reality when breaking from post 9 under Irad Ortiz, Jr.

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This Side Up: Inside-Out Classic Has Redemptive Potential

The last shall be first; and the longest, shortest. Insofar, that is, as we have a Triple Crown series at all. This year, to many, the

GI Belmont S. is just another mile-and-eighth GI Kentucky Derby prep, conveniently loaded with qualifying points. For those deigning to line up, however, an asterisk is a perfectly acceptable price for becoming a 152nd consecutive name in the annals of the oldest Classic, extending all the way back to Ruthless at Jerome Park.

The modern ruthless can perhaps be found at Churchill Downs instead–albeit we still don’t know if they will be able to bank the gate money that appeared, rather transparently, to drive their contemptuous treatment of those tracks that host the other Classics, not to mention historic prizes like the GI Runhappy Travers S.

The unilateral postponement to September of the Kentucky Derby represented one of our sport’s very first responses to the pandemic. A sudden, shared crisis called for far-sighted leadership, collective strategy and a spirit of sacrifice. As it was, we saw an immediate fragmentation by vested interests.

Whatever the merit of the resulting schedule, the 2020 Derby will clearly be tailored to Thoroughbreds at a different stage of their development. And already both the sophomores who were ready to win a Grade I over 10 furlongs on May 2 are out of the picture.

But the misfortunes that derailed Charlatan (Speightstown) and Nadal (Blame) can afflict any Thoroughbred, any time. Maxfield (Street Sense), after all, was only ever able to approach the Derby through the back door-and now he, too, is off the trail. Some things never change, and the few immutabilities of these confusing times are not always comforting.

Connections of Maxfield, of course, had already renounced the Belmont in favor of the GII Blue Grass S. That was perfectly defensible, in serving the interests of a specific horse. But all these defections, taken together, rob us of a solace we desperately needed in this horrible year.

That said, we still have the redemptive prospect of an East-West showdown between Honor A.P. (Honor Code) in California, and whoever picks up the gauntlet in New York Saturday.

And there’s a word–“redemptive”–we may hear a great deal should Sole Volante (Karakontie {Jpn}) emerge as best in the East. Now I realize that many people will never even give Patrick Biancone a hearing, in protesting his innocence of charges past. Without remotely entertaining his side of the story, they would cheerfully have “thrown away the key” when it came to his return. It takes some courage, indeed, even to enunciate one of the principles that defines a just society: guilty or not, he is entitled to start over after duly serving the punishment ordained for his (perceived/denied) offenses.

Perhaps, then, his only viable redemption–given that some will never be reconciled to his rehabilitation, whatever he does–would be to succeed afresh by methods that he knows, in his own heart, to be whiter than white. If he can never win round everybody else, all Biancone can realistically do is look himself in the mirror knowing that he has relied scrupulously and solely on his flair as a horseman (which it would be churlish to deny) while lacking the kind of patronage he previously enjoyed. For instance, in winning a Classic with a $20,000 gelding.

Human dignity is too precious, and too precarious, to be denied by mere presumption. To see Biancone reassemble his self-respect, somehow sieving out two of the best sophomores of their crop (the other being Ete Indien {Summer Front}, spectacular winner of the GII Fasig-Tipton Fountain of Youth S.), should at least intrigue any truly humane observer.

Our presumptions, remember, are based on the herd–and anyone can see that Biancone is an uncommon creature. Just consider the way he has brought out these two turf-bred horses.     Who else, nowadays, would have prepared Sole Volante (alongside Ete Indien) with a $55,000 allowance prize 10 days ago? And who else would have sufficient courage of their convictions to recognize in Luca Panici, a 46-year-old who has previously ridden a single graded stakes winner, a horsemanship and character equal to this opportunity?

A single turn won’t play to the strengths of Panici’s mount, especially if Belmont is feeding the speed. He will surely risk traffic on the inside sooner than get stuck wide rounding that endless sweep out of the back stretch, especially out of gate two.

With luck, there should be enough pace for a gap to open as they tire up front. The rails draw hands the initiative to Tap It to Win (Tapit) after he burned off a talented pursuer here last time; while Fore Left (Twirling Candy) forged his Dubai success from the front, and likewise a stakes win last summer on his only previous Belmont start. Between them, perhaps they can generate enough heat to ignite Sole Volante’s acceleration.

Whether he can get going in time to outfinish Tiz The Law (Constitution) remains to be seen. That horse sets the clear standard, with a Grade I already to his name round here plus a congenial stalking set-up. So long as Sole Volante again finishes with gusto, however, he can at least keep himself in the Derby picture.

Of the less seasoned types, Max Player (Honor Code) offers his sire a coast-to-coast foothold for superstardom; Pneumatic (Uncle Mo) fared creditably enough against Maxfield, having looked special in his maiden; while Dr Post (Quality Road) has already shown fight of a sort he might have borrowed from his purchaser, the late Jimmy Crupi.

Now there was a guy who showed, with all the disadvantages he was dealt, that you can start at the back of the line and still, with enough industry and wit, work your way to the front. Anticipating the likely run of the race, however, this time it may turn out to be Sole Volante who decrees that the last shall be first.

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