Kentucky Downs Preview | Horse Racing Free Tips

‘It Doesn’t Get Any Better’: Utley Wins Stakes At Home With Yes It’s Ginger

Mike “Hotdog” Utley, this Bud's for you!

Utley, who runs his family's Edward Utley Jr. Inc. beer (including Budweiser) distributorship in Henderson, got his biggest thrill in horse racing as favored Yes It's Ginger wore down the speedy Elle Z for a 1 1/4-length triumph in the $100,000 Kentucky Downs TVG Preview Ladies Sprint at Ellis Park. That's where the 59-year-old Utley has been going to the races since he was 12, as well as the hometown track for his eight partners who collectively own 25 percent of the 5-year-old mare with majority owner Brilliant Racing and Tagg Team Racing.

“It's great, in front of everybody,” Utley said. “I don't know how you can describe it… There will be a lot of Bud. I was crossing my fingers, trust me.”

He said the victory ranks No. 1 in his racing career as owner and fan “and it doesn't get any better.”

The Ladies Sprint was part of a turf stakes quartet Sunday that wrapped up the two-day Kentucky Downs TVG Preview Weekend at the RUNHAPPY meet at Ellis Park.

Marcelino Pedroza rode the Greg Foley-trained Yes It's Ginger for the first time, pressing Elle Z through a stiff pace before edging clear late. The Foley-trained Skinny Dip finished another 2 1/4 lengths back in third in the full field of 12 fillies and mares.

“I watched the replays on her and she's quick out of the gate,” said Pedroza, who earlier this meet won the Good Lord Stakes on the Foley-trained Bango. “She was quick out of the gate when she ran (finishing second June 3 at Churchill Downs) against Elle Z. We didn't want to be in the lead. We just wanted to sit there and make sure Elle Z felt the pressure. Turning for home, I asked her to go and she responded like a Quarter Horse. She was running in the end and was very impressive.”

Yes It's Ginger was the only one of the four Kentucky Downs TVG Preview Weekend stakes winners Sunday who didn't set a course record over the very firm turf. But she came close, powering 5 1/2 furlongs in 1:00.71, just off Totally Boss' mark of 1:00.26 set in 2019. Yes It's Ginger, a son of Yes It's True out of Ginger Light, paid $7 to win.

The mare now is 3 for 3 at Ellis Park. Brilliant Racing approached Foley about buying half-interest in Yes It's Ginger when she was a 4-year-old maiden who'd had arthroscopic surgery for a bone chip. Foley liked what he saw and brought in Utley's group, which had been looking for a horse and wanted to be part of the Foley family's Tagg Team Racing.

Yes It's Ginger promptly won a maiden and allowance race last summer at Ellis Park off a 13-month layoff. She came into this race off victory in Lone Star Park's $75,000 Chicken Fried Stakes in her last start. That made her the first stakes-winner for Utley, as well as for Louisville-based Brilliant Racing and Tagg Team, the partnership headed by trainer Greg Foley, wife Sheree and their sons Travis and Alex.

It was no sure thing that Yes It's Ginger would run at Ellis Park. She also was entered for a turf stakes Wednesday at Indiana Grand. While Foley thought the Indiana race's five-furlong distance would be even better, and the competition softer, the forecast for rain this coming week helped make the decision to stay put at Ellis.

“When we decided to run here, there were a lot of happy people, the boys from Henderson,” Foley said. “They're a great group, along with Brilliant, and then our own little group, our family.

“She's just a gutsy little filly. She gives you all every time you run her. From this time last year, when she broke her maiden over here at Ellis, she's just done nothing but gotten better all the time. She ran very impressive in Texas last time and again today. She's just a nice filly.”

Foley also was happy with Skinny Dip, who was making her stakes debut. The goal was to get at least a stakes-placing for the well-bred Into Mischief filly, a mission accomplished.

Yes It's Ginger now is 6-5-0 in 18 starts, earning $295,511. The $40,000 Ocala 2-year-old purchase in 2018 — the first horse bought by Brilliant Racing— was picked out by Brilliant founding members Natalie Gils and Brandon Stauble.

“She's been incredibly special to us — being the first one we bought, giving her all that time not knowing if she was going to come back,” Gils said. “… When it came to the point where we had to sell (part of) her, having the Foleys step in, it's just been a great relationship with them. It was really a blessing in disguise.”

The post ‘It Doesn’t Get Any Better’: Utley Wins Stakes At Home With Yes It’s Ginger appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

Grade 1-Winning Sprinter Hog Creek Hustle To Try Grass At Ellis Park

Hog Creek Hustle will have a homecoming of sorts when the 4-year-old colt runs in Sunday's $100,000 Kentucky Downs Preview Tourist Mile at the RUNHAPPY Summer Meet at Ellis Park.

Something Special Racing's Hog Creek Hustle started off his racing career with a bang two years ago at Ellis Park, rallying from near-last at five-eighths of a mile to win his debut. That proved a banner 2-year-old crop of Ellis-raced horses in 2018, with Hog Creek Hustle the next year taking Belmont Park's Woody Stephens to join Serengeti Empress (Kentucky Oaks), Knicks Go (Claiborne Breeders' Futurity) and Henley's Joy (Belmont Derby) as the winners of Grade 1 races, those designated as the best races in America. (Volatile, another current 4-year-old, didn't race at Ellis at 2 but won his career debut at the track last year and recently won Saratoga's Grade 1 Alfred G. Vanderbilt.)

“He broke his maiden there — it's going to be old-home week” at Ellis Park, said Patty Tipton, Hog Creek Hustle's co-owner who grew up in Hog Creek, Ky. and now lives in Lexington. “I hope Como's is open.”

(Yes, House of Como is open for business, though the iconic Evansville eatery just a few furlongs from Ellis Park is closed on Sundays.)

Hog Creek Hustle will try to gain his first victory since the seven-furlong Woody Stephens, which provided trainer Vickie Foley with her first Grade 1 victory. The colt has run well in most of his starts since then while tackling some of the toughest sprinters and milers in the country. That includes his nose defeat in Saratoga's Grade 1 Allen Jerkens last summer.

In search of regaining the Hog Creek karma, Foley is trying the colt on the grass for the first time in the Preview Tourist Mile. The stakes' winner gets an entry fees-paid spot in Kentucky Downs' $750,000 Tourist Mile on Sept. 7. Sunday's Preview Day features five $100,000 turf stakes that all are automatic qualifiers for the corresponding races at Kentucky Downs, for which the fields will be set Thursday. The Ellis Park stakes are funded by purse money generated at Kentucky Downs as part of an arrangement with the tracks' horsemen's group, the Kentucky Horsemen's Benevolent & Protective Association.

Hog Creek Hustle will be racing around two turns Sunday for the first time since he finished eighth in last year's Louisiana Derby, ending any Kentucky Derby aspirations that had been fueled by his second- and fourth-place finishes in a pair of earlier prep races in New Orleans. Both those graded stakes were won by War of Will, the eventual Preakness winner who several weeks ago became a Grade 1 winner on dirt and turf after taking Keeneland's Maker's Mark Mile on grass.

“We've been wanting to try him on turf,” Foley said. “I think that's a good place to try him and see how he handles it. If we're ever going to try him, this is the time…. He kind of has some high action. We're hoping he'll like it. And if he's going to like it at all, I think he'll like it at Ellis, because you don't have to be a true turf horse to run on that track.”

Tipton, one of five partners in the horse, is hoping grass does for Hog Creek Hustle what it did for War of Will in a career reboot.

“He ran right behind War of Will, and War of Will took to the turf,” she said. “We're excited to see what he can do.”

Hog Creek Hustle will be ridden by Rafael Bejarano, whose 12 victories lead the Ellis meet, with Miguel Mena second in the standings with eight.

The 130-mile ship from Churchill Downs Sunday might seem like a mere jog around the block to the well-traveled Hog Creek Hustle, who this year has left his home base to run in Florida, Arkansas and most recently New York. While the Big Apple previously was very good to the colt, that was not the case in Belmont Park's prestigious Metropolitan Mile, when he was last of eight but still lost by only a combined 6 1/2 lengths to the impressive front-runner Vekoma.

“He stumbled pretty badly out of the gate and pulled a back shoe off,” Foley said. “The jock took him to the inside, which the instructions were to stay on the outside. He still ran a good race against those kind of horses.”

Hog Creek Hustle has a 3-5-2 record in 18 starts for earnings of $638,967 along with priceless experiences for his crew.

“It's just been a very exciting adventure,” said Tipton, who with her partners purchased Hog Creek Hustle for $150,000 at Keeneland's 2017 September yearling sale. “We had no idea this horse was going to take us here. But he has. We want him to win again, because he hasn't won since the Woody Stephens. He's done really well as far as being second and third and he's been to every racetrack in America, almost. He's been a hard-knocking horse. I think this horse can run on the turf. I think he will love the mile on the turf. I think he'll be happy to be back home where he broke his maiden.”

The post Grade 1-Winning Sprinter Hog Creek Hustle To Try Grass At Ellis Park appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

‘We’re In The Game To Run’: $20,000 Colt Proving A Diamond In The Rough For Jimmy Baker

To change up their luck in buying an inexpensive racehorse for themselves, Candie Baker told her husband to get “the biggest, ugliest colt you can find.”

Trainer Jimmy Baker kept getting outbid at the 2017 Keeneland yearling sale — “They sold so fast that I didn't get to raise my hand,” he said — so he settled instead for small and good-looking. Baker paid $20,000 for that colt. Today Spectacular Gem has proven a diamond in the rough, bringing earnings of $248,571 into Sunday's $100,000 Kentucky Downs Preview Tourist Mile at the RUNHAPPY Summer Meet at Ellis Park.

The race is part of Ellis' third annual Kentucky Downs Preview Day: five $100,000 turf stakes positioned as launching pads into big-money stakes at the all-grass track in Franklin, Ky. The winners of the Ellis stakes races get a fees-paid berth in the corresponding race at Kentucky Downs. The Preview Tourist Mile is an automatic qualifier for the $750,000 Tourist Mile on Sept. 7.

Normally Candie Baker wants to buy fillies, saying, “I just think they have a bigger heart than colts. And Jimmy always did good with fillies.

“But this time I said, 'You know what, let's change our luck a bit. I need the biggest, ugliest colt you can find,'” she recalled. “Then we kept getting outbid, outbid. I was like, 'Just find me one.' He said, 'Candie, I found you one. It's not probably what you want. It's by nothing out of nothing, but he's a good-looking colt.' I said, 'That's fine.' He really liked him, and we got him.”

Good-looking horses who sell for $20,000 tend to come up short as far as fashionable bloodlines. Spectacular Gem was sired by the unproven Can The Man (who actually is a son of the popular stallion Into Mischief), and out of a mare by Malabar Gold, a $1 million yearling whose biggest accomplishment was a Grade 3 victory. Jimmy Baker said he'd never heard of Can the Man when he bought Spectacular Gem.

“He looked fantastic,” he said. “He wasn't a big horse but he was athletic-looking.”

“Jimmy has a really good eye for yearlings. I mean, cheap horses. I never want to get hurt in the business,” Candie said. “You can get a $500,000 horse that can't win for maiden $10,000. We had another filly, Starlight Express, and she made us money. I said, 'I got $20,000 that we can spend, and I know we're going to have to spend another $20,000 to get the horse to the races. We were just using those other horses' money, not my money.”

Spectacular Gem actually won his first career start at Ellis Park in a $30,000 maiden-claiming race. Five starts later, the colt earned his second victory the first time Jimmy Baker tried him on turf. He's raced on grass pretty much ever since.

The colt has lost a stakes on a disqualification and won a stakes on a disqualification. In between Spectacular Gem captured Churchill Downs' $125,000 Jefferson Cup in what's become his trademark style of taking the lead early. That's what the 4-year-old did in his last race, dominating a graded stakes-quality field in a Churchill allowance race off a 4 1/2-month layoff.

“He's not very big. He's long. He looks like a grass horse,” Candie said. “But he has a big heart and he loves what he does.”

To prepare for the Ellis stakes, Spectacular Gem worked a sparkling five-eighths of a mile in 59 1/5 seconds, which he followed up with a comfortable half-mile in 48 2/5 seconds, going the last three-eighths in 35 2/5 seconds under jockey James Graham Tuesday at Churchill Downs.

“Last week he worked exceptionally,” Jimmy said. “He's never worked like that before. I know the track was fast, but he just seems to be on top of his game this year since his break…. His workouts lately are much better than the last two years, so he's definitely on the improve.”

Baker has been training since 1989, having such quality horses as Grade 1 Whitney Handicap winner Mahogany Hall, multiple graded-stakes winner Spinning Round for New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, Grade 2 Churchill Downs Stakes winner Elite Squadron and Grade 1-placed Pretty Prolific.

“I had a lot of good years in the 1990s, and we've been piddling the last 12 years buying horses, most of them fillies — a lot cheaper, $5,000, $10,000,” Baker said. “We're just really lucky to get a horse like this. It means a lot to us because we're in the game to run. To have a horse to run in these kinds of races is just a bonus for us.”

The post ‘We’re In The Game To Run’: $20,000 Colt Proving A Diamond In The Rough For Jimmy Baker appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post