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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.

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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.

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