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C Z Rocket Back On Lasix, Returns To Hot Springs In Saturday Allowance

C Z Rocket was Oaklawn's top older male sprinter during the 2021 meeting that ended in May, but the millionaire multiple Grade 2 winner returns to Hot Springs for the 2021-2022 season trying to snap a five-race losing streak. The first chance comes in a high-end allowance sprint Saturday that his connections are using as a prep for the $150,000 King Cotton Stakes Jan. 29.

Co-owned by Southern California-based Tom Kagele, C Z Rocket was 2 for 2 last season at Oaklawn, toppling reigning male sprint champion Whitmore in the $200,000 Hot Springs Stakes and $500,000 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap (G3). C Z Rocket is winless since, exiting a seventh in the $2 million Breeders' Cup Sprint (G1) Nov. 6 at Del Mar. But the late runner gets Lasix for the first time since last May's $400,000 Steve Sexton Mile Stakes (G3) in the 6-furlong eighth race.

“He needs it,” Kagele said Tuesday afternoon. “I don't think there's any secret he was falling off in races that he hasn't had Lasix, but he still ran pretty well. We tried him in the Breeders' Cup and didn't run that great there. Coming out of that race, his blood was a little off, so he had a little bit of an excuse there. He bounced out of it really well, so this race was like perfect timing and so we decided to run here instead of waiting for the Jan. 29 race.”

C Z Rocket, prior to leaving Southern California, recorded three workouts at San Luis Rey Downs for Saturday's race, which will mark his first for trainer Rene Amescua. On behalf of Kagele, trainer Peter Miller claimed C Z Rocket for $40,000 out of a fifth-place finish April 30, 2020, at Oaklawn. C Z Rocket then ripped off five consecutive victories, including the $150,000 Pat O'Brien Stakes (G2) at Del Mar and $200,000 Santa Anita Sprint Championship (G2) at Santa Anita, before finishing second to Whitmore in the $2 million Breeders' Cup Sprint (G1) in November 2020 at Keeneland.

Miller announced last month that he was taking a sabbatical from training to spend more time with his family and focus on his health, but would “continue to act as an advisor/racing manager to my owners and my assistants as well as staying involved as an owner myself.”

Amescua has raced extensively in California and won more than 900 races in his career, according to Equibase, racing's official data gathering organization.

“I've known him for years,” Kagele said. “He was a trainer up at Golden Gate for years and just through the covid and other things, he kind of took a turn for the worse and lost some horses and some owners. Then, he recently said he was going to go out there to Oaklawn and I recommended him to Pete. I'm comfortable with it and Pete was, too. Pete owns part of C Z, also.”

After being claimed for $40,000 at Oaklawn, C Z Rocket began his winning streak against $50,000 claimers about a month later at Churchill Downs. The fifth-place finisher in that race, Hollis, was claimed for $50,000 and returned to set a 5 ½-furlong track record (1:02.17) in allowance company Dec. 10 at Oaklawn.

C Z Rocket, after escaping the claim box, won an allowance/optional claimer in June 2020 at Churchill Downs (he was in for a $62,500 tag) and set a 6 ½-furlong track record (1:15.00) three weeks later in a Keeneland allowance race. C Z Rocket has subsequently raced strictly in listed or graded stakes, spanning 10 races and roughly 15 ½ months.

“He'll be out there the whole meet,” Kagele said. “Hopefully, he does as well as he did last year.”

Regular rider Florent Geroux is named to ride C Z Rocket, the 5-2 program favorite, from post 8 for Saturday's eighth race, which has a $120,000 purse. Probable post time is 3:46 p.m. (Central). Also entered are millionaire Grade 2 winner Long Range Toddy and Mucho, a stablemate of Hollis who exits a runner-up finish, beaten a head, in the $300,000 Bet On Sunshine Stakes Nov. 6 at Churchill Downs.

C Z Rocket, a 7-year-old gelded son of City Zip, has an 11-4-4 record from 30 career starts and earnings of $1,511,641.

The King Cotton is Oaklawn's first of three major races for older sprinters. The series continues with the $200,000 Whitmore Stakes (formerly the Hot Springs) March 19 and the $500,000 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap (G3) April 16.

Moysey Records First Win of Meet

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Ken McPeek Talks 2YOs, HISA, Lasix, Training Future On Writers’ Room

The story of a high-quality Thanksgiving weekend of racing at Churchill Downs was undoubtedly Ken McPeek, who sent out four impressive winners on Saturday's all-2-year-old Stars of Tomorrow card, including GII Kentucky Jockey Club S. hero Smile Happy (Runhappy) and 'TDN Rising Star' Cocktail Moments (Uncle Mo), to follow up a six-length victory by his Envoutante (Uncle Mo) in Thursday's GII Falls City S. Tuesday, the thoughtful McPeek sat down for an expansive interview with the TDN Writers' Room presented by Keeneland to talk about his loaded barn of promising juveniles, how much longer he sees himself training, his thoughts on the first proposed rule set of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act and more.

Despite having two graded stakes winners over the weekend, one could argue Cocktail Moments was McPeek's most impressive runner at Churchill. Drifting all the way up to 26-1 off a modest worktab, the $190,000 Keeneland September graduate dropped all the way back to 10th in the 12-horse field before steadily advancing while wide on the turn. Taking charge in mid-stretch, the Dixiana Farms colorbearer put on a show in the final furlong, rocketing away to a 9 1/4-length romp.

“That was a pleasant surprise,” said McPeek, this week's Green Group Guest of the Week. “But I'll tell you, she had been training fantastic going into the race. Typically when we get a young horse ready, we don't force the issue. We let them come [around]. I like to get a race under their belt. I'd almost call the first race a schooling race. I tell the rider to take a little bit of a hold, settle, wait, wait, finish. When they do that, they take dirt in their face, they've got all this adversity, and you lose races doing that, but you also teach them. The young horses that we've gunned away from the gate, they don't learn as much as the ones that take dirt, learn to negotiate the traffic and finish. Well, she finished alright. She came like a bullet. She's been a really happy filly the last couple of weeks, but to be able to predict that first time out is difficult.”

Already with a trio of winners Saturday, Lucky Seven Stable's Smile Happy cemented the day as one to remember for McPeek, settling off the pace and blowing past 7-5 chalk Classic Causeway (Giant's Causeway) in the stretch to a 3 1/4-length score in the Kentucky Jockey Club. That was the second victory in two starts for the $185,000 Fasig-Tipton Selected Yearling buy, who joined fellow graded stakes winners Rattle N Roll (Connect) and Tiz the Bomb (Hit It a Bomb) in the McPeek barn as potential GI Kentucky Derby contenders.

“This horse has out-trained just about every horse he's worked against,” McPeek said. “He's a very physically imposing horse to be around, and he's fast. I stretched him out long the first time and he handled it like a pro, and to beat some of the horses he ran against second time out–he's got the mind of a good horse. I think there's still some fitness that's needed there too. We're going to shelve him for a little while, and I think you're going to see an even better horse when we get to the spring … He's got an interesting pedigree. There wasn't much black type, the first three dams were practically blank. But his second dam is by Relaunch, third dam by Graustark, fourth dam by Bold Ruler, and Funny Cide is under his fourth dam. We're really excited to have him.”

The conversation later turned to McPeek's increasingly impressive training resume. Starting in 1985, his career took off in the 2000s and the 59-year-old now boasts over 1,800 winners and over $95 million in total earnings. Asked to reflect on his career, McPeek went on to break a bit of news in saying he doesn't plan on training for all that much longer–with a caveat.

“I'm probably most proud of finding a lot of these horses at auction, even for modest prices,” he said. “The first 10 years that I trained, I struggled, but I convinced Roy Monroe to let me buy yearlings for him. The first yearling I bought was a Lord At War (Arg) filly that ended up running first, second or third in 15 stakes in her career for Roy and me. Then he let me buy [millionaire and 1995 Derby second] Tejano Run, who launched me. Training horses is not rocket science, but you've got to get good horses to train, and I'm in a unique stage right now where people are giving me bigger budgets. But I'm still buying for what I call the under-50 [thousand] people. I still like working the back end of the sales. I'll wear out a pair of tennis shoes. And Dominic [Brennan] is probably deserving of as much credit as me, because he's been in the trenches with me for 30-plus years. He's one of those unsung heroes–a rock-solid Irish horseman … But I'm going to lay something out there that I don't know if most people want to hear or not. I'm going to do this for 10 or 11 more years. I'm going to train until I'm 70. Unless, of course, I have horses like I've got in the barn right now. But I'm looking at doing it until I'm 70 and then I'd like to work horse auctions for people worldwide.”

Asked for his thoughts on the early HISA rules as proposed by the United States Anti-Doping Agency, McPeek offered, “I think it's fantastic stuff. I think they need to unify the licensing. If I get a driver's license in Kentucky, I can drive all over the country. And then allow reciprocity to take effect when you have a violation. These rules need to be streamlined, there's no question. They need a horseman on those committees making those decisions that has the power to say, 'Hey, wait a second, time out, you're going too far.' But at this point, there aren't horsemen sitting on those, and that bothers me.”

Elsewhere on the Writers' Room, which is also sponsored by Coolmore, West Point Thoroughbreds, Lane's End, XBTV and Legacy Bloodstock, Joe Bianca, Bill Finley and Jon Green discussed the implications of Gun Runner breaking the earnings record for first-crop sires and looked forward to an intriguing GI Cigar Mile H. card Saturday at Aqueduct. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version or find it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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All Breeders’ Cup Tests Come Back Clean

All samples collected from 2021 Breeders' Cup horses have been cleared by the Kenneth L. Maddy Equine Analytical Chemistry Laboratory at the University of California, Davis.

All horses competing in Breeders' Cup races this past weekend at Del Mar were tested for TCO2 levels in blood. Post-race testing was performed for prohibited drugs on the first four finishers in all Breeders' Cup races and any additional random horses selected by the stewards consistent with California Horse Racing Board protocol. Post-race testing was done on both blood and urine samples. The GI Breeders' Cup Classic was won by Knicks Go (Paynter).

The Maddy Laboratory's standard protocols look for a wide variety of compounds of concern for racing integrity, such as anabolic steroids, beta2 (b2)agonists, selective androgen receptor modulators, erythropoietin, and other similar doping agents. All post-race samples were tested for cobalt. Routine testing in California exceeds national graded stakes testing standards. The Maddy Laboratory is accredited by the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium and the only laboratory in the Western Hemisphere certified by the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities.

The Maddy Laboratory cleared TCO2 samples on 148 horses that competed in 14 Breeders' Cup races along with 69 horses that competed in other races on the two Breeders' Cup cards. The large fields were popular with the public, as the total all-sources common-pool handle for the two-day World Championships was $182,908,409, a new record for the two-day event.

There were no equine fatalities in the races nor any observable injuries to the horses. Carl Woods, the assistant starter who was injured at the starting gate Nov. 5, has informed the CHRB that he is fine and back to work.

Jockeys rode under extremely restrictive rules governing the use of the riding crop. Three jockeys violated those rules and received fines totaling $11,000. All jockeys were advised by the stewards prior to the races that the crop rules would be strictly enforced and that fines would be elevated.

All Breeders' Cup horses competed without the administration of furosemide, or Lasix.

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They Ran a Lasix Free Breeders’ Cup…And Nothing Happened

The biggest story when it comes to the ban of Lasix in the Breeders' Cup is that there was no story. It was, simply, a non-factor.

A total of 148 horses competed in this year's Breeders' Cup, all of them running Lasix-free. There were no reports of any horses being in distress or bleeding from the nostrils. I did not hear of one trainer blaming a defeat on the ban of the diuretic. Nor did I hear of or read about any trainers saying they were passing the Breeders' Cup because Lasix wasn't being allowed.

And there was a record handle, so, clearly the bettors weren't reluctant to play races without Lasix.

Dr. Jeff Blea, the equine medical director for the California Horse Racing Board, said that he hadn't seen any signs of serious or obvious problems.

“There was no informal data collected to evaluate EIPH in horses that ran on Friday and Saturday,” he said in an email. “Anecdotally, I had surveyed several of the local attending veterinarians to get an understanding of what they were seeing endoscopically, specifically horses that bled a grade 3 or 4. I'm still waiting on responses from two practitioners, but it doesn't appear that it was a significant problem.

“One practitioner commented that grade 3/4 was noted in less than 10% of the horses he scoped. That said, I don't know his denominator. Others commented that they were surprised that they didn't observe severe episodes of EIPH. Furthermore, to my knowledge, I am not aware of any incidents of epistaxis on those two days.”

What happened to all the dire prognostications, that horsemen would suffer irreparable injury if the drug were taken away from them? That innumerable horses would no longer be able to race without it? That horses would bleed through the nostrils in full view of a horrified public? That it is inhumane to force horses to race without Lasix?

None of that has been proven to be true.

Lasix was banned on 2-year-olds in many jurisdictions in 2020. This year, it was also banned in graded stakes races at most of the top tier tracks. This year's Triple Crown was also contested Lasix-free, also without any problems. There is not much available so far in the way of data regarding how horses fared without Lasix, but, just as was the case with the Breeders' Cup, the number of serious problems appear to have been minimal. The sport simply adjusted and moved on.

By the time we got to the Breeders' Cup, the Lasix debate, once among the most controversial subjects in the game, had turned into a non-issue. Probably a lot of you never even took it into account that this Breeders' Cup would be contested without the diuretic. That's because the results of this year's Lasix-free races have proved that taking it away is, well, no big deal.

That's just it. Is Lasix really necessary? Trainers no longer give it just to bleeders but to every horse in their barn. It became a matter of not preventing bleeding but not allowing the competition to have an edge on you.

Racing is conducted everywhere else in the world without it and American racing had done just fine without it for one-hundred-plus years before its use became widespread in the 80s.

So why allow it? It's been evident for a long time that U.S. racing is too dependant on drugs, which has created an image problem for an industry that keeps on having to prove that it is on the level and that it is safe.

But my biggest problem with Lasix is that there is credible evidence that it is a major factor when it comes to why horses race so infrequently these days. In 1970, before Lasix had permeated racing's landscape, the average number of starts per runner per year was 10.22. It's now down to about 6.15.

The slide in the number of average starters per year began just about the same time that Lasix started being legalized across the country. That's not surprising since Lasix's is a diuretic that acts to dehydrate horses. When dehydrated, a race takes something extra out of a horse and they need more time to recover. That's just common sense.

That's anecdotal evidence that Lasix has contributed to a situation where we have the most unhealthy, least durable collection of horses ever seen in modern times.

The good news is that there are more changes on the horizon. When the Horseracing Safety and Integrity Act (HISA) goes into effect, the clock will start ticking on the drug. Under HISA, a racing commission that wants to prolong Lasix use can do so for three years. After the three-year period, a unanimous vote from HISA would be needed to continue the legal use of the drug. It's on its way out.

Yes, the sport has many problems that are a lot more serious than the use of Lasix. We've seen that with the rash of breakdowns at Santa Anita in 2019 and the 2020 indictments of trainers Jason Servis, Jorge Navarro and others on charges that they were using performance-enhancing drugs. That doesn't mean that the sport can't assess each issue independently and act. Getting rid of Lasix won't solve all the drug issues, but it's a step in the right direction and the right thing to do.

And horsemen, those who were predicting doomsday scenarios, can relax. They will do just fine without the drug. This year's Breeders' Cup proved just that.

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