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‘He Was My Idol’: Wesley Ward Saddles Saratoga Winner For Hall Of Famer Steve Cauthen

Winning any race at Saratoga is highly rewarding for trainer Wesley Ward, but a victory from Palace Avenger in a Thursday six-furlong allowance held sentimental value for the conditioner winning on behalf of co-owner and longtime friend, Hall of Fame jockey Steve Cauthen.

Ward, who was a jockey for five years before transitioning to training in 1989, grew up idolizing Cauthen, who piloted Affirmed to victory in the 1978 Triple Crown at the age of 18 before moving to Europe due to weight restrictions in the United States.

“He was my idol,” Ward said.

Owned by Cauthen's Dreamfields in partnership with Don Brady, Mark O. Board and John Gaynor, Palace Avenger notched a second career win, arriving at the event off a runner-up finish at Churchill Downs at 29-1.

“It's always nice to win for a guy like Steve,” Ward said. “He's really a class act. Just a guy you really want to win for because he's such a great person.”

Ward began riding in 1984, just five years after Cauthen moved his tack to Europe, where he would go on to become a three-time champion jockey in Great Britain. During their careers as riders, both Cauthen and Ward were represented by agent Lenny Goodman.

Partnering in campaigning Thoroughbreds together is something that both Cauthen and Ward had always talked about doing.

“I always watched him from afar,” Cauthen said. “After I retired, I would see him at the sales and the track. We'd always stop and chat with each other and we would say 'We've got to get together' and we finally did.”

While Cauthen made his mark in Europe as a champion rider in the 1980s, Ward is currently making a name for himself as a trainer. Ward is known for having a knack with training young horses and sending some of his talented young horses to Europe, including Lady Aurelia who was named European Champion 2-Year-Old Filly in 2016.

“I'd say his job was harder,” Cauthen said. “It's a lot to take on going over there with a horse that's never run over a course like the ones in Europe, and he's figured it out. Not just at Royal Ascot, but at France and all over the place.”

Cauthen has some familiarity with the family of Palace Avenger, having piloted the daughter of Palace's grand dam Chimes of Freedom to victory in the 1989 Group 1 Moyglare Stud and 1990 Coronation Cup, both Group 1.

“It's a good family,” Cauthen said of the Private Account mare who also produced 2003 Champion Sprinter Aldebaran and multiple graded stakes winner Good Journey. “Chimes of Freedom was a chestnut with a white blaze so her and Palace Avenger are similar in that regard. They're about the same size, about 16 hands. The biggest similarity between the two is that they both try. That's the part you can't see when you buy them.”

A start against stakes company could be on the horizon at some point for Palace Avenger.

“I think that's what we're on the lookout for somewhere. We've talked about it a little bit,” Cauthen said.

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Espinoza On COVID-19: ‘I Don’t Want Nobody To Have This Disease … It’s Pretty Bad’

Triple Crown-winning jockey Victor Espinoza has opened up about his experience of coronavirus, believing he contracted it at Los Alamitos and admitting: “I let my guard down.”

Espinoza landed the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes on American Pharoah in 2015. He is among a host of big-name US riders to contract the virus, which has swept through the southern Californian jockey colony, resulting in the cancellation of this weekend's Del Mar meet.

While some have been asymptomatic, 48-year-old Espinoza said he has never felt any pain like it “I don't want nobody to have this disease,” he said. “It's pretty bad.”

Espinoza tested positive after riding at the Los Alamitos Derby meeting on July 4-5, joining a list that also includes Flavien Prat, Umberto Rispoli, Luis Saez and Martin Garcia.

Describing his experience on the Winners Circle ABR Podcast, the jockey said: “I survive so far. It's been already ten days, but the first couple of days it was pretty bad.

“My body, my joints, pretty much everything hurts. I don't have a headache, it's just sometimes I get a little pressure, but that pressure is like nothing I have ever felt before. This thing is no joke.

“On Tuesday it hit me pretty hard for two hours,” Espinoza went on. “The next day I woke up normal, like nothing happened. Then the following day my body started hurting, every joint, especially my legs all the way from my hip to the ankle. The worst thing is there is not much they can do.”

Espinoza, who has also won the Kentucky Derby on War Emblem and California Chrome, said he had been advised to rest at home and was beginning to feel much better. He added that he was fortunate to not have had any breathing difficulties, a cough or temperature which would have required more urgent treatment.

Until he went to Los Alamitos, the jockey said he had been taking extra precautions to avoid catching the disease.

“I have been in quarantine since March, I never went out anywhere,” he said. “I was just so careful to take care of myself – but one second I let my guard down when I went to Los Alamitos and that was it.

“I was there Saturday, and Sunday, I started to feel tired in the afternoon and by Monday it hit me and Tuesday was the worst.”

Explaining what happened at the race meeting, he continued: “I got to Los Alamitos late and there are a couple of jockeys from out of town, like Martin Garcia and Saez. I was almost close to Martin Garcia's corner and a couple of valets, who are positive now. But then we don't know.

“When I say I let my guard down, I was not even going to take a shower but somehow they convinced me the showers were okay. So I went to the shower room and when I came back to my locker Martin Garcia was there and his valets.

“They were packing their stuff right next to me and I don't have my mask on after getting out of the shower so I believe it was the couple of seconds I don't have my mask on was how I got it.”

He added: “I don't want to say that it was Martin. We were all together. We share the room with the quarter-horse jockeys. It's pretty narrow. There is no exhalation in there. Even if you are not very close to them, you could still get infected.”

This story was originally published by Horse Racing Planet and has been reprinted with permission.

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Laurel’s Leading Rider Sheldon Russell Out Four To Six Weeks With Broken Wrist

Jockey Sheldon Russell, the leading rider at Laurel Park's current summer meet, will miss at least two months with a broken right wrist suffered in a gate mishap Thursday at Delaware Park.

Agent Marty Leonard said the 32-year-old Russell was hurt after being unseated by his mount Maliceinthepalace, a 3-year-old filly trained by Michael Gorham, as the horses were loading for Delaware's third race. Maliceinthepalace would go on to run fourth under Alex Cintron.

“Walking into the gate the horse just reared up and he came off. When he came off, he landed on the ground and used his hand to brace his fall and that's what did it,” Leonard said. “The second he hit the ground he said he knew it was broken. They went and got X-rays and that confirmed it.

Leonard said Russell, married to Laurel-based trainer Brittany Russell, is expected to be out “four to six weeks.”

“You never expect that to happen,” Leonard said.

Sheldon Russell led Laurel's summer meet, which began May 30 following a 2 ½-month pause in live racing amid the coronavirus pandemic, with 20 wins and $568,391 in purse earnings, five wins ahead of runner-up Trevor McCarthy.

Russell had five multi-win days during the summer stand, including hat tricks June 6, 8 and 12. He is the regular rider for multiple stakes-winning 3-year-old filly Hello Beautiful, under consideration for the Test (G1) Aug. 8 at Saratoga and trained by his wife.

A winner of 1,392 career races, Russell ranked second in Maryland with 93 wins and $3.3 million in purses earned in 2019. The state's leading rider in 2011, he is a seven-time meet champion owning five titles at Laurel and two at Pimlico Race Course between 2008 and 2015.

Though he has been ridden at full health since the spring of 2017, Russell's career has been beset by injuries. He suffered a torn ligament in his right thumb in 2016; torn labrum and fractured shoulder in a November 2015 training accident; broken ribs (2015, 2010), punctured lung (2015), broken foot (2013), broken wrist (2008) and fractured vertebrae (2007, 2008).

“Unfortunately, he's gone through this before. It's never, 'why me' with him. I don't know how he does it, but he takes it well. He takes it in stride. I'm sure he's disappointed, but he's a true professional. He's just going to get healthy and get back to riding again. That's what he does,” Leonard said. “He's a great person.”

Laurel's summer meet, which had been racing Fridays and Saturdays since May 30, will move to a three-day schedule starting Thursday, July 23. Racing will be conducted Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays through Saturday, Aug. 22.

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Curtis Sampson, 87, Passes; Revived Minnesota’s Canterbury Park In 1990s

Curtis Sampson, Chairman Emeritus of Canterbury Park Holding Corporation, died Thursday at the age of 87. Sampson is well-known for reopening Canterbury Park horse track in Shakopee, Minn., in 1994 and leading it to the successful publicly held gaming, entertainment and development company that it is today.

Under his chairmanship, Canterbury Park was transformed from a shuttered facility into one of the most attended racetracks in the nation through a unique blend of entertainment and a relentless focus on its family-friendly atmosphere. Canterbury Park expanded beyond racing in 2000 with the launch of the Canterbury Card Casino under Sampson's leadership. Recently, the company has announced a significant redevelopment plan to maximize the surrounding property secured during his chairmanship.

Throughout a career that began in 1955, Sampson was instrumental in the formation and growth of several multi-million dollar telecommunications companies, all while operating out of his hometown of Hector, Minn., where he was born in 1933.

Sampson graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1955 with a Business Administration degree. After working three months as an accountant in Minneapolis, he returned to Hector and remained there until his death, first helping build Minnesota Central Telephone, then Midwest Telephone Company, and in 1970 forming Communications Systems Inc. (CSI). Later in his career came North American Communications Corporation (NACC II) in 1986 and in 1990, CSI formed Hector Communications Corporation which was eventually sold, with great returns to shareholders, in 2006.

Sampson had become involved in racehorse breeding in the 1980s along with his son Randy and they raced the family horses at what was then Canterbury Downs. The track flourished initially but quickly faltered, losing $10 million in 1992, its final year of operation before closing.

Curt and Randy along with South St. Paul businessman Dale Schenian purchased the racetrack and surrounding property in 1994, took the company public later that year, with Curt as Chairman of the Board, Schenian as Vice Chair and Randy as company president. In 1995 live horse racing returned to the state at the newly branded Canterbury Park.

During his speech while being inducted into the Minnesota Business Hall of Fame in 2012, Sampson said that “horse racing and horse owners need a track” to be successful. He thought it possible to turn a business that lost millions of dollars into a profitable venture but more importantly he knew what it could mean for those involved in the industry. “It had taken our whole team [at CSI] 15 years to generate 1,500 good jobs. In one fell swoop, by buying Canterbury, there could be 1,500 people back to work.”

It is that dedication to people and an industry he had come to love, that is ingrained in the culture of Canterbury and was the trademark of any Sampson business. Curt created a culture of loyalty, ethical business dealings, honesty, and community service.

In 2012, his leadership was instrumental in a partnership created with the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, owners and operators of Mystic Lake Casino Hotel, just three miles from Canterbury. A cooperative marketing and racing purse enhancement solidified the future of racing and breeding in the state.

Curt is survived by wife Marian, daughter Susan, and sons Randy, Paul and Russ along with 11 grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.

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