With exercise rider Wilson Fabian in the saddle, Disarm was accompanied to the track by assistant trainer Scott Blasi aboard one pony, while trainer Steve Asmussen followed close behind on another.

Disarm completed an opening quarter-mile of :25 and was not asked to gallop out past the wire, which is typical in Asmussen's works less than one week out of a race.

“We've been behind on his training going into the Road to the Kentucky Derby but he's responded well with each task we've asked him to complete,” Asmussen said.

Disarm was second behind Kingsbarns (Uncle Mo) in the Mar. 25 GII Louisiana Derby before earning his spot in the Derby starting gate with a third-place effort in the GIII Stonestreet Lexington S. Apr. 15. He worked five furlongs in a bullet 1:00.00 at Churchill last Wednesday.

The post Half-Mile Work for Disarm Monday appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

“She is giving us all the signs that we want to see,” said Scott Blasi, assistant to Asmussen, who added that the filly will be shipped to Kentucky for a full evaluation by Dr. Larry Bramlage and his team.

David Fiske, general manager for co-owner Ron Winchell, said, “She was fine again [Sunday] morning, but we will do all of the complete diagnostics on her and go from there. We'll take every precaution, as we do with all of our horses.”

The post Echo Zulu Heads to Kentucky for More Tests appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

“He's traveling really well. It seems like his energy level is good,” said Blasi, explaining that Asmussen left the track early to watch horses work at Fasig-Tipton's Midlantic 2-year-olds in training sale at Timonium. “He's bounced out of the Derby with relative ease and made the ship fine. Just trying to get settled in and get our schooling done and run Saturday.”

Blasi indicated that plans call for Epicenter to school in the gate during training hours Thursday morning before paddock schooling during the races in the afternoon.

Early Voting (Gun Runner), who will be looking to give Seth Klarman's Klaravich Stables a second Preakness success, also got his first feel for the surface at Pimlico Wednesday morning (video).

“He galloped a mile and a quarter. I was really happy with him coming home,” said Chad Brown assistant Baldo Hernandez. “He likes it here, so he's in good shape.”

Following his runner-up effort behind Mo Donegal (Uncle Mo) in the GII Wood Memorial S. Apr. 9, Early Voting was strongly considered for the Derby, but passed the race and has trained up to the Triple Crown's second jewel.

“He's moved forward from the Wood. He got the time off,” Hernandez said. “He's in good shape.”

Hernandez said that Early Voting will go to the track at the same time Thursday.

The post Epicenter, Early Voting Take First Tour of Old Hilltop appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

“He seems to be pretty sharp,” Scott Blasi, who oversees trainer Steve Asmussen's Churchill division, said of the GI Kentucky Derby runner-up and likely Preakness favorite. “I love how he's doing. He galloped today like that was nothing; walked off the track with good energy. We'll put a little work in him and go. Not much to do from here on out…. [but] win.”

Epicenter had the lead in midstretch of the Derby before being passed by 80-1 longshot Rich Strike (Keen Ice).

Asked if the defeat stung, Blasi said, “If you don't learn to turn the page in this game, you're going to be a miserable human. What's done is done. Move on.”

Epicenter is expected to have an easy half-mile work at Churchill Monday before vanning to Baltimore Tuesday.

Asmussen won the Preakness in 2007 with 2007-2008 Horse of the Year Curlin and in 2009 with Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra.

Un Ojo (Laoban), upset winner of the GII Rebel S., missed the Kentucky Derby with a foot bruise, but was declared on track for the Preakness following a five-furlong work in 1:02 Saturday at Churchill Downs.

“The next day after we didn't enter [the Derby], he was pretty good,” trainer Ricky Courville said by phone from his Copper Crowne Training Center base in Opelousas, Louisiana Sunday. “We were soaking the foot a couple of days and Tuesday morning he got really good. We just gave him the rest of the week, soaking it, making sure, and went on and sent him back to the track Derby morning. He's been training since. It was just unfortunate. Monday [entry day] he wasn't 100%; Tuesday he was.”

Calumet Farm's Happy Jack (Oxbow) will be getting blinkers back on for the Preakness following his 14th-place effort in the Kentucky Derby.

“In the Derby, you're trying to navigate 1 1/4 miles against 19 other horses,” trainer Doug O'Neill, who won the Preakness in 2012 with I'll Have Another, said. “By taking the blinkers off, I thought it would give him a chance to get a little breather.”

Happy Jack wore the blinkers in his first career start and broke his maiden at Santa Anita Jan. 22. O'Neill kept them on in the Feb. 6 GIII Robert B. Lewis and the colt finished last in the field of five, beaten 27 1/4 lengths. The hood came off in the Mar. 5 GII San Felipe S. and Happy Jack was third, beaten 10 1/2 lengths. They were back on in the GI Santa Anita Derby and he was third again, finishing 12 1/4 lengths behind Taiba (Gun Runner).

“He is kind of a grinder,” O'Neill said. “I think he has to be more involved early. Hopefully, with a shorter field, a better post position and with the blinkers on, he can be more forwardly placed. He's a trier and a stayer, and I think he can make up more ground more forwardly placed.”

Happy Jack galloped at Churchill Sunday morning and is scheduled to arrive at Pimlico Tuesday.

“Knock on wood, he's doing well,” O'Neill said.

The post-position draw for Friday's GII Black-Eyed Susan S. and Saturday's GI Preakness S. will be streamed live Monday from Citron beginning at 4:30 p.m. on: www.facebook.com/Preakness/ and twitter.com/preaknessstakes/.  In Spanish, go to: https://youtube.com/HipicaTV/live.

The post Epicenter Sitting on Go for Preakness appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Asmussen, who scored his record-breaking 9,446th career win on Aug. 6, is the all-time leading trainer in races won at Churchill Downs.

The record 24-time training champion at Churchill Downs, won his first race at the Louisville oval on May 16, 1993, with Snake Eyes. He won his 100th local race in June 2003; 200th in June 2006; 300th in July 2008; 400th in May 2011; and 500th in May 2014; 600th in May 2017; and 700th in June 2019.

Among Asmussen's 800 Churchill Downs wins are 83 local stakes triumphs, including two victories in the Longines Kentucky Oaks (G1): Summerly in 2005 and Untapable in 2014. He also won 2008 Stephen Foster (G1) with Curlin and the 2016 Clark Handicap presented by Norton Healthcare (G1) and 2017 Stephen Foster (G1 with Gun Runner.

His longtime Churchill Downs assistant is Scott Blasi.

Overall, Asmussen, 55, has won 9,503 races and his horses have amassed $368.2 million from 46,252 starts during a 35-year training career that began at New Mexico's Ruidoso Downs in 1986. The two-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer (2008-09) was enshrined in horse racing's Hall of Fame in 2016.

The post Asmussen First Trainer To Win 800 Races At Churchill Downs appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

Coming off one of the greatest week-and-a-half stretches in racing history, during which he won five Grade I races in Saratoga over nine days, Asmussen was this week's Green Group Guest of the Week on the TDN Writer's Room, presented by Keeneland. If that wasn't enough, two of his wins, Gunite in the GI Hopeful S. and Echo Zulu in the GI Spinaway S., came from the first crop of Gun Runner (Candy Ride {Arg}). Gun Runner, the 2017 Horse of the Year who was trained by Asmussen, is off to a sensational start at stud.

“Five Grade Is in nine calendar days, unbelievable,” said a jubilant Asmussen “We're blessed with the best horses in the world, but they just showed up when it mattered most. I was driving out of Saratoga yesterday, headed to Kentucky Downs for the races, and I could have got out and run around the car a couple of times. I was so excited. ”

While the horses have made Asmussen, sometimes Asmussen makes the horses. There's no better example of that than Max Player (Honor Code). An also-ran in May in the GIII Pimlico Special, he has since come back to win the GII Suburban S. and Saturday's GI Jockey Club Gold Cup. He is an example of a case when Asmussen went back to the drawing board, and it worked.  He said there were two keys to the process, not letting Max Player fall behind early in his races and not shipping him to a track on top of a race.

“We felt he eliminated himself by not giving himself a chance getting away from the gate,” he said. “We took him back to the gate and pretty much started over.”

On the success of the Gun Runners, Asmussen said his offspring have the same mental attributes that the sire has, which goes a long way toward accounting for their success.

“It's the state of their minds, the acceptance of what their job is,” Asmussen said. “Gunite is the greatest example of what we want in a racehorse. Good level of talent, learns from his lessons and improves. [Assistant trainer] Scott [Blasi] and I were talking about him Tuesday morning. He ate up, and just stood there like he was saying 'when are we putting on the tack? When do we go to the track?' Unbelievable.”

When asked who he believed were his best prospects for next year's GI Kentucky Derby, Asmussen mentioned two horses, Saratoga maiden winner Stellar Tap (Tapit) and Gun Town (Gun Runner). Both are being pointed for the GIII Iroquois S. Sept. 18 at Churchill Downs. Stellar Tap is the horse who gave Asmussen his 9,446h career win, which pushed him past Dale Baird for No. 1 of all-time.

“Long term, we're very excited about both,” he said.

Elsewhere on the show, which is also sponsored by West Point Thoroughbreds, Woodford Thoroughbreds, Spendthrift Farm and Legacy Bloodstock, the writers reviewed the GI Jockey Club Gold Cup day card at Saratoga and the sensational performances from a pair of allowance horses who both earned 114 Beyer numbers over the weekend, Flightline (Tapit) and this year's greatest rags-to-riches story, Baby Yoda (Prospective).

The latest on the Jorge Navarro-Jason Servis case was a hot topic among the writers. The government released more wiretaps this week that caught the two miscreants discussing performance-enhancing drugs, oftentimes drugs they didn't know the name of and didn't know what they were for, yet still gave them indiscriminately to their horses.

Click here for the audio and here for the video link.

The post Hot Trainer Steve Asmussen Joins TDN Writer’s Room appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

“I was so proud of how our horses ran yesterday. It was a great day of racing,” said Scott Blasi, Asmussen's longtime assistant. “To win two Grade Is in a row at Saratoga on Travers Day is a great feeling. There are certain days of the year that are incredibly competitive. There's Derby Day, Preakness Day, Belmont Day, Travers Day, Breeders' Cup. With that level of quality racing, it's the best of the best. On those kinds of days to do well, it's a special feeling.”

As Yaupon, under Ricardo Santana, Jr., battled in deep stretch, Firenze Fire (Poseidon's Warrior) bared his teeth, turned his head to the left, and tried to savage his rival with no fewer than seven attempts. Afterward, Asmussen said that Firenze Fire was even trying to grab Santana.

“[Yaupon] came out of it unscathed,” Blasi said Sunday. “No marks or anything. Luckily, Ricardo was able to continue to encourage him, although he was getting pretty close to the inside rail, which I was more worried about than the horse getting bit. I think it was a really hard thing for him [Jose Ortiz, up on Firenze Fire] to correct. The thing about it is those guys are riding hard, so they were going forward and it's not like you have the bit in their mouth. They're trying to persevere, and that's a hard to thing to correct when you're in that position. I've seen pictures of horses being savaged, and I've seen horses savage, or try to bite, but I've never seen any horse do it for that long. I've never seen it go on for that long.”

Blasi continued, “Yaupon is a special horse. It was a great win for him. Jackie's Warrior gave another game effort. He's a special talent. The horse he beat [Life is Good] is as well. You saw how they separated themselves from the rest of the field, and that just goes to show you the class and the quality of those two horses. It was a great race. Jackie is so consistent. At one turn he's back to doing what he wants to do.”

Midnight Bourbon came back from a near-fall in the GI Haskell S. to just miss to champion Essential Quality (Tapit) in the Travers.

“It was by far the best race of his career,” Blasi said. “We were a little bit unlucky to lose, but that horse [Essential Quality] is a champion. Once that horse gets by you, he's not going to let anybody pass him, and he proved that time and time again. Hats off to the winner, but our horse is definitely improving. I think with the time that they ran and how they came home in the last quarter, you have to have quality to be able to do that.”

The post Team Asmussen Celebrates Big Day appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

“I was so proud of how our horses ran yesterday. It was a great day of racing,” said Scott Blasi, Asmussen's longtime assistant. “To win two Grade 1s in a row at Saratoga on Travers Day is a great feeling. There are certain days of the year that are incredibly competitive. There's Derby Day, Preakness Day, Belmont Day, Travers Day, Breeders' Cup. With that level of quality racing, it's the best of the best. On those kinds of days to do well, it's a special feeling.”

At this stage of the season, the two fastest sprinters, arguably, in North America, are stabled in this barn.

J. Kirk and Judy Robison's Jackie's Warrior, who won the Grade 1 Hopeful at the Spa and the Grade 1 Champagne at Belmont in 2020, notched the first top-level victory of his sophomore season by beating the highly regarded Life Is Good in the ninth race on the 13-race card. In the eighth race, William and Corrine Heiligbrodt's Yaupon beat Firenze Fire in a race filled with drama.

As the two battled in deep stretch almost stride-for-stride with Yaupon to the inside under Ricardo Santana, Jr., Firenze Fire bared his teeth, turned his head to the left, and tried to savage his rival with no fewer than seven attempts. Afterward, Asmussen said that Firenze Fire was even trying to grab Santana.

“He [Yaupon] came out of it unscathed. No marks or anything. Luckily, Ricardo was able to continue to encourage him, although he was getting pretty close to the inside rail, which I was more worried about than the horse getting bit,” said Blasi. “I think it was a really hard thing for him [Jose Ortiz, up on Firenze Fire] to correct. The thing about it is those guys are riding hard, so they were going forward and it's not like you have the bit in their mouth. They're trying to persevere, and that's a hard to thing to correct when you're in that position. I've seen pictures of horses being savaged, and I've seen horses savage, or try to bite, but I've never seen any horse do it for that long. I've never seen it go on for that long.”

Blasi said even all that commotion could not dim the brilliance of these two sprinters.

“Yaupon is a special horse. It was a great win for him,” said Blasi. “Jackie's Warrior gave another game effort. He's a special talent. The horse he beat [Life is Good] is as well. You saw how they separated themselves from the rest of the field, and that just goes to show you the class and the quality of those two horses. It was a great race. Jackie is so consistent. At one turn, he's back to doing what he wants to do.”

The Heiligbrodts' Mitole won the 2019 Forego, the Breeders' Cup Sprint, the Grade 1 Met Mile at Belmont Park, and a fourth Grade 1 on the way to championship sprinter honors that year for the barn.

Does either Yaupon or Jackie's Warrior resemble Mitole?

“They're just really fast horses and we've had some quality sprinters like Volatile [winner of the 2020 Grade 1 Vanderbilt at Saratoga] and Mitole. I mean they were great sprinters. These horses all have the same qualities. Both of these guys, you couldn't be any better to be around and to train. Yaupon and Jackie's Warrior are professionals,” said Blasi.

Though Winchell's homebred, Grade 3 winning Midnight Bourbon, didn't give Asmussen his first Travers victory, he finished only a neck behind 2020 Juvenile champion and Grade 1 Belmont Stakes winner Essential Quality.

“It was by far the best race of his career. We were a little bit unlucky to lose but that horse [Essential Quality] is a champion. Once that horse gets by you, he's not going to let anybody pass him, and he proved that time and time again. Hats off to the winner, but our horse is definitely improving. I think with the time that they ran and how they came home in the last quarter, you have to have quality to be able to do that,” Blasi said.

The effort is particularly gratifying considering his last race in the Grade 1 Haskell at Monmouth Park in July. That day he clipped heels with Hot Rod Charlie in the stretch and fell.

“I've got to give the credit to our team here. Everybody worked so hard on that horse after coming out of the Monmouth race. The whole barn did a great job getting him to come back around,” Blasi explained. “He was able to spend time in the round pen and we let him just be a horse up here in Saratoga, which is the great thing about Saratoga. You've got the environment. It's all good.

“I'm proud of how he acted going over to the paddock. We led the pony in front of him, which I think that made a big difference,” he continued. “He was a total professional yesterday. We really are happy with how he's progressing.”

The post Asmussen Still Smiling After Travers Day Wins With Yaupon, Jackie’s Warrior appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

The ruling, dated June 10, included no additional details about the incident of disorderly conduct.

The suspension dates will be stayed, provided Blasi completes an approved anger management program and is not involved in a second incidence of disorderly conduct within any racing jurisdiction over the next 365 days.

The post Asmussen Assistant Scott Blasi Fined, Suspended For Physical Altercation appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

The Asmussen stable has a special fondness for the Preakness, the first Triple Crown race that the Hall of Fame trainer won when Derby third-place finisher Curlin wore down Derby winner Street Sense by a head in 2007. Two years later, the filly Rachel Alexandra led all the way to defeat the late-running Derby winner Mine That Bird by a length in the Preakness. Rachel Alexandra, who in her prior start won the Kentucky Oaks (G1) by 20 lengths, was the first filly to capture Preakness since 1924 and came mere days after going to Asmussen upon her sale to the late wine mogul Jess Jackson.

Curlin became the 2007-2008 Horse of the Year, followed by Rachel Alexandra in 2010.

Scott Blasi, Asmussen's chief lieutenant at Churchill Downs, said the Preakness is a tremendous race in its own right.

“It's by no means a consolation prize. It's a stallion-maker, a champion-maker,” said Blasi. “Classic example is Curlin. He drew the inside at the Derby, wasn't where we wanted him. He closed to be third and the Preakness was the stepping stone for who he became. That's when everybody started taking him seriously, and you see what kind of stallion he's turned into. It was a big deal for us. Rachel's Preakness was probably one of the most stressful races, just because we hadn't had her that long. There was so much pressure. I was actually happy when she drew the 13 hole (staying clear of traffic), and she was good enough to overcome it.”

The post Curlin Reminds Asmussen Stable Preakness Much More Than A ‘Consolation Prize’ appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post