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Week in Review: Irad’s Magic on Display in Apple Blossom

It happened again on Saturday, just as it seems to happen on every big day at the track. Irad Ortiz, Jr. won a race he wasn't supposed to win. When a race, in this case the GI Apple Blossom H., comes down to a nose at the wire and Ortiz is on the winning end, he probably made the difference. He's that good.

Ortiz picked up the mount on Letruska (Super Saver) for Saturday's race, riding her for the first time. Still, it looked like the best the 5-year-old mare could hope for was a third-place finish. The Apple Blossom was supposed to be a two-horse race between superstars Swiss Skydiver (Daredevil) and Monomoy Girl (Tapizar). Letruska had solid credentials and a couple of Grade III wins on her resume, but it didn't appear that she had the ability to defeat either of the Eclipse Award winners. Or so everyone thought.

Midway on the far turn, it was clear that Letruska was going to put up a fight. She clung to a narrow lead over Monomoy Girl as Swiss Skydiver started to back out if it. But when Monomoy Girl poked her head in front past the quarter-pole, the race appeared to be over. She was the favorite, the class of the field and had all the momentum.

For the next 20 seconds, Monomoy Girl held the lead. It was not until the last three jumps or so that Letruska drew even before putting her nose in front at the wire. It seemed that Ortiz knew that Letruska had just enough left to make one well-timed surge before the wire.

“I go the right trip,” he said. “She likes to be on the lead. I let her go, let her make the lead. She relaxed and I was able to save something for the end. She responded really well.”

As an analyst on the “America's Day at the Races” show on the Fox Sports networks, former rider Richard Migliore has seen Ortiz win hundreds of races, many of them coming when he was not necessarily aboard the best horse.

“You have to have natural ability to begin with, which he has in spades,” Migliore said.”He has incredible natural ability. He's very strong, so, from the physical side he is gifted. When it comes to the mental side, he has the mentality of a champion, which is very hard to maintain over an extended period of time. He's done that. He loves what he is doing and he's always enthusiastic, and it doesn't matter if it's $10,000 claimer or a Grade I. You can see the enthusiasm whenever he is riding. I am a firm believer that horses feed on the energy from the people around them, and when that happens a horse will give his very best. Irad brings that to the table on a daily basis.”

Migliore said that in the Apple Blossom Ortiz made all the right moves at the right time.

“I understand that this is horse racing and you need the horse underneath you, but this was one of those races where the rider totally made the difference,” he said. “It was a matter of him not getting in Letruska's way. Did you see how comfortable she was down the backstretch? He was allowing her to run at her natural gait, where she's just very happy and very efficient. At the same time, he was saving horse. He is not getting in her way and he was not using her.

“Most good riders know the habits of the horses around them and the other riders around them. Monomoy Girl does have a tendency, when she gets to the front, to idle a little bit. Irad, I am sure, knew that. When he really set Letruska down was when Monomoy Girl got in front of her. He anticipated that she was going to idle and bit and when that happened he was able to get Letruska to impose her will on Monomoy Girl.”

Ortiz, 28, has been on top for a while. He's won the Eclipse Award as the nation's top jockey three years in row and has led the nation in both wins and earnings every year since 2018.

Yet, he seems to have taken things to another level this year. At the Gulfstream championship meet, where he was riding against many of the best jockeys in the country, he demolished the competition, winning 140 races, 42 more than runner-up Paco Lopez. On his first day back in New York, he won six races on the card topped by the GII Wood Memorial S. He's winning at a rate of 28% this year, a career best for him. He's on a pace to win 480 races this year, which would also be a career best.

He's by far the best jockey in the country, and in the Apple Blossom he showed you why.

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Lucan Bloodstock Springs into Action

Karl Keegan, who has spent the last 15 years building his resume in Ocala, decided it was time to strike out on his own last fall when he officially launched Lucan Bloodstock. Following a successful sales debut in March, the operation will offer its second consignment at the upcoming Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's Spring Sale of 2-Year-Olds in Training.

Keegan, the son of a jockey, first found his love of horses in his hometown of Lucan, just south of Dublin. After serving as a work rider for trainers like John Gosden, Stanley House and Henry Cecil, the Irishman relocated to the U.S. in the early 1990s to work with Buckram Oak.

He eventually settled in New York where he would ride for trainers like Neil Drysdale, Bobby Frankel and Scott Lake in the morning before working as a valet in the afternoons.

“I've worked in many different areas within the horse racing industry throughout my lifetime,” Keegan said. “A very important 15 years of that time was spent on New York's major racetracks like Belmont, Aqueduct and Saratoga. It was there that I gained a ton of experience working alongside some

great horsemen.”

Keegan eventually made his way down to Ocala where he spent nine years as assistant trainer and manager at GoldMark Farm, followed by a five-year stint as trainer and manager at All in Line Stables.

“In 2006, my family and I moved to Ocala and I began my journey into the farm and training of young horses,” Keegan recalled. “Within that time I was also involved in pinhooking with some friends and went on to manage a consignment under All In Line Stables. After a couple of years of doing that and gaining the respect and support of my peers in the industry, in

September of 2020, I decided to launch Lucan Bloodstock.”

The name of the operation is obviously an homage to Keegan's hometown.

“Lucan was where I first discovered my love for horses, so I thought the name was fitting,” he said.

While he was kept busy this past week with six sessions of the under-tack show at OBS, Keegan is intent on offering his clients a full range of services.

“Our primary focus is to provide the highest quality of care and horsemanship for all horses that pass through our gates,” Keegan said. “We are a full-service facility which prides itself on meeting the specific needs of each individual horse; be it training, rehab or sales. We are able to do all of these things

because of hard work and dedication with a reliable staff and a top-notch facility.”

Lucan Bloodstock is based at Oak Ridge Training Center in Morriston.

“Oak Ridge has a one-mile dirt track, a seven-eighths turf course and plenty of paddock turnout,” Keegan said. “We also have our own swimming pool and cold water spa and there are plans for a new seven-eighths of a mile Celebration Bermuda turf course as well.”

Lucan Bloodstock made its debut as a consignor at last month's OBS March sale. The operation sold four juveniles in March, led by a $290,000 son of Twirling Candy (hip 30).

“We were very happy with the outcome of the March sale and we are working extremely hard to have a successful April sale also,” Keegan said.

Lucan Bloodstock brings a 19-horse consignment to the April sale. Among the group, a filly by Nyquist (hip 566) shared the :10 flat bullet during Wednesday's under-tack session. A colt by Speightster (hip 1196) worked a furlong in :10 flat Saturday.

A trio of juveniles from the consignment worked in :21 flat: a colt by Classic Empire (hip 208, video); a filly by Dark Angel (Ire) (hip 215, video); and a filly by More Than Ready (hip 414, video). “We have a solid group of horses with a few standouts that

have breezed very well over the past few days of the breeze show,” Keegan said of his April consignment. “We feel that we will be able to meet many of the buyers needs. We would love to add to our existing client base and continue to offer the best service possible.”

The OBS Spring sale will be held Tuesday through Friday with sessions beginning daily at 10:30 a.m.

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Antonacci Wins First Race as a Trainer

Godolphin Flying Start graduate Philip Antonacci won his first race as a trainer Saturday when Advanced Strategy (Karakontie {Jpn}) took an allowance/optional claimer at Gulfstream Park. Antonacci said he's only officially been training on his own since January, but grew up spending summers in the barn with his brother, Frank, a trainer for their family's prominent Standardbred operation.

“We're very excited about [the first win],” said Antonacci. “It was good for the whole team, a morale boost. We've only had four starters, so we've got a good percentage going right now. I have a good team.”

Antonacci drove professionally in the harness world for a short time and said he had seven or eight wins. “But I always had my eyes on training [Thoroughbreds].” He said in addition to graduating from the Flying Start program in 2019, he has worked for a number of trainers, including Wesley Ward in the U.S. and Gai Waterhouse in Australia. He's also been closely associated with Harness Racing Hall of Famer Jimmy Takter.

“Hopefully there's many more winners in our future,” said Antonacci. “We're at Payson Park right now, but headed at the end of the month to Monmouth. We've got 10 babies. Hopefully this will give us some momentum.”

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Bankruptcy Trustee Warns of Risk that Zayat Will Wipe Away Electronic Records

Two weeks after being granted an extra month to determine if Ahmed Zayat is hiding assets while seeking Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, the court-assigned trustee in the case told a federal judge Friday that the allegedly insolvent owner and breeder of Triple Crown champ American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile) is still trying to evade scrutiny by withholding records.

And trustee Jeffrey Testa further warned that the longer the case drags on, the higher the risk is that Zayat will wipe away cloud-storage financials before the trustee can examine those documents.

Testa now wants the judge to “compel turnover” of Zayat's trove of electronic records, and to “direct” Zayat to cooperate with the investigation, according to an Apr. 16 United States Bankruptcy Court (District of New Jersey) filing.

In that document, the legal team for the trustee wrote that because of the “serious and disturbing allegations of fraud at play in this case,” the court “should not leave it to chance that Mr. Zayat or his designees will act competently” to maintain the integrity of the evidence.

“Given the overwhelming allegations of fraud and expected sought-after delay, the Chapter 7 Trustee simply cannot wait any longer for access to the Cloud,” the filing states. “Although Mr. Zayat has represented that the Cloud is secure and that he is aware of his obligations, the longer the information on the Cloud remains in the hands of Mr. Zayat the more susceptible it is to manipulation or destruction, and this ongoing and unreasonable delay impedes the Chapter 7 Trustee's investigation.”

The job of trustee in a voluntary bankruptcy case is to make sure that a debtor's claim of insolvency is on the up-and-up. In Zayat's case, he alleged in his initial filing last September that he has $19 million in debt but only $314.22 in assets, with a huge chunk of that money owed to Thoroughbred-related creditors.

People who file for bankruptcy protection generally try to cooperate with their assigned trustees, because without the trustee's seal of approval, their debt likely won't get forgiven by a judge.

But Zayat's case has been riddled with accusations of his stonewalling and evasion since the outset of the initial hearings. Zayat, through his attorney, has repeatedly denied those claims and stated that he has been a willing and cooperative petitioner.

Not only can a trustee file an objection if aspects of the filing don't seem legit, but if alleged fraud is uncovered in a bankruptcy petition, the Federal Bureau of Investigation can investigate, and the U.S. Department of Justice can prosecute.

The trustee's request to the judge on Friday capped a week of drawn-out, back-and-forth demand letters and phone conferences between the trustee and Zayat's legal team over whether and how the access to his cloud-storage records would be granted.

According to the filing, just when the trustee thought the parties had agreed on safeguards that would satisfy Zayat's concerns about not wanting anyone to read his family's personal emails, Zayat on Apr. 15 instead proposed an unworkable alternative, which essentially was that the trustee should ask for specific financials it believed were stored in the Cloud and Zayat would retrieve them for the trustee.

“This proposed process was simply a close cousin of Mr. Zayat's previous proposals designed, in the Trustee's view, to dictate and control the process contrary to law [and] leave the Cloud unsecured, delay, and make Mr. Zayat the lynchpin of any document search and review,” the filing states.

“Mr. Zayat's primary basis for refusing to grant the requested access is that the Cloud allegedly commingles and contains his emails and those of his family members that are supposedly unrelated to the Debtor's business and that might comingle and contain, among other things, HIPAA-implicated, non-business, and attorney client-privileged communications,” the filing continues.

“The fact that Debtor's principal and his family members supposedly decided to mix business and non-Debtor affairs does not negate Debtor's statutory duty to turn over property of the estate and recorded information to the Chapter 7 Trustee,” the filing asserts. “There is simply no valid reason why the Chapter 7 Trustee should not be granted access to independently secure the Cloud. The law does not support Mr. Zayat's position…

“Given these circumstances and Mr. Zayat's decision not to allow the Chapter 7 Trustee to have access to and independently secure the Cloud and its contents raise serious concerns on the part of the Chapter 7 Trustee that the cloud and its contents might not be secure while under Mr. Zayat's exclusive possession and control, and that the Chapter 7 Trustee might be obstructed in reviewing documents that can lead to recoveries for the benefit of all creditors.

“The Chapter 7 Trustee has already taken steps to engage a reputable IT partner–Epiq–to take control of the Cloud, preserve it, and copy its contents. Mr. Zayat will have access copies to any information on the Cloud once it is secured; thus there is and will be no prejudice to Mr. Zayat or his family members,” the filing states.

MGG Investment Group, LP, the lender that is separately suing Zayat and his family members for allegedly obtaining a $24-million loan by fraud and then not repaying it, has alleged in court documents that the trustee needs to examine bank accounts in the names of Zayat's wife (Joanne Zayat) and son (Justin Zayat) because “they appear to have been used as conduits through which Sherif El Zayat, the Debtor's brother, loaned money to Ahmed Zayat.”

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