Continent’s Winningest Thoroughbred Beats Quarter Horses

Six Ninety One (Congrats), currently North America's winningest Thoroughbred with nine victories in 2021, won an 870-yard Quarter Horse race by a nose Tuesday at Arizona Downs.

“The victory doesn't count toward the 9-year-old gelding's lead as the winningest Thoroughbred, though. Equibase separately ranks Quarter Horse races in their own category.

But Six Ninety One still has a two-win cushion over four other Thoroughbreds tied with seven victories apiece.

Either way, 10 total mixed-meet victories through nearly seven months of racing is a pretty noteworthy achievement.

In all of 2020, four horses tied with eight victories apiece to lead the continent. In 2019, seven horses shared the year-end honor with nine wins. Over the last decade, the number of most annual victories has ranged between eight and 12.

Six Ninety One's July 20 score came in an $8,000 allowance dash under jockey Keivan Serrano as the 7-5 favorite. Trainer Alfredo Asprino owns the gelding in partnership with Jesus Vielma. His winning time of :44.97 was just one-hundredth of a second faster than the runner-up.

Six Ninety One was bred in Kentucky by Edwin and Melissa Anthony. He sold for $75,000 at KEESEP in 2013, then hammered for $59,000 at OBSOPN eight months later.

A speed specialist in abbreviated sprints, Six Ninety One previously won two other races against Quarter Horses in 870-yard dashes during the 2019 season.

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Arizona Downs: Six Ninety One Chasing 10th Victory Of The Year

No horse has won as many races this year as Six Ninety One and on Wednesday, the 9-year-old Thoroughbred returns to race at Arizona Downs.

Gates open at 9am, with the first race beginning at 2:30 p.m. Six Ninety One (Congrats) is scheduled to run Wednesday in Race 5, drawing post position five in a field of seven horses.

Six Ninety One has drawn national attention not just for being the winningest horse in North America, but for how dominantly those wins have come this season. The gelding is on track to shatter the record for total victories in a season.

“We are excited to welcome Six Ninety One back to Arizona Downs,” said General Manager Mike Weiss. “There's nothing quite like the excitement of a day at the races and when you have a horse doing something as special as what Six Ninety One is doing, it's even more exciting.”

Six Ninety One last raced at Arizona Downs on June 22, notching a ninth victory from 12 starts, nearly twice as many as the next-closest horse. His current win streak is seven straight races.

After just six months, that's more wins than the winningest Thoroughbred in all of 2020 or 2019. Last year, four horses reached eight wins, while in 2019, the year-long record was nine wins. In the last 10 years, the most wins by any horse was 12.

Six Ninety One was bred in Kentucky by Edwin and Melissa Anthony and is owned by trainer Alfredo Asprino and Jesus Vielma. Jockey Karlo Lopez will ride on Wednesday.

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Six Ninety One Rolls to Ninth ’21 Win

Six Ninety One (Congrats) assertively stalked outside then pounced on the pacemaker entering the far turn to win his ninth race of the year Tuesday at Arizona Downs.

The victory augmented the 9-year-old gelding's lead as the winningest horse in North America for 2021. No other Thoroughbred on the continent has won more than six so far this year.

The most noteworthy aspect of Six Ninety One's achievement is that he has racked up those nine wins in just the first six months of the season from 12 starts.

In all of 2020, four horses tied with eight victories apiece to lead the continent–but it took 12 full months of racing to win that many.

In 2019, seven horses shared the year-end honor with nine wins.

Over the last decade, the number of most annual victories has ranged between eight and 12.

Six Ninety One's June 22 score came in a  4 1/2-furlong $4,000 optional-claimer with starter-allowance conditions that protected horses from being claimed if they had started for a $2,500 tag price since 2019 (the gelding met that condition).

Under jockey Karlo Lopez, Six Ninety One broke running, but was parked three wide into the bend, which can be a disadvantage in short sprints that start on the backstretch so close to the far turn.

He took over three furlongs out, cornered several paths wide into the lane, then kicked on with gusto in the straightaway as Lopez looked over his right shoulder for competition, which was 2 1/2 lengths behind by the time the 1-5 favorite hit the wire in :51.82.

Trainer Alfredo Asprino owns the gelding in partnership with Jesus Vielma. They've had Six Ninety One for his last four wins since claiming him for $5,000 Apr. 20.

Six Ninety One was bred in Kentucky by Edwin and Melissa Anthony. He sold for $75,000 at KEESEP in 2013, then hammered for $59,000 at OBSOPN eight months later.

The gelding has now won 14 races from 39 lifetime starts while racing in Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. A speed specialist in abbreviated sprints, two of Six Ninety One's victories in 2019 came against Quarter Horses in 870-yard dashes.

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Eight Wins Already in ’21–And It’s Only June

The Week in Review, by T.D. Thornton

We're not even at the midpoint of 2021, and one North American Thoroughbred is already taking aim at a ninth win on the season.

For perspective, the eight wins racked up so far this year by Arizona-based Six Ninety One (Congrats) are equal to the number of victories achieved by the four horses who co-led the continent during the entirety of 2020.

Such a fast start through the first 5 1/2 months puts Six Ninety One on a trajectory to blast past what has evolved as the standard for wins in a calendar year. Over the last decade, that number has ranged between eight and 12 wins annually.

You have to go back to 2011 to find the last exception. That was the explosively aberrational year Rapid Redux ran the table with a 19-for-19 record, largely by pillaging the starter-allowance ranks throughout the mid-Atlantic region.

Six Ninety One, at age nine, is also a starter-allowance stalwart, as are a good number of horses who routinely dominate the continent's most-wins category.

While it can be argued that these horses are able to pad their records by being eligible for soft conditions against thin competition while shielded from being claimed (if those starter races fill), it's still no small feat to amass eight trips to the winner's circle (with one second and a third), like Six Ninety One has done from 11 starts so far this year. In fact, it's even more of a challenge for the less physically gifted horses who populate the lower end of the claiming structure.

Six Ninety One was bred in Kentucky by Edwin and Melissa Anthony. He sold for $75,000 at KEESEP in 2013, then hammered for $59,000 at OBSOPN eight months later. Jim Thares, who bought the gelding at the Ocala auction, campaigned Six Ninety One between 2014 and 2019, earning four wins in Minnesota and Arizona before losing him via claim for $6,250 in the midst of a seven-race losing streak.

A speed-on-the-lead specialist over short distances, Six Ninety One's first-off-claim connections tried him in an 870-yard Quarter Horse dash at Arizona Downs in June 2019, which he won by 10 1/2 lengths. He then won at that same distance at Arapahoe Park, but didn't score again until 2020 when stretched back out to five furlongs against Thoroughbreds.

After a five-month break, Six Ninety One started off 2021 with five wins in eight sprints at Turf Paradise. He was claimed twice between February and April, for $3,000 and $6,250.

Current trainer Alfredo Asprino owns the gelding in partnership with Jesus Vielma, and they've kept Six Ninety One in optional-claiming and starter spots where he has not been offered for sale. He's now won three straight for those connections, and six consecutive starts since March.

Six Ninety One is entered Tuesday in the sixth race at Arizona Downs. He's favored at 3-5 on the morning line to get win number nine on the season. The gelding meets the starter eligibility by virtue of running in a $2,500 claimer last summer in Colorado.

Can Horses & Bears co-exist?

The Daily Herald of suburban Chicago ran two stories Saturday that are worth reading if you're following the Arlington International Racecourse sale by Churchill Downs Inc. (CDI), which reportedly closed its opening bid process last week. You can click through to find both articles here (then scroll down).

The first, a column by Jim O'Donnell, underscores that beyond the money involved, last Thursday's announcement that the Chicago Bears football team has submitted a bid for the 326-acre property to build a new stadium could have significant political appeal for the gaming corporation because “CDI needs to cash out of Arlington 'clean.'”

By that O'Donnell means that CDI will attempt to deflect the ill will of shutting down a nearly century-old historic landmark by delivering to the community “a global-class sports/entertainment facility and lush adjacent residential development.”

O'Donnell explained it like this: “There is already an issue of 'trustworthiness' between the more clearheaded citizens of Illinois and the Kentucky-based corporation. That directly stems from CDI's somewhat stunning decision to not add a full casino at [Arlington] two years ago after close to 20 years of lobbying for such enabling legislation.”

O'Donnell then alluded to the two Thoroughbred tracks CDI has already shuttered in the past decade (Hollywood Park and Calder Race Course), noting how regulators in other states are growing increasingly leery of CDI as a suitable steward to preserve the sport of racing.

“That question of CDI's 'trustworthiness' in Illinois could bleed over not only to its future gaming licensing in [Illinois] but also into other jurisdictions,” O'Donnell wrote.

The second Herald article, by Christopher Placek, noted that the bid for Arlington that was submitted last Tuesday by the track's former president, Roy Arnold, in partnership with a consortium of developers and investors, calls for the track's grandstand to remain in place, while a mid-size arena for a minor-league hockey team is constructed as part of a 60-acre entertainment district alongside a 300-unit housing development and 60 acres of industrial space.

But after the headline-dominating announcement by the Bears (these are the only two bids that have been publicly disclosed), Arlington Heights mayor Tom Hayes endorsed the idea of combining the two projects. He acknowledged, though, that there are challenges to building a football stadium and horse track together on the same property within his village, because some of the racing infrastructure might have to be relocated.

“In a perfect world, you'd have–and you do have–enough land to do it,” Hayes told the Herald. “The only question is would you have to at least partially tear down or reconfigure the existing grandstand … That's my only concern about trying to do both. I don't know if you could do it given the existing location.”

Hayes told the Herald that the industry-standard size for a National Football League stadium and associated parking is 160 acres. Placek wrote that Arlington's track, stables and parking come to about 125 acres. “That would leave some 40 acres on the massive site” for other purposes, he wrote–which may or may not be enough to fit in the other aspects of the desired mixed-use development.

The trustees of the Arlington Heights Village are expected to vote Monday night on zoning changes that would expressly prohibit certain uses on the property, like adult businesses, kiddie theme parks, or warehouses.

Baffert judge has 'court' experience…

The federal lawsuit that trainer Bob Baffert filed last Monday against the New York Racing Association in an effort to get his banishment there reversed on the basis that it allegedly violates his right to due process got assigned to a judge who is no stranger to handling sports-scandal cases.

Carol Bagley Amon, a Senior United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York, is the judge who in 2008 sentenced former National Basketball Association referee Tim Donaghy to 15 months in prison for his admitted role in fixing the outcomes of pro hoops games he officiated.

Selective mastery…

Can you name the jockey who currently leads the continent with a hefty 41% winning percentage among all riders who have had at least 50 mounts this year?

Here's a hint: He's 57 years old and is a master of riding selectively and exclusively at Finger Lakes.

The answer is John R. Davila, Jr., with a 26-14-7 record from 63 rides. That 75% in-the-money strike rate also grabs your attention.

Davila, who began riding at Finger Lakes in 1982, is the track's all-time winningest jockey. He rides first call for trainer Chris Englehart, the track's all-time winningest trainer. They'll partner on three horses at Finger Lakes on Tuesday.

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