Week in Review | Horse Racing Free Tips

The Week In Review: The Legend Of ‘Red’-Trainer Saddles Winner At Age 96

Trainer Robert “Red” McKenzie doesn't get much ink south of the border here in the States, but he is a living legend on the western Canada racing circuit. With practically zero fanfare or notice, McKenzie added to his impressive list of lifetime accomplishments Friday night when he saddled Entitled Star (Roi Charmant), a 10-year-old mare he owns, to a 25-1 upset victory in a $4,000 claimer in the second race at Century Mile in Edmonton.

The win was significant because McKenzie is 96 years old.

The feat could very well be a record in Canada. It's shy, however, of what is anecdotally credited as the North American record for oldest trainer to win a Thoroughbred race. That honor goes to Jerry Bozzo, who saddled a winner on Oct. 11, 2018, at Gulfstream Park West, just two weeks before his 98th birthday. Bozzo died one month after winning that final race.

The prior record belonged to trainer Noble Threewitt, who visited the Santa Anita winner's circle about two months after celebrating his 95th birthday in 2006. He died in 2010 at age 99.

Entitled Star, who sports a robust 13-for-80 lifetime mark, was ridden by apprentice jockey Meagan Fraser. The two have a connection: Entitled Star was responsible for giving Fraser her first career win last September at Century Mile.

McKenzie has started two horses for a combined five starts this year, and the victory was his first of the season. Equibase credits him with 623 lifetime victories, but that database only goes back to 1976, when McKenzie was closing in on age 50 and already had four successful decades of horsemanship under his belt. Numerous published reports credit him with at least 1,000 more victories dating back to the 1940s.

An October 2022 profile by Curtis Stock in Canadian Thoroughbred noted that McKenzie is up at 5:30 a.m. every morning and “still pedals his bicycle around the Century Mile backstretch, acting like a guy half his age.”

McKenzie started getting on horses in 1937 at age 10 at an Edmonton riding academy. By 13 he had his first bush-track mounts on what was then known as western Canada's long-since-defunct “B” circuit of small-town half-milers and county fairs. By 17, he was the B circuit's leading jockey with 87 victories, scoring in stakes like the Red Deer Derby (twice) and Rimbey Derby.

With a knack for winning races in bunches while tacking just 93 pounds, McKenzie soon graduated to the “A” tracks of the old Western Canada Association. But young Red's body began sprouting faster than his career, and he outgrew riding after 300 wins as a jockey. Not wanting to go through the rigors of reducing, he turned to training, which he had already begun learning to do long before he got his license.

McKenzie cultivated a winning touch with everything from 2-year-olds to older horses, from claimers to stakes, gaining an advantage by shoeing his own trainees. Over the decades he won the Canadian, Saskatchewan, and Alberta Derbies, and although he sometimes ventured to the higher-profile Toronto tracks or occasionally to Northern California or New York with the right horse, western Canada was his home. His best horse was Grandin Park, an Alberta-bred who campaigned from 1972 through 1980, amassing a 29-17-14 record from 116 starts.

TDN could not reach McKenzie prior to deadline for this story to ask his thoughts on winning a race at age 96.

But 15 years ago, when McKenzie was 81, he told Horse Racing Alberta in a video interview, “Age is just a number. If you've got nothin' to do, you'll get old awful fast. Horses can keep you young, I think.”

Geaux Rocket Ride | Benoit Photo

On the western horizon…

With the reported injury to Two Phil's (Hard Spun), let's not forget the talent in the sophomore division currently parked out west. Three horses who had to be withdrawn from Kentucky Derby consideration because of fevers earlier in the spring are at various stages in getting back on track.

Geaux Rocket Ride (Candy Ride {Arg}) won the Affirmed S. at Santa Anita back on June 4. He's being aimed for the Haskell.

Skinner (Curlin), who was third in the GI Santa Anita Derby, will reportedly contest the July 8 Los Alamitos Derby.

Practical Move (Practical Joke), who beat both Geaux Rocket Ride and Skinner at Santa Anita, has yet to post a published workout since being scratched two days before the Derby.

There's also early-season phenom and 2-for-2 'TDN Rising Star' Arabian Knight (Uncle Mo), who is unraced since winning the Jan. 28 GIII Southwest S. He also appears Haskell-bound, with five published works since May 29 at Santa Anita, the last two of them bullet moves.

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The Week In Review: Earle Mack Has The Answer, And We Must Listen To Him

Earle Mack is right. This industry, which is mired in a crisis, can no longer afford to ignore the most obvious solution to its problems, which are synthetic tracks.

Mack wrote just that in an Op/Ed that appeared in this publication last week. If you haven't read it yet, please do so now. It is powerful, articulate and well-reasoned and was written by someone whose credentials demand that we respect his opinion. He is a horse owner, a breeder, a former U.S. Ambassador to Finland and a smart and successful businessman who clearly loves this sport and does not want it to be pushed to the edge of extinction. It may be the most important story you will read all year.

“The responsibility lies with horse racing's governing bodies, influential race track directors, and all key stakeholders to rally behind a transition to synthetic tracks,” he wrote. “Their public endorsement and commitment to safer racing conditions would signal the beginning of the transformative change our industry desperately needs.”

The 12 deaths at Churchill Downs have created a dangerous firestorm unlike anything racing has ever encountered. We only thought the problems at Santa Anita in 2019 were bad. That was an ugly story but it was largely a California story that didn't resonate with the national media. This time, we are talking about the most famous track in the country, the GI Kentucky Derby and two deaths on the Derby undercard.

This is a story that has been widely covered by every major media outlet in the country and has led to a public debate: is our sport inhumane?

How do we answer that? The public no longer wants to hear about how loved these horses are by their owners, trainers, and grooms or that they are pampered and get the very best care possible and that they were born to run. What they want is for the deaths to greatly decrease if not stop all together.

To their credit, Churchill Downs, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) and the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission have stepped up and announced that changes are being made. Theirs is a genuine and concerted effort to do the right thing and to get to the bottom of what has been going on at Churchill. Moving the remainder of the Churchill meet to Ellis Park was a drastic step. Considering the widespread opinion that there is nothing wrong with the Churchill track surface, you can argue that it was overkill, but shutting Churchill down was a victory in the public relations battle, and that matters. The days when the sport shrugged this off and we were told “it's part of the game” are, thankfully, over.

But it's not enough. This sport must do absolutely everything it can to alleviate the problem. And it's not. And it won't until synthetic tracks replace dirt tracks throughout the sport.

Yes, deaths happen on synthetic surfaces, too. But they are much safer than dirt tracks. According to the Jockey Club's Equine Injury Database, there were 1.44 deaths per 1,000 starters in dirt races in the U.S. in 2022. On synthetic tracks, the number was 0.41. That means a horse is 3 1/2 times more likely to die in a dirt race that in a synthetic surface race. Dirt tracks are the most dangerous tracks we have and yet they remain the sport's core product.

Noting those figures, Mack wrote, “…the stark and troubling statistics demand a shift in thinking. We must abandon old norms and embrace new practices that prioritize the safety and welfare of our noble equine athletes. The benefits of synthetic tracks are not mere conjecture; they are a proven truth.”

Yet synthetic surface races remain a minor part of racing and Keeneland, Santa Anita and Del Mar gave up on them too quickly, going back to dirt after a short period of time when they were in place at all three tracks.

Mack calls on Churchill Downs to lead the way. Not only does this story center around deaths at that track but the company owns the sport's most important asset, the Kentucky Derby. Mack reasons that if Churchill takes the lead and converts to a synthetic surface, that will create the much-needed domino effect. How about we go a few steps further? The three Triple Crown tracks should make a joint announcement that going forward the Derby, the GI Preakness S. and the GI Belmont S. will be contested on synthetic tracks starting next year. The Breeders' Cup should announce that starting with the 2025 Breeders' Cup only racetracks that have synthetic tracks will be considered as host sites.

It is understood that this would cause a huge change in the economics of the breeding industry, which is a powerful and influential component. There are stallions out there that are worth tens of millions of dollars and that is because they produce top quality dirt horses–ones capable of winning races like the Derby and the GI Breeders' Cup Classic. Should that strength be taken away by ending dirt racing, their value could be greatly compromised. That will never be an easy thing for the top stud farms to accept. But they can adjust. It will take time, but a new set of stallions capable of producing horses that win at the highest levels on synthetic tracks and, for that matter, turf courses, will take over.

And the farms, like every other section of the sport, need to look at what the alternative is.

“If we fail to take decisive action, the Triple Crown and horse racing itself may soon be mourned as relics of the past.,” Mack wrote. “Animal rights groups, emboldened by each equine death, are gaining traction in their campaign against horse racing. The calls to ban or severely restrict the sport grow louder with each life lost. We cannot afford to lose this race for the soul and survival of our sport.”

Is the sport sure to continue? For maybe the first time in its proud history, we really don't know the answer. Where will racing be in, say, 25 years? Will it have gone the way of dog racing? It won't if we do the right things now, before it is too late. The sport must become safer and that must happen now. The best way to do that is to end dirt racing.

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The Week In Review: April Fool In The Derby Future Wager Pool?

Approaching the four-week mark to the GI Kentucky Derby, trainer Todd Pletcher has three highly ranked contenders, and the most impressive thing about that collective is that the Hall-of-Fame conditioner has guided them through undefeated 2023 campaigns to date, meticulously mapping out their schedules to avoid overlap.

Divisional champ Forte (Violence), now 6-for-7, won Saturday's GI Florida Derby with a mad-dash flourish. 'TDN Rising Star' Tapit Trice (Tapit), the winner of the GIII Tampa Bay Derby, will be heavily favored to improve his 3-for-4 record with another score in Saturday's GI Blue Grass S. The 3-for-3 Kingsbarns (Uncle Mo) heads to Kentucky after wiring the GII Louisiana Derby.

Latching on to a proven trainer and the prospect of getting behind the “headline horses,” bettors accordingly pounded those three Pletcher trainees in Pool 6 of the Kentucky Derby Future Wager (KDFW).

Unlike pools 2 through 5 earlier this season that closed on Sunday evenings after each weekend's prep stakes had been run, this final version of the KDFW added speculative intrigue by closing at 6 p.m. Saturday, prior to the runnings of the Florida Derby and GI Arkansas Derby.

Forte closed as the 5-2 favorite, while Tapit Trice and Kingsbarns attracted 11-1 action as the co-second choices.

Forte being favored is no shock. But that prohibitively low price bettors jumped at Apr. 1 makes you wonder if some April fools got pranked in the futures pool by locking in a return that could be lower than Forte's actual mutuel on Derby day.

For perspective, only three times in the past 14 years has the Derby favorite been sent postward at 5-2 or lower odds on race day. Even the two recent, highly popular Triple Crown winners–American Pharoah and Justify–didn't get that heavily backed in their respective Derbies. Both went off at 2.9-1.

And the kicker is that bettors were willing to accept that apparently underlaid 5-2 price on Forte before knowing the results of the Florida Derby. Nor did they know how the colt came out of the race (reportedly fine).

But considering the historical starting prices in the Derby itself, do those ticket-holders still think they got good value on their KDFW investments? Presumably, they'll spend the next four weeks anxiously awaiting the Derby post draw, which presents an entirely unavoidable random wrinkle that will one way or the other affect Forte's Derby-day mutuel odds and his chances in the race itself.

As for the other two Pletcher-trained KDFW second choices, Tapit Trice at 11-1 has decent upside if he runs a monster race at Keeneland.

Tapit Trice | SV Photography

Kingsbarns, however, is likely to go off higher than his 11-1 KDFW price in the actual Derby mutuels.

Dropping down to 13-1 in Pool 6 of the KDFW, we find another seemingly underlaid surprise: Derma Sotogake (Jpn) (Mind Your Biscuits).

This 4-for-8 winner of the G2 UAE Derby could be part of the advancing wave of Japan-based horses rapidly making their marks in elite global races. But I doubt this colt will be going off lower than that ambitious KDFW price when he starts in Louisville. Since 2000, 12 winners of the UAE Derby have gone on to compete in the Kentucky Derby. The best finish among them was sixth (along with two DNF's and a 20th-place try).

Practical Move at 14-1 represents the first sniff of KDFW Pool 6 value.

For the past month, this son of Practical Joke has been ranked as the No. 2 contender on the TDN Derby Top 12 list, and he's either going to be the favorite or the second favorite in Saturday's GI Santa Anita Derby. A win or a smart second sets up this colt to peak in Louisville, and if that's the result, Practical Move will start as the second or third favorite in the Derby mutuels, somewhere in the 5-1 to 10-1 range.

But it's the other major contender in the Santa Anita Derby–Geaux Rocket Ride (Candy Ride {Arg})–whose overlaid 33-1 KDFW Pool 6 closing odds stand out like a beacon of opportunity.

For that juicy price, you get a 2-for-2, sped-centric prospect who has shown promise enough to be ranked at No. 4 within the TDN Top 12.

Geaux Rocket Ride will vie for favoritism with Practical Move on Saturday, and his Hall-of-Fame trainer, Richard Mandella, is known for not embarking upon the Derby path unless he is confident he has a colt with a realistic shot of winning on the first Saturday in May.

Kingsbarns | Ryan Thompson

Mandella hasn't started a horse in the Kentucky Derby since 2004. But in 2019 he was set to start the deserving favorite, Omaha Beach, before having to scratch days before the Derby when the colt was discovered to have an entrapped epiglottis.

Parked much, much deeper down the list among the 39 individual horses and the 17-1 “all others” field option for KDFW Pool 6 is one final, tantalizing long shot worth mentioning: The Brad Cox-trained Slip Mahoney at an astounding 130-1.

He's an Arrogate colt out of an A.P. Indy mare who will be among the favorites in Saturday's GII Wood Memorial S. at Aqueduct. Slip Mahoney was slow from the gate and second best with a big late move from 13th behind a 7 1/2-length runaway winner in the muddy GIII Gotham S. back on Mar. 4.

His distance-oriented pedigree should appreciate the stretch out to nine furlongs from three one-turn miles. And if he runs well enough to accrue the points (he's currently No. 31 with 20 on the qualifying list), bettors will likely send him off exponentially lower in the Louisville mutuels.

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The Week In Review: Opposites Attracting Attention

Saturday's two 100-point preps for the GI Kentucky Derby yielded a pair of colts who are polar opposites in many ways. Yet the stock is on the rise for both Two Phil's (Hard Spun) and Kingsbarns (Uncle Mo), as their respective scores in the GIII Jeff Ruby Steaks and GII Louisiana Derby are attracting attention while stamping both as legitimate mid-tier threats on the Triple Crown totem pole.

Two Phil's ($150,000 KEESEP) has appeal as a 4-for-8 blue-collar closer/stalker whose strengths are versatility and adaptability. He's won sprinting and routing over fast dirt, the Churchill Downs slop, and now the Tapeta surface at Turfway, where he uncorked an eye-opening 101 Beyer Speed Figure. His racing resume includes wins well off the traditional Derby path at tracks like Colonial and Canterbury, and he'll train up to the first Saturday in May at Hawthorne for connections (jockey Jareth Loveberry, trainer Larry Rivelli, and co-owners Patricia's Hope LLC and Phillip Sagan) who have no Derby experience among them.

The far pricier Kingsbarns ($250,000 FTSAUG; $800,000 FTFMAR) is evolving into a businesslike front-running force who's never lost in three starts for connections (jockey Flavien Prat, trainer Todd Pletcher and owner Spendthrift Farm) who have ample experience at racing's elite events. To illustrate how deep Pletcher's sophomore stable is this season, the undefeated Kingsbarns isn't even considered the Hall-of-Fame conditioner's top chance at a third Derby win–the colt is currently pegged third-best, behind 'TDN Rising Stars' Forte (Violence) and Tapit Trice (Tapit).

Underdog allure…

If you parse the past-performance block of Two Phil's, he's only run two races that are off-the-board toss outs, and he had credible excuses for both.

He checked out of contention in his June 23 debut at five furlongs. Then, after roughing up the competition in Virginia and Minnesota, he took a 68-1 dive into the deep end of the Grade I pool, finishing seventh in the key-race Breeders' Futurity S. at Keeneland Oct. 8 behind eventual divisional champ Forte. But he got pinballed at the break in that race, then was crowded and bore out on the first turn before settling well and putting together a better-than-it-looks middle move that he sustained into upper stretch.

Disregarding the severity of that troubled trip, bettors let Two Phil's go off at 7-1 in the GIII Street Sense S. at Churchill, and he won going away by 5 1/4 lengths over a sealed track. He initially earned a 75 Beyer for that effort, but that number has subsequently been upgraded to a 79.

After starting his 2023 campaign with a second in the GII Lecomte S. and a third in the GII Risen Star S., Rivelli opted to try Two Phil's over Tapeta, based in part on a dynamite two-minute lick the colt once unleashed when training over a synthetic track. It was an experiment that the trainer said pre-race he would take the blame for if Two Phil's “absolutely hates the surface” under race conditions. But Rivelli also noted the Jeff Ruby seemed like “the easiest spot for the money” (not to mention its coveted qualifying points for the Derby).

Loveberry, who has been aboard Two Phil's for every start except the colt's debut, nearly missed the mount at Turfway because he suffered a hairline fracture to his fibula in a gate accident Mar. 2 at Fair Grounds. Yet he returned to action two weeks later and was able to retain the ride on Saturday.

Hard Spun, the sire of Two Phil's, won the version of Turfway's premier stakes in 2007 when the race was known as the GII Lane's End S. and run over Polytrack. That win propelled him to 2-3-4 finishes in the three Triple Crown races and a second-place try later that season in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic. Through that campaign, which came against a fairly deep crop, Hard Spun-like Two Phil's is aspiring to now-became known as a reliable, determined runner who could handle any type of distance or surface he was tasked with.

Off as the 2.8-1 second choice in the Jeff Ruby, Two Phil's broke alertly and immediately responded to a snug rating hold by Loveberry. The colt cornered three wide into the first bend, was content to be parked outside while sixth down the backstretch, then took the overland route four deep through the far turn, shadowing the move of the 1.7-1 fave Major Dude (Bolt d'Oro), a Pletcher trainee.

The two chalks accosted the pacemaker at the head of the homestretch, then the outermost Two Phil's made short work of wresting command from Major Dude. No one else was firing down the lane, and Two Phil's churned for the wire largely under his own power, stopping the timer at 1:49.03 for the nine furlongs.

Two Phil's | Coady

Meanwhile, In New Orleans…

Some 800 miles south and 25 minutes later, Kingsbarns stepped into the Fair Grounds starting gate for the Louisiana Derby as the 9-2 second choice. Bettors were chipping away at his 6-1 morning-line price because Kingsbarns projected to control the tempo, and after leading at every call through very moderate fractions (:24.71, 49.50, 1:14.69, 1:39.13) and light pressure from the competition, Prat said post-win that he knew dictating the pace would be his best shot.

“We thought there was not a whole lot of speed in the race,” Prat said. “[Pletcher] told me that the horse was pretty straightforward, and if we ended up on the lead he was fine with that. He jumped well, I was able to get myself into a comfortable spot, and from there he did the job.”

Kingsbarns got a 95 Beyer. His final time of 1:57.33 for the 1 3/16 miles, though, rates as the slowest clocking in four years since the Louisiana Derby got elongated from nine furlongs. In fact, the time was nearly a full second off the previous slowest clocking of 1:56.47.

In addition, the Fair Grounds main track was decidedly speed-favoring on Saturday. Of 11 dirt races, four were won in wire-to-wire fashion, six by pressers just off the lead, and just one by a midpack stalker. Deep closers got shut out.

Still, the prospect of an undefeated colt aiming for the first Saturday in May always creates some buzz-even if the historical hurdle is high.

From 1900 to the present, nine horses have attempted the Derby with exactly 3-for-3 records. Justify (2018), Big Brown (2008) and the filly Regret (1915) were the only ones to sail home triumphantly under the twin spires at 4-for-4.

Curlin, third in 2007, was the only other one to hit the board in the Derby. The others who tried but ran out of the money were Helium and Rock Your World (both in 2021), Materiality (2015), Showing Up (2006), and Thunderer–a full brother to Regret–in 1916.

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