Even though he won the 2019 GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile, no one was ready to declare that Storm the Court (Court Vision) was a star in the making. After all, he was 45-1 that day at Santa Anita and the field for that year's Juvenile was one of the weakest in the history of the race. But nobody could have predicted what was to become for that year's 2-year-old male champion, an epic losing streak that has lasted now for more than four years and 20 races.
Storm the Court will be out to put an end to the futility Saturday at Gulfstream Park in the Silks Run S., but he is 20-1 in the morning line for a race that brought together a surprisingly deep field. Expectations are that the Silks Run will be the 21st straight loss for the now 7-year-old horse.
“The race came up super tough,” said his trainer Bill Morey.
Storm the Court won his debut on Aug. 10, 2019, for trainer Peter Eurton. He lost his rider in his next start, the GI Del Mar Futurity, and then was third in the GI American Pharoah S. Ridden by Flavien Prat, he won the Juvenile in a game effort in which he outfought Anneau d'Or (Medaglia d'Oro). Since then absolutely nothing has gone right.
“A lot of it has to do with fact he matured a lot earlier than most horses do,” Eurton said. “In the Breeders' Cup he was in the right place at the right time. The rest of the horses caught up to him.”
Storm the Court's 3-year-old campaign coincided with the pandemic, which pushed the GI Kentucky Derby back to Sept. 5. He lost all five of his starts leading up to the Derby, but ran creditably when third in the GIII Ohio Derby and second in the GIII La Jolla H. In the Derby, he finished sixth, beaten nine lengths. That was sixth straight loss, and it would only get worse.
Being that the horse was an Eclipse Award champion and a Grade I winner, the owners looked into turning him into a stallion, but the response from the breeding farms was lukewarm at best.
“There was some talk about turning him into a stallion back when he was four,” Eurton said. “But it didn't happen. His pedigree, it's just not there.”
His five-year-old season ended with a 12 3/4-length drubbing in the GIII Tokyo City S. That would be his last start for Eurton.
“The owners thought the horse would be better off back East and would have more opportunities there,” Eurton said.
He was sent to Tom Amoss and made two starts for him, the last of which resulted in a 23-length loss in an allowance race at Churchill in September.
The ownership group then decided to make another change and sent the horse to Morey. The new trainer hasn't gotten him to the winner's circle in three tries, but at least Storm the Court has been competitive. He's had three starts for the new outfit, all of them in allowance sprints on the grass. He finished third at Horseshoe Indianapolis and then second in consecutive races at Tampa Bay Downs.
“I had some other horses for the ownership group and they called me and asked what I doing for the winter,” Morey said. “When I told them I'd be racing at Turfway and Tampa, they thought Tampa might be a good place to get him reinvigorated and back on his game. That was the idea. It just seemed like the horse was obviously stale with what he was doing so we decided to try something drastically different. So far, it has worked to some extent. We haven't gotten to the winner's circle yet, but we seem to have him going pretty good. We're training him to be a sprinter rather than continuing to train him to be a router. I have trained him to sprint. I am assuming that the trainers who had him before me were all training him for routes.”
Morey is optimistic he can break the losing streak, but understands that it probably won't happen Saturday. Storm the Court is running against horses who are considerably faster than him on the Beyer scale, including Big Invasion (Declaration of War), who was second in the GI Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint.
“In this game you take chances,” Morey said. “There wasn't an allowance at five furlongs on the grass at Tampa for the foreseeable future. An on-the board-performance in a race as tough as this would almost feel like we had broken the losing streak. This looks like a tough spot. Maybe we'll get lucky and hit the board or maybe win. If not, hopefully we'll get him into the winner's circle the next time.”
At Santa Anita, Eurton will be watching. He hasn't had the horse for a year and a half, but will always have the memories of his win in the Breeders' Cup.
“I would love to see him win a race. One hundred percent,” he said. “There will always be a soft spot in my heart for this horse.”
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