There's no doubt that Gunite (Gun Runner) is a quality horse and he secured an important win Monday at Saratoga in the GI Hopeful S when upsetting the highly regarded colts Wit (Practical Joke) and High Oak (Gormley). But is he a GI Kentucky Derby winner? If the last 43 runnings of the Hopeful mean anything, the answer is no.
The Hopeful is the first Grade I race for 2-year-old males run each year on the NYRA calendar and always brings together groups of horses who were impressive winners in Saratoga or someplace else. Every year, the field represents what seems to be unlimited potential.
That would suggest that a win in the race is a ticket to stardom as a 3-year-old, but that has not been the case for a long time. The last time a Hopeful winner won the Kentucky Derby was way back in 1978 when Affirmed swept the Triple Crown. Since then, only 11 Hopeful winners have made it to the Derby and only three have done so since 2005. None of those three finished in the money.
The 2004 Hopeful winner was Afleet Alex, who finished third in the Kentucky Derby in 2005 before winning the GI Preakness S. and the GI Belmont S. Sixteen years since he last raced, he is the last Hopeful winner to have had any sort of impact in any of the Triple Crown races.
That wasn't always the case. First run in 1901, the Hopeful has produced seven Kentucky Derby winners and three Triple Crown winners (Affirmed, Secretariat, Whirlaway). Foolish Pleasure, Secretariat and Affirmed combined to give the Hopeful three Derby winners over a six-year period. Hall of Famers like Man o'War, Nashua and Native Dancer also used the Hopeful as a springboard to stardom during the 3-year-old seasons and beyond.
There's no secret when it comes to what is happening here. Two-year-olds are trained and campaigned much differently than they were during the days of Affirmed. The Hopeful was the sixth start of Affirmed's career, which began May 24, and it was his fourth stakes win. His pre-Hopeful campaign even included a ship to California, where he won the GII Hollywood Juvenile Championship. By the time he got to the Hopeful, he was already a seasoned horse.
Fast forward 44 years and the horses who compete in the Hopeful usually have had no more than two prior starts. While they have talent, they also win the Hopeful because they are precocious and fast. Eight months later in the Kentucky Derby, the rest of the class has usually caught up to them if not passed them.
None of this is to say that the Hopeful is a ticket to nowhere. The 2020 winner Jackie's Warrior (Maclean's Music), who typifies the type of horse that now excels in the Hopeful, is a Grade I winner at three, in the thick of the race for champion sprinter, and has emerged as a valuable sire prospect. That probably wouldn't have happened if he had not been managed beautifully by Steve Asmussen. Asmussen didn't pretend to have something he didn't. He gave Jackie's Warrior only one shot to prove that he was a Derby horse and the result was a distant third in the GIII Southwest S. That was the last time he ever raced around two turns and he has been on a tear ever since. Had Asmussen pressed on and tried to make the Derby there's no telling what might have happened with Jackie's Warrior.
Gunite, who was Asmussen's third straight winner in the Hopeful, will no doubt be given the opportunity to show if he's a viable Triple Crown horse. Being by Gun Runner, maybe he can do it. It's just more likely than come Derby week 2022, he'll be eyeing something like the GII Pat Day Mile S.
Mattress Mack Scores at Monmouth
It's impossible not to root for Jim McIngvale.
When Hurricane Ida hit Louisiana last week, there he was again, traveling from Houston to Louisiana with badly needed supplies for those hard hit by the hurricane. He also opened his Houston furniture store as a safe haven to dozens of families who needed shelter. A humanitarian, he never fails to come to the recsue when his part of the globe is hit by a violent storm.
Eight days after Ida struck and with the situation getting more back to normal, McIngvale could turn his attention back to racing.
While the offspring of Runhappy (Super Saver) are having a much better year than they did in 2020, McIngvale had yet to come up with a top son or daughter of his stallion of his own. That all changed Saturday at Monmouth when Runup (Runhappy) won the $200,000 Sorority S., the first stakes win for a McIngvale-owned offspring of Runhappy. She didn't beat the best field and managed to get an uncontested lead, but she improved and showed enough in her first start around two turns to suggest that even better days are ahead.
“She runs a lot like her dad,” McIngvale said via text.
Let's hope so. It would be a ton of fun to have McIngvale connected to another good horse.
Thoughts on Handle Numbers at Saratoga and Del Mar
For both Saratoga and Del Mar, the 2021 meets were ones to remember, highlighted by record wagering.
The final all-sources handle for Saratoga was $815,508,063, a 15.6% increase over last year and the first time Saratoga had eclipsed the $800 million mark. At Del Mar, the average daily handle was a record $18.38 million for the meet. The total handle was $569.98 million.
That's great news for Saratoga and Del Mar, which have never been more popular. It would stand to reason that both meets should peak at sometime, but it just doesn't happen.
The hope for racing is that Del Mar and Saratoga are creating new fans, ones that will keep betting once racing shifts to Santa Anita and Belmont. But that doesn't appear to be the case as racing's overall handle has been more or less stagnant for years. That means that what is happening is that Saratoga and Del Mar are simply grabbing a bigger share of the pari-mutuel wagering market every year.
Racing has found out that it's not hard to get people to turn out for and bet on high-quality short meets, like Saratoga, Del Mar and Keeneland. But the Thursday afternoon at Belmont, Santa Anita, or just about anywhere else, remain a tough sell and something the sport continues to need to work on.
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