$500,000 Stakes in Kentucky : 3-Year-Old Stalwars’ Inexperience Is Only on the Track, Not the Road

When it comes to limbs, trainer Gary Jones has put himself out on a long one as he sends an inexperienced 3-year-old, Stalwars, into today’s $500,000 Jim Beam Stakes at Turfway Park.

When asked how he felt about Stalwars’ No. 4 post position in the 11-horse field for the 1 1/8-mile Kentucky Derby prep, Jones said:

“It wouldn’t have made any difference if he had gotten No. 19, just as long as we’re in there. If he runs his race, there’s not a horse in Kentucky--not just here--that can beat him.”

Jones is customarily roseate about his horses, but he has saved his most glowing adjectives for Stalwars, a $105,000 Stalwart-Joy Returned yearling who runs for Corbin Robertson, the Houston oilman who also owned Turkoman, the champion older male in 1986, and other standouts such as Bold ‘n Determined, Meadowlake and Forceten.

Even though Stalwars has run only five races, Jones already says he is better than Fali Time and more advanced at a comparable period than Turkoman. Fali Time wound up fourth for Jones, after a disqualification, in the 1984 Kentucky Derby.

“This horse is more precocious than Turkoman,” Jones said. “Nobody had ever heard of Turkoman until he ran in the Travers in the summer of his 3-year-old season.”

Jones says that if Stalwars had run in the San Felipe Handicap at Santa Anita last month, he would have won, a hypothetical exercise that results in a conclusion that this is the best 3-year-old in California.

“Mi Preferido (the winner of the San Felipe and the favorite in the Santa Anita Derby a week from today) is a good horse,” Jones said. “But there’s a question about whether he can handle a distance of ground.”

Instead of staying in California, Jones has elected to hit the road with Stalwars, a journey designed to have the colt peaking on May 7, when the Kentucky Derby is run at Churchill Downs. Unafraid of the California opposition, Jones says he is in Kentucky because the timing of the races here better fits Stalwars’ schedule.

He wants to give the horse two races before the Kentucky Derby, and if he ran in the Santa Anita Derby, it would be crowding the colt. After the Jim Beam, Jones plans to run Stalwars in the Lexington Stakes at Keeneland on April 16.

The Lexington is 1 1/16 miles, which is 110 yards shorter than today’s race. “We’ll ask Keeneland for permission to work the horse out the extra distance (beyond the finish line),” Jones said. “If we don’t get it, we won’t go.”

Then Jones’ other option would be the Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park on April 23.

“And there’s always the chance that Corbin (Robertson) might tell me to run in Arkansas, anyway,” Jones said. “There’s a different digit in front of the purse in Arkansas.”

The Arkansas Derby, like the Jim Beam, is worth $500,000. The Lexington is a $100,000 race.

Stalwars, who was picked out of a Florida sale by Bert Sonnier, another of Robertson’s trainers, has two wins, two seconds and a third in five races. A foot infection delayed Stalwars’ debut until last December. Jones’ confidence in the colt’s staying power was obvious from the beginning, because he sprinted him only once, and after breaking his maiden around two turns, Stalwars came right back, in his fourth start, and almost beat Lively One in the Santa Catalina Stakes at Santa Anita on Feb. 10. That race stamped Lively One as the pre-eminent 3-year-old, pro tem, on the West Coast.

Jones thought that he could have gotten a better effort that day from Gary Stevens, the nation’s leading jockey in purses and a rider who will be aboard Stalwars for the fifth straight time today.

“My horse showed his green-ness that day,” Jones said. “We made the lead and then Gary let him pull himself up at the top of the stretch. Gary knew it after it happened, I didn’t have to tell him.”

In Stalwars’ last start, a 2-length win at 1 1/8 miles in the Bradbury at Santa Anita on March 9, Jones didn’t want the horse close to the leaders in the early going, that having been his colt’s pattern in three of the first four races.

“When I saw my horse breathing down the neck of the horse on the lead, I said to myself, ‘What’s he (Stevens) doing?’ ” Jones said. “But then I realized that they were just walking, that they were running the first half-mile in 47 (seconds) and something. The jock was smart, and I was wrong. Then Gary shook him up for the last eighth of a mile. So I went down to the winner’s circle and acted like a genius.”

Jones has not given Stevens a riding commitment on Stalwars beyond the Jim Beam, because Stevens also is riding Flying Colors, the brilliant filly who is likely to run in the Santa Anita Derby and who is also a Kentucky Derby candidate.

Naturally, Jones thinks Stevens would be making a mistake if he abandons Stalwars.

“If it happens, we’ll just find somebody else,” Jones said. If Stalwars wins today, as Jones says he will, the line of jockeys that forms to the right would be as long as the limb the trainer is out on.

Horse Racing Notes

The three Jim Beam favorites--Brian’s Time at 9-5, Dynaformer at 3-1 and Stalwars at 6-1--will leave the gate together, with Stalwars in the 4 spot, Brian’s Time in the 5 and Dynaformer No. 6. . . . Others in the field are Delightful Doctor, Cannon Dancer, Drouilly’s Boy, Buck Forbes, Glory Afar, Kingpost, Jim’s Orbit and Longview Ashle. . . . It rained for the second straight day at Turfway Friday, and there’s an 80% chance of rain again today, with the humidity high and temperatures in the 60s. . . . Drouilly’s Boy, Glory Afar, Cannon Dancer, Delightful Doctor and Dynaformer have all been successful on off tracks, and the Turfway linemaker, anticipating mud, has done an unusual thing, lowering the odds on Drouilly’s Boy from 20-1 to 10-1. . . . There’s a big round of other races for Kentucky Derby contenders today, with the Tropical Park Derby being run at Calder, the Rebel on the program at Oaklawn Park and the Cherry Hill Mile scheduled at Garden State Park. . . . Indicative of the mediocrity in the 1 1/8-mile Calder race is the fact that Digress, trainer Woody Stephens’ third-string 3-year-old, is the 3-1 favorite. Eleven horses are entered, including California invader Havanaffair. . . . At Oaklawn, in a 10-horse field going 1 1/16 miles, the 9-5 morning-line favorite is the Wayne Lukas-trained entry of Notebook and Contempt. The favorite at post time, however, might be Proper Reality, the highly regarded local horse. . . . Bill Pulliam, who owns Longview Ashley, a 20-1 long shot in the Jim Beam, says that Proper Reality is the best 3-year-old in the country. Proper Reality beat Pulliam’s colt by 1 1/2 lengths in the Southwest Stakes on March 5. . . . Chris McCarron is at Oaklawn to ride Smackover Creek, a promising colt. . . . Favored in the 13-horse Cherry Hill is Sorry About That at 3-1, with the Lukas entry of Cougarized and Tsarbaby at 4-1. . . . Patti Cooksey, one of only a few female jockeys to ride more than 1,000 winners, is back in the saddle at Turfway after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery last month. She rides Lt. Lao in a $55,000 stake today. Cooksey says Lt. Lao, a 4-year-old filly, is the best horse she has ever ridden. . . . Vilzak, who broke down in last Sunday’s San Luis Rey at Santa Anita, suffered ligament damage but no broken bones. He will be retired to stud.