Whittingham May Finally Handle Risen Star : Horse That Caught Trainer’s Eye 2 Years Ago Is Coming to His Stable at Age 4

It will be fitting if Risen Star winds up in the already well-stocked barn of trainer Charlie Whittingham late this year. Whittingham had a yen for Risen Star, the winner of the Preakness and Belmont Stakes, even before the horse ran a race.

Risen Star was only a yearling when he was consigned to the 1986 Keeneland summer sale, the creme de la creme of horse auctions. Risen Star, son of Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown champion, and Ribbon, a multiple stakes winner, was bred by Arthur Hancock and Leone Peters. Peters, who also bred and raced Gato Del Sol, the 1982 Kentucky Derby winner, died of heart failure at age 76 on June 4.

Risen Star, a good-sized young horse, caught Whittingham’s eye at the Keeneland auction.

Doing his own bidding, Whittingham offered $200,000, but he stopped there. Because there were no other bids, Hancock and Peters, who thought the colt was worth more, bought him back for $210,000.

A year later, Hancock and Peters sent Risen Star, then an unraced 2-year-old, to a sale at Calder Race Course, where Louie Roussel bought him for $300,000.

Now, Roussel and his 49% partner, Ronnie Lamarque, are planning to turn Risen Star over to Whittingham this winter. The immediate objective is to compete in the Strub Series for 4-year-olds at Santa Anita early next year.

Roussel met Whittingham, the 75-year-old Hall of Fame horseman, when Risen Star and Lively One, a Whittingham trainee, were stabled at opposite ends of the same barn at Churchill Downs before this year’s Kentucky Derby. Risen Star ran third--the worst finish of his 11-race career--and Lively One was 12th in the Derby.

Whittingham predicted that Risen Star would win the Belmont.

“He’s a good horse,” Whittingham said Sunday. “I knew he was the best horse for going that far (1 1/2 miles) in the Belmont. He’s big, he’s strong and he’s got speed.”

Whittingham said he might try Risen Star on the grass when he gets him.

“He looks like the kind of horse that you could run anywhere,” Whittingham said.

Although Risen Star’s Belmont time of 2:26 2/5 was second only to Secretariat’s 2:24, and his 14 3/4-length victory margin over Kingpost was the 120-year-old race’s fourth largest, some skeptics were saying that this year’s 3-year-old crop is mediocre.

“You hear that every year,” Whittingham said. “The year (1986) we won the Derby with Ferdinand, they said it, and they were saying it after Alysheba won the Derby last year. Then when Ferdinand and Alysheba got older, the same people saying that started saying that they were great horses again.”

Risen Star’s final quarter-mile of :24 4/5 was faster than Secretariat’s :25 in 1973, when he won the Belmont by a record 31 lengths. Neither Belmont winner felt the whip of his jockey, Eddie Delahoussaye aboard Risen Star and Ronnie Turcotte on Secretariat.

“This is a great horse,” Delahoussaye said of Risen Star. “He’s the best 3-year-old I’ve ever ridden, and he might even be better than his sire. He was still green when he ran in the Derby. Now he’s running more like a race horse. I was feeling great on him even going into the first turn, and when we moved on the filly (Derby winner Winning Colors) on the far turn, my horse was trying to pull me out of the saddle.”

The swelling that occurred just above Risen Star’s right front ankle after a training accident two weeks before the Belmont reappeared slightly Sunday morning. But neither Roussel, who also trains the horse, nor Ken Reed, his veterinarian from Louisiana, seemed alarmed.

Reed prescribed three weeks of just walking and then three weeks of walking under tack around the shed row before Risen Star is returned to serious training. This probably will prevent him from running in the $1-million Travers Stakes at Saratoga, N.Y., in August, but Risen Star should be ready to race in the $1-million Super Derby at Louisiana Downs a month later. Roussel, in a departure from earlier plans, is considering paying a $360,000 supplementary fee to enter Risen Star in the $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs in November.

Because he also collected the $1-million bonus that goes to the Triple Crown horse with the highest finishes, Risen Star’s Belmont payday was $1.3 million, about $13,000 less than Secretariat earned in his 21-race career. Secretariat, who stands at stud at Claiborne Farm in Kentucky, raced in an era when such lucrative bonuses were nonexistent.

“This is a once-in-10-lifetimes experience,” Roussel said.

Roussel’s training methods throughout the Triple Crown were unusual. Risen Star was given only three workouts--one at three-quarters of a mile and two at three-eighths--from the time he ran his last Derby prep at Keeneland in mid-April.

Jimmy Nichols, Risen Star’s exercise rider, agreed with Roussel’s methods.

“I’ve always said that more horses are over-trained than under-trained in this country,” Nichols said. “And I think that Louie has proved that you can win big races without a lot of training.”

Of course, Roussel was forced into a light-training schedule leading to the Belmont because of Risen Star’s leg problem. Now the problem for rivals is to find a way to beat the 14th horse to score a Preakness-Belmont double. Most of them will solve it by running their horses in different directions.