Wood Memorial : N.Y.’s Second Best Is Not Running
The second-best 3-year-old in New York will stay in his barn today while his heralded stablemate, Easy Goer, is expected to become the shortest-priced horse ever to win the Wood Memorial.
Despite having won five of seven starts, including the Flamingo Stakes at Hialeah in his last race, Awe Inspiring is still playing second banana to Easy Goer, who has won six out of eight. The horses have the same ownership--Ogden Phipps and his son, Dinny--and are both trained by Shug McGaughey, who has repeatedly said that only Easy Goer will run in the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs two weeks from today.
McGaughey can see no sense running Awe Inspiring as an entry in the $500,000 Wood, the last of four major preps for the Derby, even though second-place money at Aqueduct is more than $100,000. Awe Inspiring would probably finish second if he ran, because the other five horses in the field are second-raters.
One of them, Diamond Donnie, ran second, 13 lengths behind Easy Goer, two weeks ago, and the others also have modest credentials. Triple Buck is winless this year, Rock Point has won three of 11 lifetime starts and A.M. Swinger and Militron couldn’t beat lesser opposition at Garden State Park just a week ago.
Awe Inspiring easily beat better horses than these when he won the Flamingo by three lengths on March 25, the same day McGaughey was saddling Easy Goer for his near-world-record 1:32 2/5 mile in the Gotham here.
The Flamingo is also a major prep for the Derby, and in most years Awe Inspiring would be on his way to Louisville as one of the favorites in America’s premier race. This year, Awe Inspiring would be either the third or fourth betting choice--behind Easy Goer and Santa Anita Derby winner Sunday Silence and possibly ahead of Blue Grass winner Western Playboy--if he ran in the Derby.
No matter what he does, though, Awe Inspiring is being upstaged by Easy Goer. The other day at Belmont Park, where McGaughey trains his horses, Awe Inspiring turned in an effective half-mile workout in :48 4/5, but 24 hours later, Easy Goer covered the same distance 2 3/5 seconds faster.
After Awe Inspiring’s workout, a story in the Daily Racing Form hinted that McGaughey might be changing his mind about the Derby for his No. 2 colt, but in an interview Thursday, the trainer discounted that. Ogden Phipps, who is 80, reportedly would not care if Awe Inspiring, who races in his son’s name, were to run in the Derby, but the decision has been left to McGaughey.
“We’ll probably enter both colts in the Derby,” McGaughey said. “But only Easy Goer will run. If anything should happen to Easy Goer--God forbid--or if the track came up muddy, then it’s possible that Awe Inspiring could run.”
McGaughey concedes that Awe Inspiring has developed faster than he thought he would. He won in his first start, in a maiden race at Belmont last September, but by then Easy Goer already had two victories on his record.
Awe Inspiring was fourth in his second start, on an off track, and McGaughey didn’t race him the rest of his 2-year-old year. This winter at Gulfstream Park, the son of Slew o’ Gold won two allowance races in less than three weeks and both jockey Jose Santos and his agent, Frank Sanabria, were saying that this might be their Derby horse.
But when Awe Inspiring had a rough trip and finished 10th in his first stake, the Fountain of Youth, Santos picked another horse, Kerosene, to ride in the Everglades. Under Craig Perret, Awe Inspiring beat Kerosene by three lengths, and the distance between them was the same in the Flamingo.
McGaughey didn’t think Awe Inspiring was ready to run in the Florida Derby, which was two weeks after the Fountain of Youth, or the colt might have won that race, too.
Racing lore is crammed with stories of trainers whose second-best horses turned out to be something.
In the 1973 Wood, Lucien Laurin started both Secretariat and Angle Light, because they had different owners. Secretariat had beaten Angle Light three times when they were 2-year-olds, and the future Triple Crown champion went into the Wood with a 10-race winning streak, having been beaten only in the first race of his career.
It was not widely known that Secretariat had been bothered by an abscessed tooth. In the stretch, Ron Turcotte, Secretariat’s jockey, was looking around for Sham, the horse he thought they had to beat, when Angle Light surprised them and won by a head. Sham was second, four lengths ahead of Secretariat, who lost only three more races before he was retired.
Secretariat reaffirmed his superiority over Angle Light in the Kentucky Derby. The next year, in the centennial running of the Derby, Woody Stephens ran Judger and Cannonade as an entry. Judger had run down his stablemate in the stretch of the Florida Derby, and was a big winner in the Blue Grass the week before the Kentucky Derby. But at Churchill Downs, Cannonade gave Stephens his first Derby win and Judger ran eighth.
Since then, Stephens has made a career of winning with his second string, especially during the 1980s, when he won the Belmont Stakes five consecutive times. Stephens got his other Derby win in 1984 with Swale, who had played Pancho to Devil’s Bag’s Cisco Kid when they were 2-year-olds.
So when Easy Goer and Awe Inspiring are flown to Louisville from New York next Wednesday, one horse should be put in business class and the other ought to be flying tourist. In racing, though, the way horses are perceived or travel doesn’t always jibe with the turns that their careers take.
Horse Racing Notes
Chris Antley, who doesn’t have a mount in the Wood, rode the winner of the seventh race Friday, extending his record to 57 consecutive days with at least one winner at Aqueduct. . . . The track is expected to be fast today. . . . The shortest-priced winner of the Wood has been Native Dancer, who paid $2.20 when he won in 1953. Easy Goer paid $2.10--the minimum--in winning the Gotham.
Manastash Ridge, with Robbie Davis riding, is the 2-1 favorite today in the $400,000 Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park. The colt carries 123 pounds, three less than Trapp Mountain, Double Quick and Clever Trevor, who are co-high weights in the 11-horse field. . . . In the $250,000 California Derby at Golden Gate Fields, Flying Continental is the 7-5 favorite, with Laffit Pincay seeking his fourth victory in the race. Flying Continental, second in the Santa Anita Derby, carries 117 pounds, two less than Endow in an eight-horse field.
