Wind Splitter Ready to Challenge in General George

Weep no more, my lady.

It is understandable that Pat (Mrs. Randy) Williams of Pasadena, Md., needed a Kleenex as she was overwhelmed by the sentiment of the picture show in the Kentucky Derby Museum last spring. It does that to people any day, and this was the first Friday in May.

Their young trainer, Dale Capuano, could have been forgiven a sniffle the next afternoon. It was his first time in Louisville, too, and the trip hadn’t really been necessary. Starting in the 14th lane of a 15-horse field, Wind Splitter never got closer to Sunday Silence than the box-seat elite.

“He’s never run a bad race,” Capuano said. “Except the Derby.”

A filled out Wind Splitter is a big boy now after flubbing in last year’s Kentucky Derby, and Capuano (a 10-year trainer who won’t be 28 until November) barely had time to be a little one; they are pointed for the $200,000 General George at Laurel Race Course here Monday, and not in a shy way.

The field, headed by Dispersal and Little Bold John, may even fill to its 14-horse maximum, but none of it scares Capuano. “I have a lot of confidence in this horse,” he said. “I believe he’s as good as anything in there.”

Wind Splitter won only one race last year, a modest allowance sprint at Philadelphia Park. That was a re-entry exercise after the May-to-November layoff Capuano gave him.

“He was tall and lanky and he needed time to develop,” Capuano said. “And he needed a rest. He was tired after that grind.”

That grind included narrow second-place finishes in the Federico Tesio, the Cherry Hill, the Garden State and an allowance at Pimlico in preparation for the Derby. Those four races spanned only 37 days.

Wind Splitter has had only one race this year and he didn’t win it. But, as Capuano points out, that’s one more than Dispersal and Little Bold John have had.

In that six-furlong sprint, Wind Splitter went head-and-head with the precipitate Pulverizing through five furlongs in a rash :58 3-5. “You know that’s not Wind Splitter’s style,” Capuano said. Even so, Wind Splitter “finished gamely,” beaten only three quarters of a length while Pulverizing faded away by four.

The trainer still believes Wind Splitter’s forte to be a mile and an eighth, “and probably a mile and a quarter.” That would mean the seven-furlong General George is not Wind Splitter’s thing either.

“Not exactly,” Capuano said. “But he has sprinter speed.” Indeed, freshened after his furlough last year, Wind Splitter posted fractions of :22 and :45 in that Philadelphia sprint.

His breeding was modest enough that Capuano was able to claim him as a 2-year-old (owner Randy Williams’ idea) for $23,500. Yet his English grandsire, Sharpen Up, may have transmitted some classy genes.

Sharpen Up sired Pebbles, the filly who was supplemented to the 1985 Breeders’ Cup Turf and ran an Aqueduct track record to beat a dozen of the world’s best males.

Asked if he now considered pushing Wind Splitter to the Derby a mistake, Capuano said: “A mistake in what sense? It cost us money, missing some races we could have won when he was on the farm last year.

“But he came out of it all right physically. He hasn’t peaked yet. After the General George we’ll try stretching him out again (in distance races). But there’s plenty of time for that.

“I think,” Capuano said, “that Wind Splitter might get there (to his competitive peak) in late April or early May.”

That would be in time for the $700,000 Pimlico Special.