Victory Gallop Aims to Show His Chances Aren’t Dead Yet

Ivan Dalos, a breeder from Toronto, sold him at a yearling sale and didn’t give it another thought until the new owner called and said the horse had died from an illness related to his diet. Dalos felt badly for the horse, not the buyer. You pay your $25,000, you take your chances.

Some time the next year, Dalos received a call from a friend at the races in Kentucky.

“Hey, Ivan,” the man said. “Your dead horse just won a race.”

Sure enough, Dalos checked the horse’s bloodlines and discovered it was the one he had sold. He called the owner, whose subsequent investigation revealed a case of mistaken identity. The next thing you know, Dalos was on his way to Churchill Downs to see his first-bred Kentucky Derby horse.

If this were a script for a movie, like “The Horse Whisperer,” Hollywood would command me to report that Victory Gallop won the Derby. That didn’t happen. The next best thing did. He finished second to Real Quiet, then did it again two weeks later in the Preakness.

With a victory in Saturday’s Belmont Stakes, Real Quiet would take his place in history alongside horses such as Secretariat and Citation as the 12th Triple Crown winner, the first since Affirmed in 1978.

With another second-place finish to Real Quiet on Saturday, Victory Gallop would take his place in history alongside one other horse. Alydar is the only horse to finish second in all three races to a Triple Crown winner, chasing Affirmed to the wire in each.

“If we come second in all three, it won’t be the worst thing in the world that could happen,” Victory Gallop’s trainer, Elliott Walden, said Thursday. “I would go home very proud if that happened.”

But with all due respect to Alydar, Walden said he would prefer for Victory Gallop’s name to be mentioned after the race in the same breath with other horses.

“I’d just as soon he become the next Easy Goer or the next Bet Twice,” he said, referring to two of the horses that have prevented competitors from sweeping the Triple Crown races with victories in the Belmont.

While Walden talked, his horse munched on grass in the yard outside Barn 5 on Belmont Park’s backside. If racing were a beauty contest, Victory Gallop would win by several lengths. Although elegant from the side, Real Quiet appears so narrow from the front that his handlers nicknamed him “The Fish.” Victory Gallop has leading-man looks.

The women who work at Dalos’ farm nicknamed the horse Cruise, not because of his easy stride but because they thought he was as handsome as Tom Cruise.

He developed a rash after the Preakness, probably because of the 92-degree heat at Pimlico, but he’s still in better condition than his trainer.

Playing three-on-three basketball last week at Monmouth Park, N.J., Walden, 35, battled jockey Julie Krone’s husband for a loose ball, came down wrong on his right ankle and broke it. After a two-hour operation, the ankle is held in place by five screws and a metal plate.

Walden probably will ask a friend, trainer Bill Mott of Cigar fame, to saddle Victory Gallop before the Belmont.

Wearing a laundry bag from the posh Garden City Hotel wrapped around his cast to keep it clean, Walden warns anyone who visits his barn not to count out Victory Gallop.

The last person who did that was Barry Irwin of Pasadena-based Team Valor. Offered a chance last year to buy Victory Gallop for $500,000, he declined after a veterinarian told him of a chip in the horse’s ankle.

“I didn’t want to become known as the thoroughbred junk man,” said Irwin, whose Captain Bodgit pressed Silver Charm in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness last year despite a bowed tendon.

Irwin said the vet told him Victory Gallop had maybe three races left.

That was two victories and two second-place finishes ago.

“We’re not conceding Victory Gallop is here for second,” Walden said. “I think we’ve got a big shot to beat Real Quiet. I don’t think they’re that far apart. Absolutely, we should have won the Derby. I’ve watched it a few times since and every time we get closer at the wire.”

Officially, Victory Gallop finished half a length behind, leading Walden to wonder what might have been if Alex Solis hadn’t taken the horse six wide at the turn for home.

“We had an unlucky trip,” Walden said, meaning something less flattering to Solis. He didn’t have to say it, having already replaced the jockey with Gary Stevens before the Preakness.

Bettors approved, making Victory Gallop the favorite, then watched as Real Quiet beat him by 2 1/4 lengths.

“Real Quiet beat us solid in the Preakness,” Walden said.

Everybody knew it, he said, except for Victory Gallop.

Walden had a horse here earlier this week, Distorted Humor, who finished fifth in the mud in the Met Mile and was so frustrated with the experience that he bit his groom. But Victory Gallop, the trainer said, hasn’t developed a complex about Real Quiet.

“When he finished second in the Derby and Preakness, I’m not sure he saw the horse in front of him,” he said. “When they finish second, a lot of times horses are very content.”

In case Victory Gallop needed an ego boost, though, Walden lined him up this week against an inferior horse from his barn.

“Victory Gallop thumped him,” he said. “I let him get his confidence up.”

Walden’s is already there.

“The extra distance here plays into our strength,” he said. “Victory Gallop will go the mile and a half. I see him stalking Real Quiet. Then we’ll all see what happens.”

He smiled, remembering a time when he was 15 and also pulling for the second-favorite.

“I, for one, always believed Alydar would end up getting Affirmed,” he said.