Evening Attire’s Kelly Plays It Close to Vest

Pat Kelly appears to be the exception among trainers who are running horses in today’s eight Breeders’ Cup races at Arlington Park.

“Horse of the year is the farthest thing from my mind,” Kelly said at his barn Friday. Those who know Kelly said he wasn’t just horsing around.

Since Kelly won’t do any pre-race stumping for his Evening Attire for horse-of-the-year honors, it was left for trainer Bobby Frankel, who definitely is thinking about the national title, to quantify the Classic, which at $4 million is the richest race on the $13-million Breeders’ Cup card.

“If one of four horses wins the Classic, they should win [horse of the year],” Frankel said. “I’m talking about my horse [Medaglia d’Oro], War Emblem, Came Home and, to a certain extent, Evening Attire. But if one of those four doesn’t win, then I guess a lot of things can happen.”

An upset in the Classic can conceivably open the door for at least six other horses: Azeri in the Distaff, Xtra Heat in the Sprint, Beat Hollow (also trained by Frankel) and Rock Of Gibraltar in the Mile, and High Chaparral and With Anticipation in the Turf. The group is a mixture of fillies, sprinters, grass horses and Europeans, categories that usually don’t produce a horse of the year, but in a hard-to-figure year, one of them might sneak in after the 250 or so Eclipse Awards voters cast their ballots in December.

Evening Attire is another type that seldom wins the title: A gelding. Castrated early last year, shortly after he had turned three years of age, Evening Attire could become the first gelding to be voted horse of the year since John Henry won for the second time, in 1984.

“I just want to win this race,” said Kelly, the easy-going 54-year-old son of a Hall of Fame trainer. “All I know is that Evening Attire is a gelding and a very nice horse, and he seems to be peaking at the right time for this race.”

Evening Attire hadn’t won anything higher than a Grade III stake until he captured the Grade II Saratoga Handicap in August. Then in September, running in a Grade I for only the second time, he was a 2 3/4-length winner of the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park.

Both of those wins came on off tracks, leading handicappers here to theorize that rain today would play into Kelly’s hands. The forecast is calling for no rain -- and a little sunshine -- for the first time this week, with temperatures in the low 50s.

“If there’s a little water left over on the track, that would be fine,” Kelly said. “But I think this horse is not just a mudder, he’s a nice horse that can handle almost any track. Look at his record -- he’s won on both tracks at Aqueduct, at Saratoga and at Belmont. None of those running surfaces is the same.”

Kelly, who dropped out of the University of Miami 32 years ago while halfway toward an accounting degree, to follow his father, Tommy Kelly, into the training game, brought Evening Attire here almost two weeks ago. Most of the Classic trainers waited until this week to ship their horses into Arlington.

One day this week, Kelly was visited at the barn by Dee Poulos, the wife of the late Ernie Poulos, who trained Evening Attire’s sire, Black Tie Affair, when he won the Classic at Churchill Downs to nail down horse of the year in 1991. Cozzene, winner of the 1985 Mile, is the only Breeders’ Cup winner to also sire a winner. Cozzene’s son, Alphabet Soup, won the Classic in 1996.

“You know what?” Dee Poulos said to Kelly. “You drew No. 8. That’s the same number Black Tie Affair won from.”

Other than both being gray, another bond between Black Tie Affair and Kelly’s horse is that neither was considered a title contender until late in the year. Starting in June of 1991, Black Tie Affair won the Stephen Foster Handicap at Churchill Downs and never lost again. In the Classic, he was 4-1 while beating Festin, Summer Squall, Unbridled and others. It was Black Tie Affair’s sixth consecutive win and his last race.

Now standing at stud in Japan, Black Tie Affair had a running style like War Emblem, the front-running Kentucky Derby winner. Evening Attire has been known to win with early speed, but lately he has won after sitting just off the pace.

Tommy Kelly bred Evening Attire, mating Black Tie Affair with Concolour, a filly who ran only four times, won once and earned $7,200. The elder Kelly, now retired, has often seen Evening Attire run, but he’ll likely watch today’s race on TV.

“We got him as far as Kentucky,” Pat Kelly said. “But I don’t think he’ll make it the rest of the way. He is 83, after all.”

There’s hardly a Kelly at Belmont Park who hasn’t had something to do with this horse. While still unraced, Evening Attire was under the care of the elder Kelly and another of his sons, Larry, at Hialeah in Florida. Ready to run for the first time in July 2000, the horse had been turned over to Tim Kelly, another of the current trainer’s brothers. Evening Attire won only one of five starts in 2000, but he was thrown in with some salty 2-year-olds and the Kellys were hoping he’d improve and move up the ladder.

In 2001, Tim Kelly quit training to join the racing office at the New York tracks, and his brother Pat became the trainer. Pat Kelly is more than just the son of somebody whose bronzed plaque hangs in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He once won two Grade I races on the same day, the Man o’ War with Solar Splendor and the Woodward with Sultry Song in 1992, and in 1982 he saddled Laser Lane, the second-place finisher behind Gato Del Sol in the Kentucky Derby.

Before the 1992 Woodward, Kelly had brought Sultry Song to California for a win in the Hollywood Gold Cup. For a Southern California bonus, Kelly was treated to his first earthquake on the day after the Gold Cup.

This week, reporters have pushed Kelly for his horse-of-the-year thoughts.

Kelly would not be moved. “See me after Saturday’s race,” he said.