Trainer Hopes Volponi’s Best Comes Out at Night

Phil Johnson has gone through the litany of solutions that might end Volponi’s losing streak. He’s changed jockeys. He’s taken the blinkers off and put them back on. He’s switched from dirt to grass. He’s done everything but fire the trainer, and that’s not likely to happen, since Johnson, a part owner of the horse, also is the trainer.

Tonight, at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, Johnson will try another wrinkle: running Volponi under the lights. It worked last year, when Volponi finished second as the favorite in the Meadowlands Cup, then returned to daylight three weeks later and delivered a 43-1 shocker in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Johnson, who’ll turn 78 next Thursday, hopes that the same $400,000 race makes for another successful launch into the Breeders’ Cup, which will be run at Santa Anita on Oct. 25.

“If he runs good and gets beat, we’ll still go to California,” said Johnson, who has watched Volponi go winless since that Breeders’ Cup victory at Arlington Park.

Returning to the races as a 5-year-old in May, Volponi finished second five consecutive times before running third on grass in his last start.

A year ago, Johnson ran Volponi without blinkers at the Meadowlands, then added them for the Breeders’ Cup, and he said that he might do the same thing this time.

“Maybe taking the blinkers off will dull his speed a little bit and let him finish better,” Johnson said.

The Breeders’ Cup win is Volponi’s only victory in his last 11 starts.

“It’s been frustrating, but I think he’s been running better lately, and [physically] he’s doing well,” Johnson said. “He only got beat by a little more than two lengths against Mineshaft [in July], and that’s a lot closer than most horses have come against that horse.

“Some people are saying that his Breeders’ Cup win was a fluke, but I don’t think so. It was only a fluke to the guy who put out the morning line in Chicago and made him 50-1. That made everybody believe that he didn’t belong, but he beat the Kentucky Derby winner and the Travers winner to win the race.”

In a six-horse field tonight, Volponi is the 8-5 favorite on the morning line. Dynever is the second choice at 3-1. Volponi will be ridden by John Velazquez. Johnson dropped Jose Santos, who won with his horse in the Breeders’ Cup, after the fourth consecutive second-place finish this year.

The Meadowlands Cup is part of an avalanche of Breeders’ Cup preps this weekend. There are 18 races, worth more than $7 million, at Santa Anita, Belmont Park, Keeneland, Hoosier Downs and the Meadowlands, and Sunday, there are some races at Longchamp in Paris, including the Arc de Triomphe, France’s most prestigious race.

Keeneland’s 17-day meet opens today with the 151st running of the Phoenix, a $250,000 stake for sprinters, and the $400,000 Darley Alcibiades for 2-year-old fillies. Trainer Cole Norman, who said after Beau’s Town won the six-furlong Crosby Handicap at Del Mar in 1:07 4/5 that the 5-year-old gelding would be trained up to the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, has changed his mind and is running in the Phoenix.

The Alcibiades has drawn Lokoya, nosed out by Marylebone at Belmont, and Be Gentle, who was second to the undefeated Ashado at Saratoga. Ashado is running Saturday in the $500,000 Frizette at Belmont. Of the four, only Be Gentle is not trained by Todd Pletcher, who has all but cornered the 2-year-old market this year. Pletcher, who has started 50 2-year-olds, has won 32 races with juveniles, eight of them stakes.

Santa Anita will run five stakes this weekend, among them Saturday’s $500,000 Goodwood Handicap and $150,000 Oak Tree Derby. The field for the Goodwood, a prep for the Breeders’ Cup Classic, includes Pleasantly Perfect, who’ll try to become the first repeat winner of the stake since Lord At War in 1985. Pleasantly Perfect hasn’t run since finishing fourth in the Santa Anita Handicap on March 1.

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Trainer Neil Howard said a decision on Mineshaft’s status for the Breeders’ Cup Classic would probably be made by Monday. After winning last Saturday’s Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont, the horse was shipped to Howard’s barn at Churchill Downs.