Gone, but Not Forgotten
As Mike Smith whipped Azeri repeatedly in a $250,000 race last Saturday at Churchill Downs, Laura de Seroux watched on TV from California and cringed.
“Mike must have hit her 25 times,” De Seroux said. “It hurt me to watch that, to see [Azeri] get punished that much. But I don’t blame Mike. It was a tough race, and it’s his job to win. He was just trying to win the race.”
Carrying 125 pounds to the winner’s 114, Azeri lost by a head on Kentucky Derby day to Mayo On The Side in the Humana Distaff Handicap. It was only the third time in 18 starts that Azeri had lost. It also was her first defeat since trainer Wayne Lukas had replaced De Seroux, who was fired by the mare’s owner, Michael Paulson, after winning the horse-of-the-year title in 2002 and a second divisional title in 2003.
Paulson, whose late father, Allen Paulson, bred Azeri, brought her back to the races -- and gave her to the Hall of Famer Lukas -- after De Seroux had recommended late last year that the horse be retired because of a tendon injury, which prevented her from trying to repeat as winner of the Breeders’ Cup Distaff.
Paulson said he got favorable opinions from two Kentucky veterinarians before ending Azeri’s brief retirement. In her first start under Lukas, Azeri won the Apple Blossom Handicap at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark., where De Seroux had saddled her to win the same race in 2002 and 2003.
De Seroux has now become an Azeri watcher instead of an Azeri handler, which would seem to be a difficult transition for a trainer. What helps is that De Seroux was resigned to losing Azeri, anyway, when she presumed that Paulson would take her advice and send the horse to the breeding shed.
These days, De Seroux is in the business of winning races without Azeri, and she’ll take two whacks at that today at Hollywood Park, where she’s running Total Impact in the Mervyn LeRoy Handicap and Ballingarry, the 119-pound high weight, in the Jim Murray Memorial Handicap.
When Paulson announced early this year that Azeri would return to the track under Lukas, De Seroux told the Daily Racing Form, “Shame on them both,” but now she prefers to mostly watch quietly from the sideline.
“There’s no point to my getting in the middle of anything,” she said this week. “But what I am is curious. I’m curious to see how her campaign unfolds. They’re obviously taking a very aggressive approach. That was very unconventional, what they did at Churchill, backing up on distance by running her seven furlongs just after she had gone a mile and an eighth [in the Apple Blossom].”
At Churchill Downs on Friday, Lukas said that Azeri’s next start might be against males, in the $750,000 Metropolitan Handicap at Belmont Park on May 31.
At the San Luis Rey Downs training center in Bonsall, where De Seroux stables her horses, the stall that once belonged to Azeri is now occupied by Toasted, a 3-year-old who won the La Puente Stakes on the turf at Santa Anita last month. Toasted’s breeding spells dirt racing, and he was nominated for this year’s Triple Crown series, but after the La Puente, his immediate future is on grass.
Wins such as Toasted’s have been dear this year for De Seroux, who has had only four in 52 starts. In 2002, when she became the first woman to train a horse of the year, the barn won 26 races out of 106 starts and ran horses who earned almost $4 million. Last year, De Seroux accounted for 14 wins in 111 starts and purses of $1.9 million.
“We should be all right as the year goes on,” De Seroux said. “A lot of our horses were on the sidelines at the same time, and when that happens, you’re probably not going to win as many races as you’d like.”
Ballingarry, a 5-year-old Irish-bred, and Total Impact, a 6-year-old bred in Chile, have had unexpected gaps in their schedules. Smith, who survived the trainer change and still rides Azeri for Lukas, will ride both of De Seroux’s horses today.
Total Impact won last year’s LeRoy, but then was out for seven months. He’s winless in his last five starts -- dating back to the LeRoy -- but ran second twice at Santa Anita, including a runner-up finish behind Dynever, an East Coast shipper, in the San Bernardino Handicap on April 3. Dynever, one of the best older dirt horses in the country, blew everyone’s doors off, running 1 1/8 miles in a sparkling 1:48.
“How about [trainer] Christophe Clement, coming all the way out just to run [Dynever] in a $150,000 race,” De Seroux said, laughing. “Greedy, greedy, greedy. If he doesn’t ship, my horse wins the race by two lengths.”
Ballingarry, who has earned $1.5 million, won the 2002 Canadian International for his Irish trainer, Aidan O’Brien, and then with De Seroux was en route to Canada for the same stake last year. But while in Kentucky, he kicked something, infected a hock and spent three weeks in a clinic. He didn’t run for seven months, returning last month to finish fourth in the Arcadia Handicap at Santa Anita.
“That whole experience was a very bad one,” De Seroux said. “I was already in Canada, waiting for the horse to arrive, and of course the rest of my horses were in California. It was a logistical nightmare.”
Ballingarry ran third in last year’s Jim Murray, behind Storming Home and Denon. Among his rivals today are Continental Red, another millionaire; Rhythm Mad, a French import who liked the grass at Santa Anita, and Gassan Royal.
“I expect Ballingarry to run well,” De Seroux said. “He’s been doing fantastic. I think he’s as good as ever.”
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Preparing for next Saturday’s Preakness at Pimlico, Kentucky Derby winner Smarty Jones galloped 1 1/2 miles at Philadelphia Park for his 170-pound exercise rider, Peter Van Trump.
“I thought he went super,” trainer John Servis told Blood-Horse magazine. “Usually he gives Peter a breather sometime during his gallops, but not today.”
Servis plans to train Smarty Jones at Philadelphia Park through Wednesday morning, then van him the 100 miles to Baltimore later that day.
Entries will be taken and post positions assigned Wednesday. Pimlico officials said there were 10 horses in the Preakness picture: Smarty Jones, Lion Heart, Imperialism, The Cliff’s Edge, Borrego, Eddington, Rock Hard Ten, Water Cannon, Little Matth Man and Sir Shackleton.