Bauer can stay hot with Warrior Johny

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Phil Bauer will keep rolling while he’s hot. A breakthrough year got even better Sunday when Coppelia won the $300,000 Dream Supreme Stakes at Churchill Downs, with the most encouraging news being the prospects of further success in the near future.

Bauer will saddle Warrior Johny in the first and richest of back-to-back allowances Thursday at Churchill, where a 10-race card gets started at 1 p.m. Eastern. A two-back romp at Saratoga was enough to make Warrior Johny the 7-5 morning-line favorite in a field of seven 3-year-olds in the eighth race, a $134,000, second-level allowance at 1 1/16 miles.

“The horse is doing great,” said Bauer, who began this week with 19 wins and more than $2 million in stable earnings in 2022, both of them career highs. “We’re looking forward to seeing him run.”

Warrior Johny, with Joe Talamo riding from post 6, was beaten just five lengths when sixth in his latest race, the Bourbon Trail on Sept. 24 at Churchill. That race followed an eye-catching, 8 1/2-length jaunt that graded out to a 99 Beyer Speed Figure in a first-level allowance at Saratoga in August.

“Joe has gotten really familiar with the horse since he rode him in the Bourbon Trail,” noted Bauer, the private trainer for the Rigney Racing of Tammy and Richard Rigney.

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It’s been a terrific last few months for Bauer and the Rigneys. Within three days of each other in mid-September, Fireball Baby won an ungraded stakes at Horseshoe Indianapolis and Played Hard won the Grade 3 Locust Grove at Churchill, both of them on the heels of a 6-for-13 Saratoga meet that drew widespread attention. Then there was the first stakes victory for Coppelia on Sunday.

“We’ll enjoy it while we can, knowing how hard it can be to keep going at this pace,” said Bauer, a lifelong Louisville resident who in 2003 graduated from St. Xavier High School, located just a few miles from Churchill.

Bauer has Mariah’s Princess primed for the Chilukki Stakes this weekend, while his other standout 4-year-old filly for the Rigneys, Played Hard, goes next in the Grade 2 Falls City on Thanksgiving. After the Churchill fall meet ends Nov. 27, Bauer will split his stable between Fair Grounds and the Trackside training center in Louisville.

The opposition for Warrior Johny in the Thursday co-feature includes Pioneer of Medina (post 3, Luis Saez), who hasn’t come close to the 96 and 93 Beyers he earned earlier this year for Todd Pletcher during Kentucky Derby prep season. The colt has run poorly in his last three starts, starting with a 19th-place finish in the Derby on May 7.

The allowance that directly follows as race 9 is a $127,000, first-level dash going five furlongs. Skelly (post 5, Brian Hernandez Jr.), a last-out maiden winner with an 84 Beyer, is the 8-5 program choice in a field of 11 3-year-olds and up.

Purses listed here include substantial bonuses restricted to registered Kentucky-breds.

More frigid weather is in store for Thursday, with a daytime high of just 38 in the local forecast. Once again, no turf races are carded.

◗ The only stakes this week at Churchill is the Grade 3, $300,000 Chilukki on Saturday. In addition to Mariah’s Princess, the one-mile race for fillies and mares is expected to include Center Aisle, Coach, and Charlie’s Penny.

Nine stakes will be run Nov. 24-26, led by the Grade 1 Clark on Nov. 25. The 19-day meet runs through Nov. 27.

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