Caribou Club adds to big weekend for connections in Seabiscuit

DEL MAR, Calif. – Jockey Joe Talamo used Hall of Fame equipment to guide Caribou Club to an upset win in Saturday’s Grade 2 Seabiscuit Handicap on turf at Del Mar.

Talamo recently received a saddle as a gift from retired Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens. Saturday was the first time Talamo used the saddle, just days after Stevens announced his retirement because of a back injury sustained last weekend.

“When he retired, he gave me one of his saddles, and one to Drayden Van Dyke and Mike Smith,” Talamo said. “I used it for the first time today. I know why he won all those stakes for all those years.”

Caribou Club ($16.20) won his second Grade 2 race, and fourth stakes, in the $202,415 Seabiscuit Handicap. Talamo kept the 4-year-old gelding toward the inside for the first seven furlongs before guiding his mount three wide entering the stretch.

“We had a beautiful trip,” Talamo said. “It worked out well.”

Caribou Club gave owner Glen Hill Farm and trainer Tom Proctor their second graded stakes win in as many days at Del Mar. Friday, they won the Grade 2 Hollywood Turf Cup with Chicago Style.

Caribou Club, who earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 97, was timed in 1:41.38 and finished 1 1/4 lengths in front of 72-1 Secretary At War, who was always near the front under jockey Ruben Fuentes.

“I put him in the perfect position,” Fuentes said. “They only came to me in the last sixteenth.”

Synchrony, the 8-5 favorite who won two Grade 3 races at Monmouth Park in the summer, closed from 11th in a field of 12 to finish third. Big Score ran fourth, followed by Kenjisstorm, He Will, Ohio, Pincheck, Le Ken, Madame Stripes, Ann Arbor Eddie, and Holiday Stone.

Ann Arbor Eddie, a two-time stakes winner, was vanned off and taken to trainer Doug O’Neill’s stable for evaluation, track stewards said.

Caribou Club, by City Zip, has won 6 of 16 starts and earned $444,744. He won the Henry Clark Stakes at Laurel in April and the Grade 2 Connaught Cup at Woodbine in June before losing his next three starts, including a fast-closing third in the Grade 3 Eddie D Stakes on the hillside turf course at Santa Anita on Sept. 28.

In the Eddie D Stakes, Caribou Club closed from eighth into a fast pace to finish three-quarters of a length behind Stormy Liberal, who won the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint at Churchill Downs earlier this month in his next start.

“He was a lot closer today,” Talamo said. “When I asked him, he had a great turn of foot.”