Casse hoping to end roller-coaster year with a bang

Mark Casse is knocking on the trunk of the tree outside his barn at Keeneland. Knocking on the wooden sawhorse with red saddle towels draped over it at the end of the shed row. Knocking on anything he can find, really.

There’s good reason for the trainer to be knocking on wood. After a year encompassing satisfying highs and devastating lows, Casse brings his strongest hand yet to the Breeders’ Cup. A victory would be a career milestone for the lifelong horseman, who fell in love with the sport at the age of 12, when his father took him to see Secretariat win the Kentucky Derby, and took out a trainer’s license at age 18.

“Maybe we’ll finally win one,” Casse said.

Casse has made 23 Breeders’ Cup starts, with his best results a pair of runner-up finishes – Sealy Hill in the 2008 Filly and Mare Turf and Laugh Track in the 2013 Sprint. Casse sends out multiple Grade 1 winner Tepin against males in the Breeders’ Cup Mile; legitimate threats Airoforce and Conquest Daddyo in the Juvenile Turf; Catch a Glimpse in the Juvenile Fillies Turf; and Conquest Big E in the Juvenile. Siding Spring is an also-eligible for the Juvenile.

In some ways, it’s no surprise that Casse has a large Breeders’ Cup contingent. Casse, who ranks 13th among active North American trainers in career earnings, rolled into 2015 off a career-best season in terms of wins and earnings in 2014. But the barn has weathered loss this year. Most significantly, there was the loss of Danzig Moon – a blaze-faced, mischievous colt who outran his odds to finish fifth in the Kentucky Derby – to a fatal breakdown in the Plate Trial in June.

“I’m still not over our loss of Danzig Moon,” Casse said. “It’s very difficult. People don’t realize … I read comments, and they want to say this or that. These are our kids, you know? We love them, and we take this very seriously, especially the people that work with them. It’s just ... it’s brutal.”

Casse, a six-time Sovereign Award winner, has trained three Canadian Horse of the Year honorees, most recently Lexie Lou, who gave him his first Queen’s Plate victory last year. But the filly made her lone start of 2015 in January and was later sidelined with a swollen eye. Noble Bird, who qualified for the Breeders’ Cup Classic with a win in the Stephen Foster Handicap, was benched after finishing unplaced in the Whitney.

The Whitney was part of a difficult Saratoga meet for the stable, which won just three races from 42 starts. Tepin, who earlier in the year won graded stakes at Churchill Downs and Belmont, suffered a pair of heartbreaking defeats at Saratoga, caught at the wire in the Diana by Hard Not to Like and in the Ballston Spa by Dacita. Both only served to endear her more to her caretakers.

“At the moment when you get beat and you get nailed at the wire, you’re really disgusted,” said Norman Casse, Casse’s son and top assistant. “But then you’re walking back with her, and you realize she’s laying it all on the line for you. And she put in two big efforts at Saratoga on a racetrack that seems to play more in favor to closers, running at distances she didn’t like as much, so she actually probably gained more respect getting beat in those races than she did winning her races at Churchill, at Belmont.

“When she’s walking back after a race, she’s exhausted. She lays it all on the line for you. She’s just been a pretty special filly to all of us.”

Casse got back on a roll at the Keeneland fall meet, winning nine races – five during opening weekend – to tie for leading trainer. The victories included a pair of graded stakes with Tepin and Airoforce.

The tough Saratoga meet followed by the big Keeneland meet reminded Casse of the cyclical nature of the game. Casse recalled that after his barn had “the worst Keeneland meet ever” in the spring of 1988, he set a record for wins at the Churchill Downs spring meet. So, when his stable followed the Saratoga meet with a strong Keeneland meet, he was not surprised.

“We felt like coming in we were bringing some live horses, but you never can predict this kind of success,” he said.

Tepin’s victory in the First Lady Stakes was particularly sweet vindication, as she left no doubt with an emphatic seven-length score.

“About the eighth pole, I was looking for somebody to come running,” Casse said. “She’s lost such tough ones.”

Also emerging that opening weekend with a maiden victory was Conquest Big E. Casse’s patience with the colt paid dividends, just like it did with Catch a Glimpse, who ran fifth in her debut at Saratoga, then won an allowance and the Grade 2 Natalma at Woodbine.

“I wasn’t really crazy with the way [Conquest Big E] was at Saratoga,” Casse said. “He lost a lot of weight, he was getting upset every day, he was a real pain in the gate. Catch a Glimpse was the same way. She was a mess at Saratoga, and that’s why I sent her to Woodbine. That’s the one good thing – we have the ability to move horses around, and I think that’s probably one of our strongest suits. He was really ready to run the last part of Saratoga, but we decided not to do it. When you go to the paddock and you have to go through the crowd, a lot of horses can’t handle that, and I was really concerned with his mental stage that he wouldn’t be able to handle that.”

Conquest Big E is owned by the Conquest Stables of Ernie Semersky and Dory Newell, relatively new owners who came to Casse in 2012 and have helped to revitalize his operation. Semersky’s nickname is Big E, the namesake for the freewheeling gray colt.

“We’ve been saving that name for a long time, and Ernie would always kid me, ‘When are you gonna have enough guts to name one Big E?’ We worked [the colt] in Florida a few months ago, and I called Ernie and said, ‘All right, we’ve got Conquest Big E.’ That tells you right there that we’ve always thought he was special.”

Promising 2-year-olds like Airoforce, Catch a Glimpse, and Conquest Big E – as well as Conquest Windycity and Siding Spring – suggest that the good times will continue for the Casse barn. But for now, the trainer will savor the current success while not taking a single horse in the barn for granted.

“It’s been a crazy year,” he said. “It’s been one of our best years and one of our worst years. I still ... I kind of watch with one eye open when I watch these races.”