With Clement barn rolling, Tawny Port gets his firm ground in Gold Cup
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FRANKLIN, Ky. – Strange things are happening with the Miguel Clement barn at Kentucky Downs – not bad things, but strange things.
Clement on Saturday won the ultra-rich Nashville Derby with Caroline St. Beat, who ran in and won a New York-bred allowance race the day after Clement had entered the horse in the Nashville Derby, which came just one week later.
Now comes Tawny Port, who put in a Sept. 2 workout at Saratoga the day before he was scheduled to start here at Kentucky Downs in the Bowling Green Gold Cup.
By Sept. 2, though, Kentucky Downs had already decided to truncate the Sept. 3 card because of wiltingly hot weather, moving the Gold Cup to Wednesday’s closing-day program. Clement gave Tawny Port one final piece of work, sent him west, and in the course of six days, conditions have only improved for Tawny Port.
Tawny Port likes a dry, firm, fast course, and with Kentucky Downs caught in the grip of a heat wave, that is exactly what he’ll find in the $750,000 Bowling Green Gold Cup, a stayers’ race over 2 1/16 miles.
Tawny Port long has excelled racing over 1 1/2 miles but looks even better going farther than that. He finished second in this race last year – no match for a German buzzsaw named Flatten the Curve, who was brilliant on the day – and in his second two mile-ish try captured the Belmont Gold Cup in June.
Clement expected a competitive performance Aug. 15 in the Grade 1 Christophe Clement over 1 1/2 miles – until the Saratoga course came up wet. Tawny Port checked in an even fifth over yielding going.
“He doesn’t like soft turf whatsoever, and prior to post I was very worried about the ground,” Clement said. “Sure enough, he still doesn’t have an affinity for it.”
Tawny Port had six rivals in the first version of the Gold Cup and has seven now. He also has a different jockey, with Flavien Prat, who rode him to victory in the Belmont Gold Cup, at Kentucky Downs on Wednesday.
The Belmont Gold Cup runner-up, Navy Seal, could offer the stiffest competition. Fifth in the 2024 Nashville Derby at Kentucky Downs, Navy Seal shined over the local course a year ago with a smart second-level allowance score. Trainer Wesley Ward tried him at a true staying trip for the first time in the Belmont Gold Cup, where Navy Seal held a lead in upper stretch before Tawny Port swept past.
“This spot was in my mind even before he ran in that race,” Ward said.
Navy Seal shows a gap in published workouts from July 22 through Aug. 20. Ignore it. To begin with, Navy Seal gallops 2 1/2 miles during a standard morning’s training at Keeneland, and Ward said the unconventional weekly breezes at about one mile he’s been giving Navy Seal don’t make the work tab because of how they’re configured, and how slow they are. Navy Seal often works from the five-furlong pole to the five-furlong pole while staying closer to the outside rail than the inner fence; the five-furlong time the horse runs to the wire comes up too slow for clockers to even enter into the database.
Several others could pull an upset, and a win from Limited Liability wouldn’t really be an upset at all. He cruised to an easy victory in this race’s 2024 renewal and checked in third last year, just 1 1/2 lengths behind Tawny Port. But 7-year-old Limited Liability races for the first time since November, and it’s hard to imagine he could take down Tawny Port – particularly on a scorching, sun-baked Kentucky Downs closing afternoon.
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