Couple of adjustments help Scholar Athlete make grade

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – West Point Thoroughbreds partners from Canada and across the United States will converge on Woodbine in two weeks to see if Scholar Athlete can give the group its first Queen’s Plate winner in its third attempt.

West Point Thoroughbreds recorded an eighth-place finish in 2005 with Get Down and a ninth-place finish in 2011 with Enduring Star, but Terry Finley, chief executive of West Point Thoroughbreds, believes Scholar Athlete has a big chance this time.

“This horse is certainly our best prospect to run really well, and I think he’s got a legitimate shot to win,” he said.

West Point Thoroughbreds bought Scholar Athlete out of the Fasig-Tipton Florida sale of 2-year-olds in training in March 2015 for $85,000. Finley said the organization can’t compete with big spenders at the sales, but Scholar Athlete fell into a nice spot in the market.

“We liked the way this horse galloped,” he said. “We liked his athleticism. If they move the right way and they show they’re pretty good athletes and they’re not ones that are going to bring $500,000, they’re usually the horses that we zero in on. He was one of them. He fell into all of the spots we like to be in at these 2-year-old sales. We were really happy when we came away with this horse.”

Bred in Ontario by Adena Springs, Scholar Athlete is by Einstein and out of the El Prado mare Creme Catalan. Finley said the horse was named after his son Ryan, who played soccer at Duke and Notre Dame and currently plays professional soccer in Sweden for Ängelholms FF.

“We try to attach meanings to the horses that we name,” Finley said.

After the Florida sale, Scholar Athlete was sent to trainer Graham Motion at Fair Hill Training Center in Maryland. He made four starts at Woodbine as a 2-year-old, recording one win and finishing third behind Shakhimat in the Coronation Futurity in November.

From there, Scholar Athlete went back to Florida for the winter, starting twice on turf at Gulfstream Park, including a narrow loss in the Grade 3 Palm Beach Stakes in February. He looked to have a big chance in the Rushaway Stakes on Polytrack at Turfway Park on April 2 but wound up fifth, 11 1/2 lengths behind the winner.

“We went in with a lot of confidence, but there’s no real excuse there,” Finley said. “The vast majority of times, there are no excuses, you just get outrun. That’s what happened at Turfway – we just got outrun.”

After the Rushaway, the owners and Motion opted to add blinkers and geld Scholar Athlete to get him to move forward.

“He’s a little bit of a knucklehead but not terrible,” Finley said. “In the back of our minds, we knew we had a horse that had some talent, and we know he’s a Canadian-bred, so how do we put ourselves in a position to take the next step? Those are the things you can do with a 3-year-old colt.”

In his first start with blinkers and as a gelding, Scholar Athlete did take the next step, recording an 84 Beyer Speed Figure in a gate-to-wire score in an allowance on turf at Belmont Park on May 12.

“We gelded him almost immediately after the Turfway race, and that’s what we were hoping for,” Finley said. “We were going to give him a little bit of a break and come back at Belmont or somewhere on the East Coast to set us up for the Plate, and that’s what has happened so far. It’s worked according to plan up to this point.”

Finley said the connections considered running Scholar Athlete back in the Plate Trial after the race at Belmont but decided to train him up to the Queen’s Plate instead. Scholar Athlete will be making his first start in eight weeks in the Queen’s Plate, and Finley said there is a bit of concern as to whether he will peak at the right time.

“If we would have run in the Trial, you hope to run well so you have some momentum, but the downside is running back in three weeks,” he said. “He’s going to have to get a mile and a quarter, and a couple more weeks in between races is not going to be the reason he doesn’t get the job done.”