Delta Downs notes: Rise Up earns rest with Jackpot win

VINTON, La. – Rise Up will be freshened before embarking on a 3-year-old campaign, trainer Tom Amoss said Sunday, a day after the colt dominated the Grade 3, $1 million Delta Downs Jackpot.

Rise Up scored by six lengths in the Jackpot, a 1 1/16-mile race for which he earned a preliminary Beyer Speed Figure of 88. He also picked up 10 points toward Kentucky Derby preference through the system administered by Churchill Downs. Rise Up is scheduled to ship early this week to Florida.

“The immediate plan is he’s going to get a little time off, a brief rest of 30 to 45 days,” Amoss said Sunday. “He may ship to Ocala. That’s the plan.”

From there, Rise Up will return to Amoss’s division at Fair Grounds. The trainer said no schedule of races has been set for the colt. Rise Up gradually moved to the lead in the run to the first turn of the Jackpot, then separated himself from his rivals through the stretch to win in a stakes-record time of 1:44.71.

“He ran really well, and he used his speed to win,” Amoss said. “You always wonder for how far a horse can use it to his advantage, and we know up to a mile and a sixteenth. His 3-year-old season, we’ll test the waters and see if we can go farther than that.”

Rise Up closed out a successful 2-year-old campaign in the Jackpot, which was his third stakes win following the $100,000 Mountaineer Juvenile and $200,000 Jean Lafitte at Delta.

He races for Paul and Andrena Van Doren, who purchased the Rockport Harbor colt privately following his win in the Mountaineer Juvenile. Amoss said he has had horses for the Van Dorens for about six or seven years. Paul Van Doren founded the Vans shoe company.

“His passion away from work is always racing,” Amoss said.

Amoss said one of Andrena Van Doren’s top horses was Shaconage, a multiple Grade 3 winner she bred and raced. Jadada, also a graded stakes winner, raced for the couple’s Kentucky-based Sterling Stud, while another notable winner for the Van Dorens was the multiple Grade 2-placed La Madame.

Amoss, 52, celebrated one of the best days of his career Saturday. The Jackpot was one of four victories he had on the 11-race card, with the quartet also including the $150,000 Delta Mile with Grand Contender.

“That was a lot of fun,” he said. “It was one of those special days that comes along rarely.”

The Jackpot was Amoss’s first win in a $1 million race. He’d been close in such races before, most notably finishing second by a nose with Williams News in the $1.5 million Canadian International at Woodbine in 2000.

Coastline, the winner of the Street Sense Stakes at Churchill Downs who finished eighth as the favorite in the Jackpot, is to be freshened in Ocala, Fla., trainer Mark Casse said. The horse stumbled to his knees coming out of the gate Saturday.

“It made me want to cry,” Casse said Sunday. “I was really confident in him. The good part is he’s fine this morning, and he’ll live to fight another day.”

Casse said jockey Shaun Bridgmohan said Coastline broke so quickly that the ground broke out from under him. The horse on Sunday was en route to Ocala.

“He’ll have a little bit of a break, not a long one,” Casse said. “We’ll figure out which direction we want to send him: Tampa Bay, the direction of Gulfstream, or the direction of [Oaklawn]. We still feel he could be a Derby horse, and we’re still treating him like that until he proves otherwise. I’m sure not holding yesterday against him.”

Casse said he will have divisions this winter at both Gulfstream Park and Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark.

Tepin provides emotional win in Princess

Casse won the Grade 3, $500,000 Delta Downs Princess on the Jackpot undercard with Tepin in what was an emotional win for the trainer. She rallied for a 1 1/4-length victory over Bahnah and earned a preliminary Beyer of 81 for the first stakes win of her career Saturday.

“That was kind of special,” Casse said. “She comes with a little history.”

Casse said his friend, David Greathouse of Glencrest Farm, who died last month, introduced him to Tepin’s owner, Robert Masterson. It was Greathouse’s son, Deuce, who recommended the yearling purchase of Tepin.

“My last conversation with David was the day before he passed, and we were talking about Tepin,” Casse said.

Masterson purchased Tepin, a daughter of Bernstein and a half-sister to Grade 2 winner Vyjack, for $140,000 at the Fasig-Tipton select yearling auction at Saratoga in August 2012. She won the Princess in her fourth career start with a sustained bid in her two-turn debut. For the effort, she picked up 10 points toward Kentucky Oaks preference.

“She came back great,” Casse said Sunday. “I talked to Robert last night, and we’re going to take her to Ocala and give her just [a short] break and then probably look for something again at Gulfstream Park or Hot Springs. She’s bred for the grass, too, but we’re going to try to keep her on the dirt for now.”

• Handle on the Jackpot card from all sources was a track-record $5,044,286, up 16 percent from $4.3 million in 2012. On the Jackpot alone Saturday, the handle was $988,709, according to officials with Delta Downs.