Disarm looks for breakthrough win in Lukas Classic

Disarm scraped into the 2023 Kentucky Derby, earning enough qualifying points three weeks before in the Lexington Stakes to make the race, then finished an encouraging fourth. A little less than four months later his 3-year-old campaign ended with a fine second in the Travers Stakes, and Disarm looked like the sort of colt who’d be even faster as a 4-year-old.

So far, that has not been the case. The attempt to get Disarm a Grade 1 win is on hold, with the colt set to line up Saturday at Churchill Downs in the Grade 2, $500,000 Lukas Classic.

Disarm faces seven in this 1 1/8-mile fixture, a race he should win if he expresses the true breadth of his ability.

“Almost, not quite,” is how trainer Steve Asmussen describes Disarm’s standing in the older-male dirt route division. “He’s just around the edges. He needs a breakthrough performance.”

To that end, Asmussen for the Lukas Classic will remove the blinkers that Disarm has worn since the Travers Stakes. Disarm never will be the kind of horse to show a lot of early speed, but he fell too far behind in his two Grade 1 starts at Saratoga, the Whitney and the Jockey Club Gold Cup. In the Jockey Club Gold Cup, Disarm broke flat-footed and was squeezed back to last.

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“We need him to get more involved early and did so by putting the blinkers on him last year. I don’t think he’s as good in the gates with blinkers on as without. We’d like to see him stand up in there better and get away better,” Asmussen said.

Tyler Gaffalione, who hasn’t ridden Disarm since his debut win two summers ago, picks up the mount in a race where Disarm could be compromised by a lack of pace.

Disarm could wind up second choice behind Hit Show, who makes his first start since Wathnan Racing bought the colt from his breeders, Gary and Mary West. The purchase came after Hit Show captured the West Virginia Governor’s Stakes on Aug. 4, though Hit Show remains in the barn of trainer Brad Cox, who won this race three years ago with Knicks Go.

In an abbreviated 2024 campaign, Hit Show sandwiched a disappointing seventh-place finish as the favorite in the Prairie Meadows Cornhusker between wins in a Churchill allowance comeback start and the victory at Mountaineer Park. There, Hit Show stalked the pace before Florent Geroux found room to run along the inside part of the track at the quarter pole, Hit Show making the lead in upper stretch and holding at bay Heroic Move and Komorebino Omoide. The Lukas Classic is a tougher spot, and Hit Show would offer negative value at his 2-1 morning-line odds.

The morning line pegs Rattle N Roll at 5-2, a shorter price than Disarm at 3-1, which seems implausible given that Rattle N Roll hasn’t started since finishing fourth in the 2023 Lukas Classic. His trainer, Kenny McPeek, is having a career season, with wins in the Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks, but McPeek, though solid enough with layoff horses, has a record of 3 for 53 over the last five years with horses returning from a half-year break or longer in a dirt-route race.

Warrior Johny hasn’t hit a level as high as Disarm or Hit Show, but with luck, he could give both a run. Warrior Johny’s last start came in the Charles Town Classic, run over a small oval that’s not for every horse, and two races ago, in the Whitney, Warrior Johny failed to handle a wet track and was all but eased to the wire. A return to his winning form in a Saratoga allowance on July 11 puts him in the hunt – though not if Disarm brings his best self to the Lukas Classic.

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