Fawkes running Noble Drama in the Big Drama

It’s been a decade since Big Drama won the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, clinching an Eclipse Award as North America’s champion sprinter, but you can still hear the excitement in trainer David Fawkes’s voice when the horse’s name is mentioned.

“Big Drama was a blast, what a nice horse,” Fawkes said Wednesday. “He took me a long way.”

Saturday, Gulfstream Park will host the fourth running of the $75,000 Big Drama Stakes, a seven-furlong race for Florida-bred sprinters, and Fawkes and Harold Queen – the owner of Big Drama – will be well represented by Noble Drama in the eight-horse field. Noble Drama is by Gone Astray out of the dam Riveting Drama, who is a half-sister to Big Drama.

Noble Drama won the Sunshine Millions Classic for Florida-breds in January, his second straight win at Gulfstream following an eight-month layoff. Things didn’t go quite as well across the state when Noble Drama finished a well-beaten sixth in the Grade 3 Challenger Stakes on March 7 at Tampa Bay Downs.

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“He just didn’t ship well, that was my opinion,” Fawkes said. “I don’t know why. I shipped him before, and he won.”

In the Big Drama, Noble Drama will be cutting back to seven furlongs, a distance at which Noble Drama has two seconds and a fourth from three starts.

“In a perfect world, it’d be a mile but it’s not,” Fawkes said. “I think he fits in there just fine.”

The Big Drama field, from the rail out, is With Verve, Last Judgment, Network Effect, Garter and Tie, Red Crescent, He Hate Me, Noble Drama, and Royal Squeeze, last year’s Big Drama winner.

Noble Drama will be ridden by Paco Lopez, who is returning to action less than three weeks after undergoing surgery to repair a fracture at the base of his thumb. Lopez suffered the injury when he was unseated by his mount Fluent in Sarcasm in the ninth race on April 11 at Gulfstream. He underwent surgery April 14.

Lopez had the cast removed from his thumb on Monday “and he’s doing great, he’s jumping, ready to go,” said Cory Moran, Lopez’s agent.