Hovdey: Summer of Pharoah, fast fillies, fairy tales

From Bobby Vinton to Jim Morrison to the Steel Monkeys and the Foo Fighters, the end of summer has been celebrated in song as basically a bummer.

Hope your summer was fun. But now it’s gone, or it will be when the sun comes up Wednesday, the day of the autumnal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, when Earth’s axis stands at attention in relation to the planet’s orbit of the sun. I had to look that up.

The final summer weekend of racing, crowned by Saturday’s Pennsylvania Derby, provides an opportunity to reflect upon the racing events bracketed by the previous three months. Summer is the most intense racing time of year, when more tracks are open to welcome holiday patrons and more races are run to seize the light of the longer days. It stands to reason there would be more chances for memorable moments, and summer 2015 did not disappoint.
American Pharoah’s Haskell, Beholder’s Pacific Classic, and Honor Code’s Whitney rest atop the short list on the highlight reel. They’ll be talked about for a long time to come.

Private Zone continued to play his feel-good role as the light of the life of one of his owners, the paralyzed former classic-winning rider Rene Douglas, while The Pizza Man made it safe to believe in fairy tales by winning the Arlington Million for his Illinois connections.

All year long, the 3-year-old filly main-track scene has looked like the stage of a Republican presidential debate, and the summer competition did nothing to clear up the picture. The West’s Stellar Wind won the Summertime Oaks at Santa Anita on the last day of spring, so that doesn’t count. But the following weekend at Belmont Park, the stretch-running Include Betty fired the first shot of summer in winning the Mother Goose.

After Include Betty came Calamity Kate in the Delaware Oaks, Curalina on the disqualification of I’m a Chatterbox in the Coaching Club American Oaks, and Embellish the Lace in the Alabama, while the brilliant Cavorting hovered nearby, winning the Test and the Prioress. It’s always fun to have at least one division in such entertaining disarray. Hopefully the $1 million Cotillion Stakes on the Pennsylvania Derby undercard – featuring I’m a Chatterbox, Calamity Kate and Embellish the Lace – will have added to the chaos.

As usual, the older North American turf division proved itself to be at the mercy of whatever gunslinger the Euros decided to send across the pond, as dramatically illustrated by Flintshire’s manhandling of the Sword Dancer Stakes at Saratoga and Mondialiste’s swooping finish to win the Woodbine Mile.

Anyone who did not leave the summer season drooling for a matchup down the line between Rachel’s Valentina and Songbird simply was not paying attention to either the Spinaway or the Del Mar Debutante. As for the 2-year-old colts, let’s just say they are a work in progress, although the one named Nyquist has won two graded stakes and has yet to be beaten in three starts out West.

There have been eight races worth at least $1 million run this summer, with the Pennsylvania Derby and Cotillion left to be decided at this writing. American Pharoah, Beholder, Honor Code, The Pizza Man, and Flintshire won five of them. Force the Pass enjoyed the windfall of the Belmont Derby, and Keen Ice earned every penny of his Travers purse in upsetting American Pharoah.

The other $1 million pot belonged to the unbeaten Lady Eli, who won the Belmont Oaks on the Fourth of July as if the sky was barely the limit. Then she foundered, and while reports in recent days have been promising, no one who knows the disease can ever look the other way until complete recovery is announced.

Hold also a good thought for Gabriel Charles, a Del Mar Derby winner who made an impressive return from injury this summer by dusting his opposition in the Eddie Read Stakes at nine furlongs on the Del Mar grass. Gabriel Charles colicked while training for a run at the Arlington Million and was in rough shape for a while, but he reportedly now is out of the woods and could return to training later this year.

As far as that goes, the summer has ended on a sorry note with the injury sustained by Flavien Prat at Los Alamitos last Thursday afternoon. Going down in a two-horse tangle with Santiago Gonzalez, Prat took the worst of it with five fractured vertebrae and a punctured lung, not to mention the loss of the momentum he earned with a second-place finish in the Del Mar standings in his first season there.

Beyond the domination of Irad Ortiz Jr. (Puerto Rico) and Javier Castellano (Venezuela) at Saratoga and Rafael Bejarano (Peru) at Del Mar, it was a very l’été Français in America. Prat and the blossoming Midwest star Florent Geroux have joined Eclipse Award winner Julien Leparoux in a Gallic onslaught, the likes of which has not been seen since the heyday of Jean-Luc Samyn and Jean Cruguet in New York. Prat will be down for an unfortunate period of recovery – missing out on his first Breeders’ Cup opportunities – but hopefully it will be only a blip on the timeline of a long career.

There’s always next summer.