Kentucky Derby: Lynch hoping equipment adjustment will rejuvenate Classic Causeway
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Brian Lynch suspects Classic Causeway might have displaced his palate in his last race, perhaps accounting for the colt’s poor performance, so the trainer is tweaking a couple of things.
“We’ve always kept things very, very simple with him by running him in a snaffle [bridle],” said Lynch, who on Saturday will saddle Classic Causeway for owner-breeders Clarke Cooper and Patrick O’Keefe in the 148th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs.
“But I felt like he may have displaced in the Florida Derby,” describing a common condition wherein a horse’s soft palate will drift upward to sit atop the epiglottis to partially obstruct the trachea and restrict air flow. “When he was scoped after the race, he was displacing repeatedly but correcting himself. Maybe in the race he did get entrapped for a little bit, we don’t know.”
For the Derby, Classic Causeway will be equipped with a dropped noseband bridle, which sits lower on the nose and encircles the chin groove in front of the bit. The noseband can help to keep a horse from opening its mouth and crossing its jaw by increasing pressure lower on the nose. This is combined with a tongue tie, which Classic Causeway also will have for the first time for a race. A tongue tie keeps a horse from moving its tongue excessively; some trainers believe it helps prevent a horse from flipping its palate.
Lynch said he uses a tongue tie for racing on “maybe 50 percent” of his horses. He said the dropped noseband and tongue tie were used Saturday when Classic Causeway breezed six furlongs at Churchill in 1:13.20, in company, for his final pre-race prep, “and he scoped perfect afterward.”
Further complicating the decision to add the equipment is the fact Classic Causeway has a protruding fleshy nodule of a couple inches on his lower left jaw. Lynch doesn’t want it messed with.
“That’s one reason everything had been so basic before,” he said. “He did very well working" -- in the dropped noseband and tongue tie -- "so we’re good.”
The speedy Classic Causeway is something of an unknown quantity in the Derby, other than he can be expected amid the first flight as the field flashes under the wire the first time. The Giant’s Causeway colt was one of the consensus Derby favorites after back-to-back, front-running triumphs at Tampa Bay Downs in the Feb. 12 Sam F. Davis and March 12 Tampa Bay Derby, but his stock plummeted after he faltered to finish last of 11 in the April 2 Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park. Lynch even withdrew him from Derby consideration following the Gulfstream race, but reversed course April 25, announcing the colt was back in the field.
Julien Leparoux has the mount on Classic Causeway, replacing Irad Ortiz Jr., who rode the colt in his three Florida races this winter. Ortiz will ride Mo Donegal.
Lynch admitted to being downcast and somewhat puzzled following the Florida Derby, but early Monday he was back to his cheerful self.
“The horse is doing good,” he beamed. “Five days out and doing good.”