Kid Cruz earns shot at Travers Stakes

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Midway down the backstretch of the Jim Dandy Stakes on July 26, Kid Cruz was last of six runners – not surprising, perhaps, given his past-performance lines. But given that Kid Cruz had broken on top under jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. and was with the leaders entering the first turn, his position as the trailer was disconcerting to trainer Linda Rice.

“My heart sunk,” Rice said. “Irad had rushed him out of there, got squeezed back in a four-horse sandwich on the turn with Kid Cruz not wanting to be there in the first place, then he seemed to lose his action. I thought at the five-eighths pole we could get outdistanced.”

Not the case. Kid Cruz, still last at the five-sixteenths pole, came with his customary late run in the stretch and finished third, six lengths behind the victorious Wicked Strong. It was a good enough effort in Rice’s estimation to move on to Saturday’s Grade 1, $1.25 million Travers.

“I was very happy to see him gather himself back up and come running at the end of it,” Rice said. “His action looked good, and he was finishing well, and he got beat six lengths. If that weren’t the case, he wouldn’t be running in the Travers.”

On Monday, Kid Cruz completed preparations for the Travers by working four furlongs in 48.91 seconds over Saratoga’s main track, breezing inside a stablemate, A Marked Man. He galloped out five furlongs in 1:02.14.

Also on Monday, Kid Cruz, a son of 1999 Travers Stakes winner Lemon Drop Kid, was one of 11 horses expected to be entered for the Travers. Post positions were to be assigned Tuesday night at a downtown Saratoga Springs restaurant, Druthers.

The Travers field, with riders, was expected to be: Bayern (Martin Garcia), C J’s Awesome (Edgar Prado), Charge Now (Junior Alvarado), Commanding Curve (Shaun Bridgmohan), Kid Cruz (Ortiz), Mr Speaker (Jose Lezcano), Tonalist (Joel Rosario), Ulanbator (Brian Hernandez), V. E. Day (Javier Castellano), Viva Majorca (Julien Leparoux), and Wicked Strong (Rajiv Maragh).

Bayern, the Haskell Invitational winner and probable Travers favorite, was due to work Tuesday at Del Mar before being flown here Wednesday.

Rice said that following the Jim Dandy, she received calls from agents representing five jockeys seeing if she was going to make a jockey change on Kid Cruz.

“I said, ‘No, that’s not me. Everybody’s entitled to make a mistake. He rode two beautiful races on that horse, and I’m leaving it alone,’ ” Rice said, referring to victories in the Easy Goer and Dwyer stakes at Belmont.

No one is riding better than Ortiz at the moment. From Thursday through Sunday, Ortiz rode 11 winners from 26 mounts, and he is now a clear second in the jockeys’ standings with 34 wins, eight behind Javier Castellano.

“He’s really matured as a rider,” Rice said. “He’s patient, but he knows when to be aggressive. He’s really in a zone.”

Ortiz said Kid Cruz is a lazy kind of horse whom he has to ride virtually all the way in a race. In the Jim Dandy, he wanted to keep the horse closer to the pace because it looked like there wasn’t a lot of speed on paper.

“I didn’t want to change the horse’s style, but I don’t want to drop 10 lengths behind [a half-mile] in 50 [seconds], and now I come running, but they take off, too,” Ortiz said. “I wanted to be right there. You have to stay and ride him, and he’ll give you something. I tried to be as close as I can before the turn.”

The Travers field grew to 11 with confirmation that Mr Speaker and C J’s Awesome would run. Mr Speaker, the winner of the Grade 1 Belmont Derby on turf last out, will return to dirt for trainer Shug McGaughey. In his only previous start on dirt, Mr Speaker finished seventh in the Holy Bull Stakes, a race in which he was kept closer to the pace than he prefers.

“I know he’s good on the grass,” McGaughey said. “I’m not opposed to giving him another opportunity on the dirt going a mile and a quarter. We know he’ll do that.”

C J’s Awesome, a maiden winner at 1 1/4 miles in June at Churchill Downs, was entered by trainer Ken McPeek, who sent out 33-1 Golden Ticket to dead heat for the win with Alpha in the 2012 Travers.