A long goodbye for Gun Runner's racing team

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Steve Asmussen was only partly kidding when asked to reminisce about Gun Runner being retired to stud after the Pegasus World Cup is run Saturday at Gulfstream Park.

“Nooooooo!” Asmussen said.

At some point, a wave of agony to mitigate the perpetual ecstasy is bound to overcome Asmussen and all those closely associated with Gun Runner, who was a virtual lock to be named 2017 Horse of the Year when the Eclipse Awards were presented here Thursday night at Gulfstream. It’s a road Asmussen already has traveled twice with horses he trained to Horse of the Year titles, Curlin (2007-08) and Rachel Alexandra (2009).

“It’s really, really weird,” Asmussen said early this week. “When you see them afterward, sometime down the road – it’s even weirder. You go from being in charge of every single thing that involves them – everyone around them, who touches them, who gets on them, every single thing they do – to nothing. Just nothing.

“It’s hard to let another horse walk in a stall they walked out of. You almost feel you should leave it open as a shrine.”

Whereas his two previous Horse of the Year honorees came to him after having already raced – Curlin was turned over to Asmussen after one start for Helen Pitts, and Rachel Alexandra after a record-setting performance in the Kentucky Oaks for Hal Wiggins – he was on the ground floor in the making of Gun Runner.

Bred by the Besilu Stables of Benjamin Leon, Gun Runner was co-owned from the start by the Three Chimneys Farm of Goncalo Torrealba and the Winchell Thoroughbreds of Ron Winchell and his mother, Joan.

“The deal was we race him, and they stand him,” David Fiske, racing and farm manager for the Winchell family, told Daily Racing Form shortly after Gun Runner ended his 3-year-old campaign in November 2016 with a victory in the Grade 1 Clark Handicap at Churchill Downs.

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Gun Runner was not initially a superstar among his peers. He was fourth in the final start of his 2-year-old year, the 2015 Kentucky Jockey Club, and after winning the 2016 Louisiana Derby by 4 1/2 lengths, he was defeated in four of his next five starts, including a third in the Kentucky Derby, a fifth in the Haskell, and a distant third behind Arrogate in the Travers.

“Fate is the only answer I can come up with” as to why Gun Runner was overshadowed by the likes of Nyquist and Exaggerator in those earlier days, said Asmussen, who was inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame in 2016. “Personally, I always felt he was good enough, but it just wasn’t meant to be.”

His triumph over older horses in the 2016 Clark was a turning point. The next year at 4, his six starts resulted in a runner-up finish in the Dubai World Cup and victories in all the rest, capped by an emphatic score in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Florent Geroux, who will be back aboard Saturday for the $16 million Pegasus, rode Gun Runner in all 15 of his races the last two years.

It’s got to be very difficult to say goodbye to a horse who has done so much for everyone involved. Assistant trainer Scott Blasi, who surely has logged the most hands-on hours alongside Gun Runner over the last 2 1/2 years or so, probably will be most affected, Fiske said.

“This isn’t going to be nearly as tough on me as Scott and the guys in the barn who’ve worked around him every day,” said Fiske, adding with a chuckle: “They’ll be on antidepressants for a while.”

“He’s just been really special to us,” Blasi said after sending Gun Runner through his final career breeze here Monday.

Fiske began working for the late Verne Winchell, Ron’s father, nearly 38 years ago. He said a happy nostalgia has frequently entered his mind with this final farewell ahead.

“I’ve got pictures of Ron [now age 45] from 1991, when we ran Olympio in the Preakness,” Fiske said. “Ron is there as a sullen teenager with a mullet. Obviously, he has a much deeper appreciation now, knowing how much time his dad put into the sport and how much he enjoyed it. To reach this pinnacle means a lot to him and his mother.”

Torrealba acquired controlling interest in Three Chimneys from farm founder Robert Clay in 2013, and it didn’t take long for him to hit the proverbial home run.

“To have a horse of Gun Runner’s stature in this stage of revitalization by Mr. Torrealba obviously brings a lot of financial benefit,” Three Chimneys vice chairman Doug Cauthen said. “But more importantly, it solidifies your credibility in regard to being a serious player in this industry. For the stallion barn, there’s no bigger contribution than a horse like this, one you were involved with so early on.”

Asmussen, who now has trained four of the last 11 winners of the Horse of the Year vote, said he was too closely involved with Gun Runner to notice whether the horse has garnered as much widespread fan support as Curlin or Rachel Alexandra or other highly popular horses in recent years such as Zenyatta, California Chrome, and American Pharoah.

Regardless, Gun Runner will leave Florida after the Pegasus as a deserving champion.

“There is and always has been an overwhelming support or fan base for Gun Runner over how tough he is,” Asmussen said. “There’s a great appreciation from people, at least within horse racing, about how tough he is. The people who come up to me to talk about him, fellow horsemen and his fans – they’re very proud of how tough he’s been.

Asmussen is not about to take anything for granted. At the relatively young age of 52, he knows it is entirely possible he could train another Horse of the Year in the future – but at the same time he realizes a Curlin, Rachel Alexandra, or Gun Runner don’t come along every day.

“They’re royalty,” he said. “They just are. Their awareness of who they are is very strong. That is the similarity between the three – how sure of themselves they are, and who they are.”