Nicks on five-bagger: "Just amazing"

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Ralph Nicks arrived back in south Florida around lunchtime on Sunday after having attended the Keeneland yearling sale for the past week. By the time he got to dinner that night, Nicks had added five more victories to his already impressive record here this summer, a feat even he found a bit hard to believe.

“Did it really happen?” Nicks said on Monday. “That’s what I was saying last night.”

Nicks won with five of his six starters on Sunday’s card. He entered two horses in the eighth race, which he won with first-timer Final Encore. He also sent out Washington’s Song to capture her debut earlier on the card. Nicks’s other Sunday winners were More Royalty in an entry-level allowance race and the claimers L. A. Style and Sasstalk. All five of Nicks’s winners were ridden by Tyler Gaffalione, the meet’s leading rider as well as the top apprentice in the country in both races and money won.

Nicks’s super Sunday capped a four-day run in which he sent out eight winners, padding his already comfortable lead atop the local trainer standings.

“I thought going into the day all of these horses had a chance to win,” said Nicks. “But you know how things go in this business. If a couple of them win or everybody hits the board, you feel like you had a good day. To win with five of them, especially when four are 2-year-olds, everything has to align perfectly. It was just amazing.”

Nicks’s stable has grown steadily since he decided a couple of summers ago to train on a year-round basis at Gulfstream Park. Nicks, who had never won more than two races on a single card prior to Sunday, went out on his own in 2004 after having served 14 years under Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott.

Nicks said he thinks the juveniles Washington’s Song, Final Encore, and Barbarenda, who won her debut Saturday, all could have bright futures. Washington’s Song won a five-furlong turf race Sunday.

“Washington’s Song is a very well-bred filly, an expensive yearling by Unbridled’s Song who looks the part,” said Nicks. “I think she’ll be even better the further she goes. We started her out on the turf because her mother won on the synthetic, and I think her stride is a little better suited for turf than dirt.”

Barbarenda is a half-brother to Grade 1 winner Rock Fall, who is among the leading candidates for this year’s Breeders’ Cup Sprint.

Nicks noted that Barbarenda arrived at his barn the day Rock Fall won the Grade 1 Alfred G. Vanderbilt at Saratoga.

“So her value literally increased during the four-hour van ride here from Ocala,” he said.

Nicks, who said he purchased two horses for one of his clients just prior to departing Keeneland on Sunday, is looking ahead to the Breeders’ Cup with the star of his 2-year-old crop, Tap to It, the runner-up to Rachel’s Valentina in the Grade 1 Spinaway earlier this month at Saratoga.

“She’s going to train up to the Breeders’ Cup,” said Nicks. “She’ll have her first work since the Spinaway at Belmont on Thursday and will ship to Keeneland about 10 days before the race.”

Nicks should keep rolling

Nicks’s hot hand should continue when racing resumes here Thursday. He’ll send out Kandoo as the heavy favorite in the afternoon’s $44,000 main event, carded for 2-year-old fillies under entry-level optional-claiming conditions at six furlongs.

Kandoo was an impressive debut winner here July 18 before shipping up to Saratoga, where she stumbled at the break and finished sixth in the Grade 2 Adirondack.

Kandoo will face six rivals, five of whom won their last start, on Thursday. Of that group, Above Fashion, who is the only non-Florida-bred in the field, might be best, having been second behind the odds-on Battle Diva in the Cassidy Stakes here earlier this year.