Nikki's Sandcastle's win eases Kassen's pain

Impending back surgery kept trainer Dave Kassen from witnessing firsthand Nikki’s Sandcastle’s win Saturday in the Grade 3 Hanshin Cup, but Kassen watched with pleasure from Kentucky as the 7-year-old Nikki’s Sandcastle scored his second graded stakes victory.

Nikki’s Sandcastle hadn’t started in a one-turn race since May 2012, but he and jockey Leandro Goncalves had no trouble keeping up with a swift pace in the one-mile Hanshin, pushing on to a half-length victory over Mister Marti Gras. Nikki’s Sandcastle’s other graded stakes win, also on Polytrack, came last fall in the Grade 2 Fayette over nine furlongs at Keeneland.

“I was confident in him. He’s a fairly versatile horse, and he’s got more speed than people think,” Kassen said.

Kassen, a former jockey who began training more than 30 years ago, has been troubled by a painful nerve condition in his back for more than a year. He said he’s scheduled to have outpatient surgery in two weeks but said the procedure wasn’t expected to keep him from his daily racetrack routine for more than a brief period.

“It’s not like I’m doing a lot of hands-on stuff at the barn anyway,” he said.

Kassen typically stables his entire string at Arlington but has only four horses here right now while operating an 11-horse string at Churchill. The larger purses in Kentucky, Kassen said, motivated the shift, but when the meet there ends June 29, Kassen will move everything to Arlington.

It’s at Arlington where Nikki’s Sandcastle probably will make his next start, in the July 12 Arlington Handicap, a 1 1/4-mile grass race.

“If he ran really well there, we could think about the Arlington Million,” Kassen said.